Analyzing

Title: Analysis
Date: 28 November 2011
Class: IB English HL
Category: Other Classes

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            Throughout the year, during English literature class, we have analyzed prose and poetry. Recently, we have looked at poems by Sylvia Plath. Her poems contain lots of allusions to myths and legends; contain a lot of content based on suicide attempts and torture, and link directly to her personal life. Although my English teachers have always told “there is no right and wrong answer in English”, we still make assumptions and guesses on what we think the writing is trying to convey. If the quotation mentioned above is true, then how do English teachers mark essays based on analysis, and give students appropriate grades? Whose interpretation do we base the “answer” on? Who decides and how does this person decide whether an interpretation is unsuitable for the passage or poem, especially since everyone thinks differently and has different viewpoints? [Wondering/Knowledge Issues] I remember a couple classes ago, I interpreted a ‘Lady Lazarus’ by Sylvia Plath as being about rape, while the other students thought it was about her numerous suicide attempts and her desire to seek revenge on her husband. [Connection] Can there really be more than one interpretation? Would the author or poet have intended both meanings? Did the writer intend any of the meanings at all? How do we know if we are interpreting the work in the correct manner? How will we ever know if we were right, if the writer is no longer living? Does it matter whether the interpretation was intended by the writer or not, given that the reader learns something from it? Who gets the power to judge whether the interpretation is valid or not? [Wondering/Knowledge Issues]