Word: symbols
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...theoretical one. The fault is not in literary studies, but with literary studies. Academics in this field are not paid to produce anything, are not paid for the content of their work at all. Our society chooses to pay them to do what they do because they are a symbol of knowledge and tradition, regardless of how radical their theories might be. Really, it's only a kind of effete entertainment or, at best, private passion, for them. The truest words I ever heard in an English class were that the purpose of the English department is to help...
...theoretical one. The fault is not in literary studies, but with literary studies. Academics in this field are not paid to produce anything, are not paid for the content of their work at all. Our society chooses to pay them to do what they do because they are a symbol of knowledge and tradition, regardless of how radical their theories might be. Really, it's only a kind of effete entertainment or, at best, private passion, for them. The truest words I ever heard in an English class were that the purpose of the English department is to help...
...nameless bum without his box, chains and death-defying stunts? Would we drop Hugh Grant's name nearly as often without his infamous exploits? Would Linda Tripp be a household name if she wasn’t' a self-professed double talking snoop? Would Annie Taylor be an enduring symbol of American ambition if it wasn't for her unprecedented trip over the Niagara Falls in a barrel of her own making? Hardly...
...painfully illustrates, this feat of daring and desperation did not have the effect Annie desired. Immediately after experiencing the shock and joy of her self-described immaculate rebirth within the Falls, Annie climbs out of the water and is greeted only by cold disbelief and disgust. Instead of a symbol of beauty and hope, the crowd gathered to see her feat finds instead "a woman, short and plain and only slightly bruised,/ moving dizzily among them/ like a fly hatched by mistake in the winter sun." To the crowd gathered and to history itself, Annie was an ugly old woman...
...self-made womb, becomes in the end Annie's self-made tomb as Annie watches herself disintegrate within the short and petty memory of history. Eventually she is even called an imposter when the idealistic collective imagination consumes memory and literally recreates "Annie Taylor" into a blonde, beautiful symbol of female youth and fertility. Perhaps if Annie Taylor fell over the falls 40 years earlier her story would have been different. Perhaps then we would not remember young and handsome Bobby Leach, the famous "first man to go over the falls in a barrel" (five year after Annie's forgotten...