Analyze This Essay, Research Paper

Analyzed This

One thing I am very tired of these days is analyzing. People are always scrutinizing things looking for a deep, hidden meaning. We analyze words, body motions, music, decisions, and appearance and just about anything else we can think of trying to figure out the meaning and the motivation behind them.

Throughout school, the literature part of English class has always involved a great deal of analyzing. What is the author trying to say in this part and stuff like that? Well, I do recognize the fact that some authors intentionally reveal little through their words on the surface but choose those words carefully in hopes that the reader will look more deeply to find the true meaning. I acknowledge that this is sometimes the case but some people just want to analyze every phrase from every author, but not every author tries to hide some deep meaning in their work. Many times, you just have to take the words for their face value.

This is the case in my form of writing. Everything you read of mine is meant to express my ideas and my views. There is no hidden message or deep meaning behind my words. Even in my works of fiction and poetry, what you see is what you get. I do not want to have my readers rely on their own interpretation of my work, I want them be able to read my work and get a clear message of what I’m trying to say. The main reason I do this is to try to avoid misinterpretation. Whenever we would have discussions in English over the things we read, it seemed like everyone had their own thoughts about what the author was trying to say and, in many cases, those thoughts were very contradictory. On a personal level, this is good because it gets people to think on their own which is something that needs to be incorporated more in our educational system. But, this often leaves the author’s message unclear to the reader therefore the point they were trying to get across is lost.

So, when it comes to literature, I am not telling you to stop looking for the true meaning of certain phrases (except when it comes to my works), but sometimes there is nothing there to see. The same thing pretty much goes for speech. Some people think it is cute to leave things open-ended and speak in riddles but there generally is less there than you think. But I do believe, in some cases, that intonation can often tell just as much as the words themselves. Another case of over analyzing involves body language. Many times I have been with a friend and have met someone and afterwards my friend will say something like “I think he likes you”, or something along that lines. So when you ask them why they think so they will say something involving the way he was looking at you or how he was standing or something obscure like that. I really hope that not many people are like these (self-proclaimed body language experts) or I might be in trouble. I never try to do certain motions or movements in order to convey a message. If I want to tell someone something, I will say it verbally. Even if I ever did decide to try delivering a message through body language, I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s not like there is a big public movement to teach people about it, most people seem to just pick it up on their own, leaving many things to personal interpretation. So one person might view one thing in a totally different way than someone else might view it.

So, if you are one that enjoys analyzing body language, I’m not telling you to stop but I don’t think you should think too much of your “findings” since many people are totally ignorant of their “language”(such as myself). You might think something means one thing when it could mean something totally different or, more than likely, it means nothing at all.