Literary Critics Debate Your Son’s Second-Grade Essay
The author cleverly rebukes Foucault and other leading post-structuralists
Welcome back to “Lit/Crit Corner,” where the world’s foremost literary critics offer insightful opinions on today’s most important new literature. Today, I’m joined by two of the sharpest minds in the business to discuss “All About Me,” the essay your son wrote yesterday in his second-grade class.
Our first panelist is Samuel Samwell, a giant in the field whose most recent work is “Lunar Layers: The Moon as Metaphor for a Tortured Soul in Goodnight Moon.” We’re also joined by Amy Ames, whose best-known piece is “Red or Dead: Socialist-Existentialist Tensions in The Little Red Hen.”
Let’s get right to it, shall we?
“All About Me” is short — just three sentences. What do you make of the essay’s brevity?
Samwell: The author cleverly juxtaposes an all-encompassing title, “All About Me,” with a three-sentence essay. In so doing, the author implicitly invites readers to ponder the meaning behind these two seemingly contradictory elements.
Reflecting on the title/structure dichotomy, I believe the author is asking readers to consider how well one human being can truly know another — suggesting that when a person believes she knows “all” about someone else, she actually knows very little.
Separately, it’s worth mentioning that the author’s use of structure to impart his theme seems intended as a rebuke, albeit a subtle one, of Foucault and the other leading post-structuralists.
Ames: I think the author’s structural brilliance goes even deeper than Sam perceives.
Remember, the title is “All About Me” — and I’d emphasize the word “Me.” The author challenges readers to consider how well they know others, but also themselves. Like Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five, the author’s goal is not to entertain, but to take the reader on an inward journey toward transformative personal meaning.
The essay begins by stating that the writer “want[s] to be a firefighter when I a grown up.” What should readers take from this?
Ames: “Firefighter” is metaphorical, of course — but a metaphor for what? I think it’s safe to say that the author is talking about the “fires” that rage within each of us, such as hatred and jealousy. Much like Golding in Lord of the Flies, the author raises the specter of our own fundamental human darkness, then asks readers to consider whether they can become the “firefighters” needed to overcome it in their own lives.
Samwell: Well-stated, Amy, but you’re off the mark. Upon a close reading, it seems evident that the author has a more globalist perspective, much like Orwell in Animal Farm. The “fires” the author hopes to fight are those that plague modern society, such as racism, hunger, and war.
The author cleverly drops a clue to his meaning: the deliberate omission of the word “am.” He obviously aims to draw the reader’s attention to this missing word, which is close to “a.m.,” meaning “morning” or, more specifically, a new dawn for humanity if the “firefighters” of the author’s young generation remake the world.
Ames: The solecism is, of course, central to the passage, but I read it as “AM,” that is, a fundamental affirmation of existence and individualism — a profoundly existentialist omission supporting my thesis on the meaning of “firefighter.”
The next sentence reads, “I play video games.” Is the author simply saying he enjoys time with his Nintendo?
Samwell: (Chuckles). It’s safe to say the author is after something much deeper.
Like a video game, the author suggests, life may appear free-flowing, but in fact is dominated by hidden limits and rules “programmed” by the powerful. This sentence is an understated yet potent attack on patriarchal norms and the prevailing post-colonial worldview.
Ames: I agree with you, Sam, but I think there is another layer here: a distinct advocacy of classic transcendentalism, modified with a more modern twist.
Note the usage of the words “I,” “play” and “games.” The author’s focus on the individual human experience is a moving paean to the works of Emerson and Thoreau.
Undoubtedly influenced by Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, the author boldly takes this philosophy another step. He questions whether his own experience is so constrained by outdated societal conventions as to render his life less than it could be, just as a character in a video game is bound by the game’s design.
The essay’s final sentence reads, “I have a dog.” Should readers assume the author is talking about an actual Golden Retriever?
Ames: Heavens, no. Animals are among the most commonly-used symbols in literature — like the white whale in Moby Dick or the pigs in Animal Farm. Even Old Yeller’s death was a metaphor for the end of the agrarian way of life in an industrializing nation.
Samwell: I always thought Old Yeller was an attempt to bridge the gap between determinism and fatalism.
Ames: At least we can agree it’s not about a kid and his dog! Like that would be a thing someone would write! (Laughs).
In “All About Me”’s final sentence, the author returns to the theme of internal struggle. He has a “dog,” but he’s speaking of his own animal nature, his basest instincts.
It’s clear that the author intends to respond to themes raised by Dostoevsky, particularly in Crime and Punishment. Yet, like Martel in Life of Pi, I think the author’s message is hopeful. The author could have chosen any animal to symbolize his struggle, but he selected “man’s best friend.” He’s telling readers that while it may be impossible to defeat one’s inner beast, it is possible to learn to coexist with it. Perhaps, to even emerge stronger for having done so.
Samwell: I’m in a different camp. This author is a master wordsmith, not one likely to use a simplistic metaphor like the one you describe, Amy. I believe he selected the word “dog” because, backwards, it spells “god.”
The author is saying that, when it comes to struggles against war, hunger, and the like, we cannot sit back and hope that a higher power intervenes. We, the author suggests, “have” the power of a god within us; the power to reshape the world. We must be proactive; we must reject fatalism. It’s a bold, humanist vision.
We’re almost out of time, but one more question for you both. The author’s teacher, Ms. Troutman, gave “All About Me” a C+ and commented, “please work harder on your assignments.” Your reaction?
Samwell: (Sniffs). Great literature often goes unappreciated in its time. A Confederacy of Dunces wasn’t published until a decade after Toole’s death.
Ames: I suspect Ms. Troutman is deeply uncomfortable with the essay’s profound message. She is likely in extreme denial about confronting her own internal ills — her “dog,” if you will.
Samwell: It’s safe to say Ms. Troutman won’t become a “firefighter” anytime soon.
That’s it for today! Please join us next week for an all-new “Lit/Crit Corner,” in which our panelists will discuss, from a post-modernist perspective, how the pulling of buttons in Corduroy represents the struggle to escape from one’s inherent nihilism.
