The Curtains Are Almost Never Just Fucking Blue BY Victoria B.

While it’s super fun to convince yourself that you understand the subject better than your teacher does, I’m here to bring you some bad news: the curtains are almost never just fucking blue.
 
The average reader does not care about why the curtains are blue. Similar to the average movie-goer, they are there to be entertained. They want to be immersed in a story for a while, and that’s all. The average moviegoer has no idea what goes into creating a film, and it doesn’t matter to them. The story affects them, and that’s all that’s important. However, if the moviegoer takes a class on film or bothers to study it at all, they will learn about things like mise-en-scene and the uses of different camera shots, angles, lighting, etc. They will learn how each of those things affects how the story reaches the viewer. They will learn that the things they feel while watching a movie aren’t simply reactions to the basic plot. Their emotional responses come from all those little things that we don’t even notice while we’re so involved with the story.
 
It’s the same with literature. If you are the average reader, there is no reason for you to concern yourself with why the curtains are blue. In fact, J.D. Salinger probably loves you. The dedication of his book, Raise High on the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction says, “If there is an amateur reader still left in the world—or anybody who just reads and runs—I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children.” There is nothing wrong with being a person who “reads and runs,” but understand that your English teacher is not one of those people. Your English teacher has studied literature for years. She has made it her business to learn and understand all of the choices authors make and how those choices affect readers. She knows that every single word in a work is chosen carefully. Each sentence is intentionally crafted to evoke the desired response in the reader, which is why we bother to study things like symbolism, imagery, allusions, diction, syntax, alliteration, assonance, consonance, sibilance, etc. All of these things serve a purpose, whether you are conscious of them or not, and if the author has bothered to mention what color the curtains are, you had better believe that there is a reason. You are in a class in which it is your teacher’s job to teach you these things so listen to her and learn something.