I think too much. My mind is constantly at work filling itself with intricate but tangled thoughts and ideas, neurons rapid-firing, and I often find it hard to keep up with myself. I think this is one of many reasons I gravitated towards the English major- because English study corrals my unruly thoughts and helps me make sense of them.
I always knew this was the case with creative writing, as it’s been an outlet for me since I could first write, a way to express and understand myself. However, it’s just this year that I’ve realized examining literature can serve the same purpose for me. Literary analysis is all about making connections and using those connections to understand the world around us. Time may only move forward, but there are so many undercurrents to life that travel in multiple directions, so many ongoing conversations between different people and cultures that transcend the limits of time through their preservation in the written word. My violin teacher used to say that when beginning a piece, to keep the music moving forward, you should imagine the notes are already playing and you are merely joining in. When we study literature, whether it’s one work on its own or two in context of each other, we are doing the same thing- joining conversations that are already in existence in order to keep moving forward and advancing.
There are so many of these conversations, and they are frequently so intertwined with one another, that it is overwhelming and frustrating at times. Just when you think you’ve reached the answer, found where it all began, you bump up against another conversation or make another connection and suddenly things are complicated again. But this isn’t such a bad thing. The recursiveness of the conversations that literature introduces and preserves forces us to keep moving forward. We participate in discussions that could very well go on forever (and indeed, some have been going on forever) because that is how we grow and progress. Despite sometimes feeling like we’re running in circles, we really do get closer to an answer with each turn of the conversation. And even though it can be frustrating to maneuver such labyrinths, it can also be exhilarating.
The English discipline, as described by the Board of Education in 1921, “connotes the discovery of the world by the first and most direct way open to us, and the discovery of ourselves in our native environment” (Board of Education 1921: 20, as cited by Moran 34). Analyzing literature- taking part in its conversations- helps me understand my own inferences and interpretations and discover how they fit in with “a much broader interest in life, society, civilization, and thought” (Moran 26). The conversations are there to be had, and the connections there to be made.