Pictures/Videos Topic

[SlowPokemon]

Lol that's actually from a banned episode of Pokemon. Like the James with boobs pic.

Silly James, being controversial.

[Saria]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qST5eVLudrQ

^Cartman sings better than Lady Gaga. :3

[KefkaticFanatic]

god dammit

[triforced1]

LIES

[Bespinben]

I"m having a really hard time "un-seeing" Diglett's nose as a mouth with a tooth.

[Jub3r7]

I watched that episode. That's where Ash caught about 30 tauros in the safari zone.

Also. The tooth. T_T

[Bespinben]

Team Rocket - the only evil organization that has sense enough to use guns to do the job.

[Saria]

[Dude]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIp4eOkH_hE
I'm so cool.

[fabbemannen]

[imageinhere]http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kv74tkeYPt1qzfebyo1_500.jpg[/imageinhere]
god dammit

That pic is going to disturb me everytime I play pokemon from now on -.-
But still lolz xd

[ETFROXX]

[Dude]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62NxRzhZgQk

WHY IS THIS SO ENTERTAINING.

[KefkaticFanatic]

@ETF And then you read Shakespeare or something and realise, oh wait, authors actually do make awesome metaphors and symbolism and shit everywhere.

[Ruto]

Not always, I'm thinking of Kafka and how these people were arguing that the Commandant representing Jesus, or it was the officer that was representing a disciple, and the machine represented the Old Testament, etc...while missing the point (the apparatus is overly complicated and malfunctions in the current times). Yes, there are awesome metaphors that were intentional, but honestly...a lot of them are really made by the reader too. 

Also those people seem to have forgotten that Kafka was actually Jewish.

[Mashi]

But, once you get passed the small language barrier, Shakespeare makes everything evident!  In many other cases, any symbolism or metaphors or pathos or whatever literary element the authors use is only found through (Usually) intense and tedious speculation.  Most people want to read books because they're fun to read, not because they want to analyze a page and write 5 pages of notes on it.

I think symbolism and the like are important devices that can be used to enhance any piece of literature, but the way it's gone about in English class is too exacting, in my opinion.  There's technically no way of truly discerning what an author means to say in a work unless he/she writes something such as "Symbolism in my Books" (This is so frivolous and someone should definitely do this), take The Catcher in the Rye (Controversy over whether there is symbolism in the text) or Wuthering Heights (Controvery over what symbolism in the text signifies), for example.  I'm not sure how other English classes work, but in mine, if we're asked to find what's symbolic of a certain excerpt of a book, despite how legitimate our premises are, if we don't surmise what the author ostensibly implied, we either don't get full credit or lose a substantial amount of points.

But anyway, I think that symbolism can be a powerful tool if used correctly.  But not everyone has the prowess of writing like Shakespeare, or of creating sentences as extensive and descriptive as Hemingway, or of supplying conspicuous imagery as Tolkien, etc.  If otherwise, analyzing a text can quickly become dull and irksome.  But then again, I suppose it may depend on how it's taught and what particular book is being read, but nevertheless, I think that whether a book should be dissected or not should be up to the reader.  Not to say that people shouldn't learn how to properly read a book to find such devices, but there's a fine line between speculative amusement and over-analytic dullness.