lunabee34

I had to read "Red Badge of Courage" in a college freshman class. I ha-a-a-ted it; I found it grim and pointless. Then we had to write an analysis of the book -- without, mind you, any prior discussions / teachings of how one wrote a good analysis. Mine was titled, "The Color Symbolism in the Red Badge of Courage" -- and it was 100% bullshit, writing out of my ass.

The funny thing is, my grade was "100." Not "A" or "A+", but "100" -- as in no misplaced commas or awkward constructions? I lost a lot of respect for the teacher after that -- couldn't he tell that I was shoveling bullshit? OTOH, considering your reaction to Donald Pizer's critical essay, maybe all literary analyses are just various shades of bullshit, and I didn't know that at the time. <grin>