I try to teach my students the importance—and the value—of subjectivity. I don’t know if the carpet was blue because the author wanted to portray something sad. But if that’s how it seems to you, what can you take away from that? If you’re finding hints of sadness in everything you read, what can that tell you about yourself at this point in time? Those are the lessons that are going to help you in your day-to-day life anyway. In fifty years you’re not going to need to know about symbolism in classical literature. But you’re definitely going to need lots of tools for figuring yourself out, for
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