March 18, 2016 the Racquette Editor-in-Chief
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Opinion & Editorial
the Racquette
3
Yes, Actually, the Curtains are Probably Blue for a Reason
Kirsten Meehan Editor
The Internet has produced many, many things that annoy me. Captcha tests, viral videos, “rickrolling,” the comment section of pretty much every website I’ve ever been on, pop-up ads, 12-year-olds who think they’re smarter than me and about 99 percent of memes are just a few of those things. However, only one thing that’s originated on the Internet annoys and offends me not only on a personal level, but as both a student of literary analysis and someone with a sincere love of literature. From what I can gather, this thing originates from a text post on the popular micro-blogging site Tumblr. It says that “What the author said: The curtains are blue. What your English teacher thinks it means: The curtains represent the character’s depression and reluctance to carry on. What the author meant: The curtains are blue.” The point is also sometimes illustrated with a venn diagram, in which the circles of “What the Author Meant” and “What your English Teacher Thought it Meant” barely overlap. This is infuriating. There are, of course, works in which scenery details such as blue curtains are just scenery details. However, if you are reading something for an English class, odds are you are not reading one of those works. On top of that, if your English teacher is pointing this
detail out to you, the detail is most likely largely accepted to be something other than padding thrown in for the sake of the word count. Teachers, for the most part, don’t want to waste your time. Teachers, especially ones instructing a high school English class full of disinterested students, are going to give widely-accepted information that class so that those disinterested students can pass their state exams. This kind of thinking also completely kills what makes literary analysis fun or, at the very least, interesting. Let’s stop complaining about how they’re “just blue curtains” and stop to consider this: why does the author, who has an entire plot and theme to convey and argue, feel like it’s important for readers to know this piece of information? Are they working in the tradition of Jane Austen, who perfected the art of characterization through a person’s belongings and home? Those pages spent describing Rosings Park and Pemberly weren’t written just to sound nice, after all. If the blue curtains checkered and worn, as if they might be at home in a farmhouse, that says something very specific about the person who owns those curtains. It gives a very different impression than curtains described as “blue, silky and artful,” and that gives a different impression than if they were described as “worn, but well cared for.” Maybe this writer isn’t following in Jane Austen’s footsteps.
Maybe they’re going for someone a bit more contemporary, such as Virginia Woolf. In her novel “Mrs Dalloway,” a person’s taste in flowers speaks to their personality as much as their actions do. A conventual person might like roses, but it takes someone special to love sweetpeas. Perhaps, in our hypothetical book, several other characters have pink curtains, not blue. Maybe this person is the only one in the neighborhood to have blue curtains. The curtains could be an act of silent rebellion in a stifling environment, or maybe against gender roles, if you read into color symbolism. Isn’t that so much more interesting than just accepting the curtains are blue? Maybe, at this point, I should go back and address more directly the claim this Tumblr text post makes. The English teacher says that the curtains stand for “the character’s depression and reluctance to carry on.” To that I say, “Is the character you’re talking about depressed in the first place?” If they’re not, there’d be no reason to make that statement, so let’s assume they are. Does the character stare at the blue curtains that are blocking the sun, then decide to stay in his house the day after the funeral? Are the curtains talked about when the character is feeling particularly bad? Do these curtains add to the suffocating imagery of the room? I can think of many reasons why curtains, which exist to block out a light source, that are
simultaneously being described as the same color that people associate with sadness, can be interpreted as a sign that a character is depressed. That’s not much of a stretch at all. So, yes, maybe the blue curtains are just blue curtains, but wouldn’t it be so much more interesting if they weren’t? The problem is that, in a time where Young Adult literature are the books that get the most mainstream attention, people forget that most authors are told to cut any unnecessary words from their manuscripts. In a world after the publication of “Twilight” with adjectiveladen sentences, people forget that if an author is working towards a distinct theme, every single word counts. This wouldn’t bother me if only high school students thought this way, but a few weeks ago, one of my peers used this argument on me when stating why he didn’t like his literature class. Many college students think like this, and that’s really disheartening. Some people can’t understand how cool it can be to decode a writer’s diction and find the meaning beneath, because they can’t accept there’s anything there in the first place. Please, Internet, for the love of God. The state-mandated school curriculum and the Common Core are already trying to kill the English Major. Don’t help them do it because a 15-year-old got angry that they earned a bad grade on their “Great Gatsby” paper.
Corrections from Last Week’s Issue Page 1: The Men’s Swimming and Diving team came in eighth, not ninth. The Woman’s Swimming and Diving team came in ninth. Page 1:The article “Men’s Swim Team Ninth SUNYAC” references a Tyler Van DeValk, but his actual name is Jacob Van DeValk. Page 6: The poem “The Car,” by Rebecca Augustine, was printed twice.
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