But English was my thing. As it happens, I am now a professional writer and editor. This is in no way thanks to him! He was the kind of English teacher who nitpicked about rules and sucked the joy out of reading and interpreting literature. He would dock you for every spelling or grammar error made in a paper—so if you could make a solid argument that the pig in Lord of the Flies was a metaphor for lost civilization, but you spelled “civilization” wrong throughout the paper, you’d get a D. He almost ruined books for me. Now, apparently, he’s moved on to trying to ruin democracy.
It's literally his job.
It's to reinforce the idea of proofreading your work for errors and verifying there are no mistakes. It's like these whiny entitled dickheads see accountability and quality standards as a terrible accostments to their fragile ego.
I didn't need an entire article of a person crying just to say he's pedantic and thinks people should have enough pride in their work to make sure they present it in the best way possible.
Who the hell is going to take a piece seriously if it's littered with plainly obvious mistakes?
Clearly, making an argument that the pig symbolizes "lost" civilization to a Jewish teacher was a huge mistake.
/s
Also, it's been 35 years since I read LotF, but I'm pretty sure the pig carries meanings of primitivism, not civilization but hunter-gatherers, a time when man was completely dependent on a world of plants and animals he could not control or even influence much, the degeneration of bits of Bible study into animism, totem and taboo, and ritual sacrifice.
That's because you read the whole thing rather than skim reading for a facile hot take to make a good pull-quote. The kids turned feral. They also killed a pig. Obviously the pig was the porcine incarnation of civilization and when they killed it they lost their civilized ways.
Nevermind the facts and flavour of the rest of the text point in a different direction, some pseudo-deep metaphor between two contextless incidents is enough to form a thesis you can be proud of if you're at the level of a professional gossip monger. Job done, paper submitted.
The state of journalism in 2020, everyone.
It's literally his job.
It's to reinforce the idea of proofreading your work for errors and verifying there are no mistakes. It's like these whiny entitled dickheads see accountability and quality standards as a terrible accostments to their fragile ego.
I didn't need an entire article of a person crying just to say he's pedantic and thinks people should have enough pride in their work to make sure they present it in the best way possible.
Who the hell is going to take a piece seriously if it's littered with plainly obvious mistakes?
What, you mean "the pig is actually civilizashun" isn't a compelling enough argument to make you carefully re-evaluate entire the book?
Clearly, making an argument that the pig symbolizes "lost" civilization to a Jewish teacher was a huge mistake.
/s
Also, it's been 35 years since I read LotF, but I'm pretty sure the pig carries meanings of primitivism, not civilization but hunter-gatherers, a time when man was completely dependent on a world of plants and animals he could not control or even influence much, the degeneration of bits of Bible study into animism, totem and taboo, and ritual sacrifice.
That's because you read the whole thing rather than skim reading for a facile hot take to make a good pull-quote. The kids turned feral. They also killed a pig. Obviously the pig was the porcine incarnation of civilization and when they killed it they lost their civilized ways.
Nevermind the facts and flavour of the rest of the text point in a different direction, some pseudo-deep metaphor between two contextless incidents is enough to form a thesis you can be proud of if you're at the level of a professional gossip monger. Job done, paper submitted.