Literary Theory is bizzare

<p>I put longer hours in but I am haunted by B+ or sometimes worse for my overall grade in English, except for with the high grade markers.</p>

<p>I don't believe in Freud, it sounds ridiculous to say that the the fangs in Bram Stoker's Dracula represent the phallus and that lips are women's parts. It's a sexual enough story without that.
I don't believe that Frankenstein monster is supposed to be sympathetic, his humanity is a source of motive that makes him even more threatening. Frankenstein's concerns over population were legitimate because the artificial creation will compete with man. </p>

<p>A certain french existentialists is an anti-american snob. We have to learn about how Las Vegas is the rest of America under the magnifying glass. But it isn't. That's not even a theory. That's just rubbish (I'm a New Zealander so the curriculum might differ). How is that even an academic statement? It's more like bad poetry. He says it like it's scientific.</p>

<p>Some lecturers think my analysis is good but to get the A I have to show more 'understanding'. I understand it enough to see how outdated and oversimplified it all is and until now I've made it quite clear in my essays that I don't tolerate the premise.</p>

<p>I hate to see my record in the hands of these weird, abstract tasks. I wrote one short assignment sarcastically and got a good mark but I can't rely on that. I know I'm being extremely arrogant, but I've endured three years of this and I'm over it. I wanted to look at historical english literature from back in the day but we're just expected to criticize accepted social norms with vague allusions to books. Maori sovereignty, queer theory, feminism, post modernism. It's deliberate misinterpretation of classics (or, often, any random pulp fiction book) for a political agenda. The lecturers say they want to make us sophisticated. I don't care about being 'sophisticated'. I feel robbed.</p>

<p>These literary theory types tell me that in the age of information knowledge is useless by itself and that they are there to provide interpenetration. I say in the age of information there is no excuse for a lack of knowledge. You can't just go, 'I can access info whenever therefore i don't need to retain anything'. That's lazy.</p>

<p>But I still want to conquer the papers. I don't know how to do this while staying true to my intellectual convictions.</p>