fandomhigh | Is A Cigar Just A Cigar, Tuesday, Period 3

A stack of papers sat on Cindy's desk today; as soon as everyone was seated, she nodded at Jaime ~~if he was there~~ to begin passing them out. "This is your syllabus for this semester. Be warned, items may move on a whim--specifically mine--because I feel like teaching something different that day. Everything listed here will be covered and possibly more besides, but the when isn't set in stone, okay?"

"Today, however, we will be following it and discussing where symbols come from. Now, because this is a high school survey course, we're mostly going to be sticking with works that use Western symbolism and sources. This is not to say that there aren't plenty of amazing works from other cultures, and I heartily encourage you all to read some, but working from the Western canon means at least a higher likelihood that you'll already have some passing familiarity with the works in question and I can make broad sweeping generalizations about certain symbols and aspects without adding a whole mess of qualifiers."

She reached into her desk and pulled out four heavy books: the Bible, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Edith Hamilton's Mythology, and a brightly-colored book titles Fairy Tales for Children. "The first broad sweeping generalization I get to make is this: When in doubt, the symbol you're looking at probably came from one of these four sources. There are very few other works that come close to the cultural embedding we see from these. Many students reading Amleth for the first time are astonished to find line after line of quotes they recognize, and even people who do not follow the Bible or the Christian religion can recognize certain repeating themes from within its pages. For centuries, knowledge of the Greek and Roman myths were required to be considered an educated individual, and many of us were told bedtime stories from from the pages of the Grimm Brothers or Hand Christian Anderson. The tales themselves may have been abridged and adapted, but enough remains for them to be recognizable. Anytime you read a story about a girl with a hard home life who gets a bit of supernatural assistance to go to a party where she meets a cute boy, but she has to flee, leaving behind only a trinket for him to find her by, you're reading a version of Cinderella, even if no fairy godmother, wicked stepmother, or glass shoe makes an appearance."

She managed to say that with no irony at all. Cindy was very proud of herself.

"Folktales to mythology to religion to the Bard, all of these have seeped deeply into our collective consciousness. If there's a garden in the book, there are some pretty good odds that the author is trying to evoke the Garden, Eden, from the Book of Genesis. A young man with conflicted, possibly sexual feelings for his mother? Well, that's Amleth--from Shakespeare--who himself was reaching back to ~~meta for-~~Oedipus, by Sophicles. Then question them becomes, 'why.' Why is the author trying to get you to make these connections? What is he or she trying to do with them? The answer is this: by invoking these symbols, the author is letting you do more of the work. When you read a symbol, even if you don't fully recognize it for what it is, it informs your reading of the rest of the work. It makes things easier to grasp and understand. When we read about two brothers with an uneasy, possibly even antagonistic relationship, the echoes back to Cain and Abel situate the story beyond just the pages of the text. No author wants to give you a book that you cannot latch onto. They all want their texts to connect with things you already know, to resonate with you. By drawing on these cultural contexts in their works, they're letting the knowledge that you bring with you ground their novel into other aspects of your life. It also lets their stories offer a deeper meaning without hitting you over the head with it."

[~~Wait for~~ OCD is up. NOW you can start pinging.]

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George had no idea why she was doing this. None. At all.

But she found herself lingering back, after class.

And once everyone else had filtered off, and she could pretend she was mostly talking to herself, forced casual and not minding much if the teacher was even listening ...

"It reminds me of shooting stars."

Cindy looked up from where she was packing up her books. "Shooting stars? Go on."

This was interesting--it wasn't an answer she'd heard before.

George felt self-conscious, sure that the answer was wrong, but ... she couldn't think of a plausible lie, either, so she marched on.

"They streak across the sky, so fast and so bright, and then ... nothing," she said. "Most stars just sit there until they fade out. But anything that burns that fast, it can't last. It's just going to burn and disappear, just as you fixed your eyes on it."

She shrugged, awkwardly. "That's what he did. His dad's the steady and reliable one, but Icarus? He burned out and poof! He's gone."

Cindy nodded. "That's actually a beautiful way to put it," she said softly. "Do you enjoy literature and English classes? The sums up both the tragedy and the glory of what he did. You never read that Daedalus is having fun flying, you realize."

"My dad teaches English," she said. "At the college. He used to read Shakespeare to me. I didn't get it, most of the time, but ... it was pretty."

She wondered about Daedalus's flight, and shook her head. "I don't know that either's ... better," she said. "I mean, Icarus had more fun, but ... then he's dead. And he doesn't get to fly ever again."

"It's not a question of better," Cindy says. "More of how you look at it. Wings and flight usually symbolize freedom, which they are striving for, though Icarus ends up dead and Daedalus heartbroken. Icarus knew a few moments of joy and wonder and then died. Some stories suggest that for a few, fleeting moments, he became like one of the gods. Some people would agree that was worth dying for."

Cindy wouldn't, but that's because she was a pragmatist to the core. "Personally, I'd rather live to fly again, but my feelings don't influence the beauty and tragedy that's there anyway."

"Maybe he didn't have a choice," George said, mostly to herself. "I mean, someone might say it's worth dying, to have that, but he didn't do it on purpose. He was just ... flying, and then it was over. It kind of changes things."

She wasn't sure where she was going with that, either. It just seemed important to note.

"No, he didn't," Cindy said softly. "The number of people who embrace death knowingly and willingly is vastly outnumbered by those for whom death is an unwelcome surprise. But now we have this story, one that's been passed down for thousands of years. Clearly, it still speaks to us, since we still tell it. There are tons of scientific and mechanical programs out there called Icarus. We all know how the story ends, so why? Why does it still matter to us?"

"Because ..." Dammit. That question was hard. "Because I think maybe all the people that ... fly safely kind of envy Icarus. Even if he died, at least he lived, first. They wish they could be that brave."

Cindy nodded, pleased. "Honestly, I think you're right. For the Greeks, kleos--glory--was worth the risk. They kind of originated the theme, live hard, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse."

George nodded. She should just leave it there, except. Except.

"They were wrong," she said softly.

Cindy had been a spy for centuries. If she missed the fact that there was some weight to that statement, she'd be forced to retire and work at the shoe store full time.

She gave George a sharp glance. "Sounds like you're speaking from experience there," she said just as softly.

Could be any kind of experience. Losing a friend, family, taking a life...Cindy didn't know for sure. But there was something there.

She nodded again. "Kind of," she said, rethinking the message over again and shaking her head. "Sometimes life isn't fair. It's not an either-or. Daedalus gets sucked into a jet engine and his last thought is, I should have at least gone for it."

Great. Now she was emo-ing all over the professor.

Edited 2010-09-09 23:19 (UTC)

Hey, if there was one thing Cindy understood, it was how unfair life was. Especially if the unfairness in question was not of the whining 'my-privileged-life-is-so-hard' variety.

"If there's something I've come to learn, it's that regretting how you die is one thing. Regretting how you've lived another. But it's a hard lesson to learn and many people don't. And they take offense if you live your life as though you have. Which is why a lot of people read the myth of Icarus and take away the message 'Don't fly too high.' The myth might say that, but it's not the only message it's passing on."

Is A Cigar Just A Cigar, Tuesday, Period 3

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