The Study of English Literature, Part One: Finding A Meaning

Common Meanings

What possible meanings might one find in a work?

One method is just to take the specific events of a story and restate them in very broad terms.  For example, if the story is about someone who is beaten up by bullies, then the meaning is never just that we should do something about children being beaten up by bullies.  Instead, say something vague and all-encompassing about “the relationship between power and cruelty” or “the duty of every person to help protect the weak from oppression.”  The story shows someone waiting for a phone call?  It must be about waiting for important and uncertain events in general.

There are also a number of all-purpose fail-safe meanings that are especially helpful on sight passages and the like.  The first of these is individualism, or the importance of non-conformity.  In almost all literature, giving in and accepting what everyone else does is a major no-no (as it leads to a boring story) and people who just follow the patterns of their heartless society end badly.  The other easy one is the religious interpretation.  Jesus did and said so many things that almost everything is related to him.  If that fails, the Bible is incredibly long and talks about just about everything.  The thing to keep in mind is that English-literature-studying-type people feel more profound if they talk about religion from an arms length, so never make it to obvious if you personally are, for example, pro-Christ and anti-devil.  If you want to be very profound, you can hit both canned meanings by dealing with either the relationship or the conflict between individualism and religion.

Modern literature, of course, is often written by depressed (and/or deranged) atheists, and often it is assumed that individual people are ultimately worthless and valueless, so you sometimes need to go beyond those first two meanings.  Luckily, there are lots of other things that tend to be emphasized with more-than-religious fervor.  You can usually find the evil of industrialized society, or its flip side, environmentalism.  Pacifism works in many war stories, while the need for courage and self-sacrifice works for the rest.  Imperialism and patriotism is not an ideal choice, but the brotherhood of all man is acceptable if you can manage to say it with gender-neutral language.

There are also the three main Big Theory meanings for twentieth-century literature: Freudianism, Marxism, and Feminism.  These are tedious to write about, but a lot of twentieth-century writers thought they were important and so they show up.  I have intentionally listed them in order of decreasing stupidity and irritatingness, with Freudianism being the most stupid and irritating, Marxism being somewhat stupid and irritating, and feminism being borderline tolerable, if repetitive.  Even when these meanings do not quite always show up explicitly (you can find all three very explicitly in a book like House of the Spirits, say) you can deduce their importance from their opposites.  We see capitalism, and bad things happen, so the point obviously must be that Marxism is good.  The people don’t talk about each other in sexual terms, so the main point obviously must be their repressed sexuality.  The woman seem to be fulfilling only minor roles in the story, so the point obviously must be that they should be doing more important things.

However, you should never, ever, ever say “obviously must” in an English essay.  Why?  Because of the Principle of Meaninglessness.

The Principle of Meaninglessness

The first and most basic principle in the study of English literature is this: all literature is meaningless.  To put it another way, no literature has a true meaning.  Thus, you are free to make up whatever you want.

For example, consider the following famous poem: “So much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow, / glazed with rain / water, / beside the white / chickens.” (W.C. Williams)  What does this really mean?  Well, frankly, it says that this wheelbarrow is important and tells us where the wheelbarrow is sitting, but beyond that we can only speculate wildly.  I may choose to invent some religious references—we have the blood of Christ, the water of baptism, etc. —but someone else could just as easily invent some political references—it’s about the Russian revolution, see; the reds are like a wheelbarrow that gathers the gains together communally, while the whites are pecking after individual gains like chickens.  Neither of these can be proven true any more than we can prove that the “glazed” is meant to make you think of a doughnut, making it all a profound comparison of fast food.  Hence the chickens.

For the sake of IB literature, thus, it is safer not to focus directly on a meaning.  You could write an essay about how House of the Spirits is meant to deliver a message of empowerment to women, but you can’t definitively prove that even if you line up all the evidence.  The safest thing to do with a meaning is just to take it for granted.  Decide what you think, state it in universal terms in the introduction (“Women have struggled long and hard against evil” or “For as long as they have existed, families have fought”), and then focus in on the details of the writing techniques instead.

More on that later.

For part 2 of the series, click here.

Related posts:

1. The Study of English Literature, Part Three: Progression
2. The Study of English Literature, Part Two: Positives and Negatives
3. TPCASTT – A Method of Analyzing Poetry [English notes]
4. A Political Novel: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich [English notes]
5. Chapter 1 – Culture and Meaning [Anthropology notes]