[WP] The English Teacher's worst nightmare: a story or poem that is completely literal, with absolutely no double meanings

"I hate metaphors. That’s why my favorite book is Moby Dick. No frou-frou symbolism. Just a good, simple tale about a man who hates an animal." - Ron Swanson, Parks and Rec

I will say this, as an author: Sometimes the blue curtains ARE a representation, even if we don't realize that we made them blue because of it.

"Literalture"

I'm just picturing the ghost of Poe floating around English classrooms and crying out, "It was just a freaking raven! Damn thing wouldn't leave my house!"

I gotta say of all the prompts I've seen this one is the first that really gave me pause. I didn't realize how much practically all writing relies on metaphors and symbolism so much.

There are blue curtains.

Teacher: This represents his sorrow after the events of each day and his struggle to live

Author: THE CURTAINS ARE BLUE BECAUSE I LIKE THE COLOUR BLUE

The prompt is funny, but the best part is that the central conceit fails in the vast majority of these stories (certainly the upvoted ones). All these stories have double meaning--they're responses to the prompt itself which is, itself, a metacriticism of the (potential) absurdity of literary analysis. None of the responses can fulfill the prompt itself. They attain double meaning because they are responses to the prompt!

This is certainly in the case of /u/mitch-bittens and /u/AlexUrwin and /u/WinryJude. I'm certain that you could continue down to almost every response of substance.

Offer: I will sincerely analyze any piece of writing in this thread upon request.

I like the prompt, but I have to point out that it's essentially un-doable because (a) the premise is wrong; literalism of that kind is actually quite a valid choice in poetry, and (b) symbolism is in the eye of the beholder, so there's no possible way to write something in word-symbols that can't possibly be perceived as symbolic of something else.

OK, I got that off my chest. Now to read some more entries.

Paging /u/poem_for_your_sprog...

http://simple.wikipedia.org

So... I am the Walrus?

Can anyone complete this prompt without making a meta reference that their story has no alternative meaning?

For a prompt about not using metaphors, there certainly are a lot of them being used!

In love with this thread. I read and enjoyed The Scarlet Letter in high school. Felt dumb when the teacher would review our assigned reading and would say "did you see what he did there?" He wrote a sentence. For this book. JUST LET ME ENJOY THIS GOD DAMMIT.

I lost my leg Climbing up the top sails I lost my leg

This prompt reminds me of the over-analysis of Alice in wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. Scholars have been analyzing these two books for decades. They think that AiW is a metaphor for drug use and WoO represents consumerism in America. In reality, both stories are literal nonsense. Both Lewis Carrol and Frank Baum have said that there is no hidden meaning in these books.

As someone with autism, I fucking love this post. Finally literature where I don't feel like I'm missing 75% of the story. <3

This reminds me of a story my English teacher told me. This girl from Texas wrote a poem that was really good and ended up being put on the 12 AP Literature test. However, the girl could not answer the questions correctly because the writers of the test had put meanings and interpretations on the poem that she had never thought of.

It really makes you think about how English classes go on about analyzing pieces and finding an interpretation that may just be coincidence.

Currently reading the curios incident of the dog in the night-time and it fits this prompt perfectly

This writing prompt is literally R. A. Salvatore

Once upon a time, there lived an alien named Snoo. Snoo was very lonely despite being so popular with all his internet friends. One day, Snoo decided to venture out of the interwebs, but it was very difficult to communicate with the humans, so Snoo did what Snoo did best...memes. Snoo went to the local library and printed out the lolcats 'I can haz cheezburger?' and 'If I fits, I sits' in the hopes of being adopted into a real family.

One rainy day, Snoo was picked up by a man in a suit, but he had no face! Snoo was scared and puzzled by this man, but hopeful. The slender man took Snoo into his car and drove him to his cabin in the woods. While the mysterious stranger took care of Snoo, Snoo couldn't shake the feeling that something was very wrong.

Snoo had heard legends of skinny men in suits with no faces snatching children in the dead of night. 'But Snoo was not a child', Snoo thought, 'so Snoo must be safe.'

Meanwhile back on the interwebs, all of Reddit was in an uproar. Snoo's antenna was what powered the reddits and without Snoo, 404 errors abounded. Forced to take action, SJWs and red-pillers banded together beseeching the return of their beloved Snoo.

Months went past and still no sign of Snoo. Even Bing was joining the band wagon with their well meaning but completely unhelpful Death by SnooSnoo. The netizens were becoming desperate lamenting that memeing on other social media platforms just isnt the same.

A year has past since Snoo's disapperance until a new post appears on creepy-pasta. Rumors abound that Snoo was being held hostage by SlenderMan and that Snoo spottings were made while playing the namesake videogame.

Back in the cabin, Snoo has lost track of time, day and night seemed to shift so quickly. He could barely sleep what with all the screaming. His master also has a habit of banging the door open and shut as he comes and goes and there seems to be a foul smell coming from the basement. Curious Snoo goes to check it out, quickly regreting his decision. Suddenly the basement door slams open, foot falls heavy on the steps leading into the abyss. Snoo is suddenly lifted into the air. The red light from his antenna illuminates Slenderman's face, a hole where his mouth would be opens and emits a loud screech and Snoo is thrown across the basement. Slenderman goes back up the stairs, points a long skinny finger in Snoo's direction, brings it to his neck and makes a slicing motion and locks the door behind him.

Snoo is now frightened and with only his antenna light to guide him he tries to find a way out. Tired, scared, in pain and overcome by smell of what could only be corpses, Snoo begins to lose hope, even his red light is beginning to flicker.

Almost anything from /r/TalesFromRetail and related

There once was a ladybug. It was very red. It had little black spots Some wings and a head. A fat little body Rotund in shape it then flew into a window agape. the ladybug crawls around and then leaves and buzzes and lands outside on a tree.

the end

I always go with literal meaning in this kinda stuff in school. A quick story of such occurrence:

Recently, I had to read an excerpt of Admiral Byrd's biography, one of the first people to reach the South Pole. At the quiz that followed the lesson, it asked what do you feel is the theme of Byrd's story.

I literally just wrote "That he was the first person to get to the South Pole". Seriously, what else would it be?

It is especially bad when religion is brought, as my school is a Christian one (why, mother?). "How did [x] persevere the results of not eating for a few days in exchange to use his money to create [life changing invention]". Me: "because people can go for a few days without food". School: "through the sheer Devine power of God". Fuck off, we are in science class, not religious studies.

I'd just like to clear up that last part: I have no problem with religion if any kind. I'm Christian, and am okay with talking about religion, but I'm not overly religious. However, when we are learning about science or history, or even language, it irritates me that they shove religion down our throats there. Learning about religion is for religion class, not science, history, language, and even, somehow, maths.

/rant

The stories in this thread would make a great exercise for an English class. 'Make an extra meaning appear where there isn't any.' It's fun and a good way to get the students to really overanalyse the text.

sadly, even if you presented one of these with the original writing prompt, you won't make your life easier on a high school literature class... i remember this book which was an awfuly descriptive piece of realistic prose that talked about the life of an average farmer family. on the test they asked us "on which day of week did they go to plow their field".

Enter Charles Bukowski

Logical impossibility. English teacher would simply kill the author and add own subtext.

I think this has to be the WP-threading that I have most enjoyed reading.

First the Prompts and then their analysis pulled out of the ass, it's just a wonderful combination.

So essentially every poem and story I have seen in English.

I had a university professor tell me a story once. He himself was in an english class years ago and they were studying some poem, and finding all these meanings in it. Well it just so happened that the author of said poem was in town so they got them to come in to speak to the class. Things are going well until the teacher asked about the symbolism of the poem, at which point the author told them there was literally no hidden meaning to the poem, it was to be taken as is.

u/Gadinn you'll like this I think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMU1_-_4WKg&

To quote my seventh grade self: "Maybe it's just about an old guy trying to catch a fish."

" This text clearly represents our societal tendency to see everything in black and white, and to dehumanize those who do things we cannot understand. We can't (or won't) understand what would push Casey to the point of actually killing someone, so we accept the suggestion made by the untrustworthy narrator, and we just assume that Casey's motives are somehow fundamentally different from ours. That instead of a complex set of circumstances and a turbulent emotional conflict, Casey just had a compulsion to see what would happen. That Casey's motivations were a desire so alien to us that we can comfortably dismiss the very idea that we, the reader, could ever do the same thing.

The conflict arises when Casey's doomed attempt to hide himself and the bag suddenly presents a break with this dehumanisation. In that one crucial moment, Casey's true self shines through the facade we have constructed for them. It becomes clear that they are not some unrelatable emotionless shell; they are a person just like us, with emotions and instincts for self preservation. It's only a glimpse, but it's just enough to momentarily disrupt the illusion, before we relapse and once again see the arrest as artificially simple and one-dimensional. Even having seen past the facade, we can't bring ourselves to imagine Casey complexly, because the lie is so much easier to live with. "

How did I do?

"Ok"

"The word gingerly is generally defined as carefully."

Lemony Snicket!?

So why did Casey use his father's laundry bag? What significance does that have over any other bag? Was this premedatated meaning he planned to use that bag, or heat of the moment and fulfilling a primal desire to see what it feels like to do something like this?

I'd like a 500 word essay on my desk from each of you by Monday.

Class dismissed.

Think! Why was there an officer at the door? Is it really a police officer or is it his conscious really coming to lock him up in a prison of guilt?

The author has clearly presented us with a surrealist position of self-doubt. He opens the door to guilt attempting to escape the insanity that he lives in inside his mind - after all he has just committed murder seemingly at random.

"Casey couldn't prevent the officer from seeing him or the bag"

Ah but why? He could easily have hidden behind the door especially if he was opening the door gingerly. One would expect him not to have opened it wide open whilst dragging a body. Is this the inevitability of humanity coming for him? What is the author really telling us?

Imagine yourself in Casey's shoes. You've just murdered a man and stuffed him in a hypothetically red bag. Why would you drag the bag to the front door? Isn't the front door how most people first approach a home? Could this be a metaphor for Casey's past murder boiling to the facade of his personality.

We can conclude that the author wasn't talking about murder at all. He was clearly talking about the suffocating prison of society holding us all back. The murder is an abstract representation of creativity; the officer a symbol of authority. He's telling us to rebel! He wants us to live! The house is actually an apple! DON'T YOU SEE CLASS? HE'S ACTUALLY A WOMAN!

Here, class, we see an effective use of style and diction to convey underlying themes and motifs of a character or scene.

The language is simple, lacking flourish; it is extremely 'matter-of-fact', forward, and at times it can be repetitive and halting. This is reflective of Casey's inner thoughts and workings; as a sociopath, he lacks feeling, especially empathy. This is evidenced by his blasé attitude and demeanor towards a situation towards which most would feel a sense of horror and fear.

We get a glimpse into Casey's motivations in the first paragraph, where the author states that Casey wanted to see what it felt like to kill a man. However, as the story progresses, we see that it is deeper than that: Casey wants to see what it is like to feel at all. In the climatic confrontation with the police officer, we see that he was tragically unsuccessful despite his unspeakable crime; when confronted with the prospect of prison, he has no reaction, simply stating his affirmation of compliance now that his last attempt at emotion has been for naught.

However, this tragedy is made even more pronounced by the author giving glimpses of Casey's humanity. Instead of a murderous robot devoid of anything that makes us human, we see that Casey actually has a slight sense of humor. An example of this is in the descriptive language used to paint the picture of his activities: While the rest of the piece is bland and forthright, the use of the word 'gingerly' stands out as unnecessarily colorful. Combined with the focus on the color 'red' throughout the piece, it is no coincidence that the word used to describe Casey's activity could also be used to describe the same color (ginger).

Painstaking care is made to specify to the reader how exactly the word 'ginger' is used in this context, as opposed to the double meaning as a color. This is symbolic of Casey's fear and denial of his human side, and makes his final submission to his emotionless aspects all the more tragic.

Casey is perhaps the most nihilistic character I've ever encountered. Killing simply to see what it felt like is absolutely not normal human behavior, suggesting that Casey suffers from some kind of mental disorder in addition to his apparent disinterest in human life. The focus on the red of the blood suggests either Casey's underlying/suppressed anger or his hyper-awareness of the consequences of what he's done, or both.

His amplified heartbeat suggests that, by killing a person, Casey achieved a strong reaction, which is probably what he hoped would happen; however, the thrill is fleeting, and by the time he encounters the police officer, Casey is conspicuously calm, reinforcing the idea that his ability to feel strong feelings is inhibited.

Casey was clearly unconcerned about being caught, and even seems to have WANTED to be caught, as evidenced by the mess he leaves behind and the fact that a police car was waiting for him outside the house. Why would Casey want to be caught? Perhaps he feels that he deserves to be punished for being different from society (he knows that it is abnormal to be willing to commit murder out of mere curiosity-- we see here a conflict between his willingness to become what society views as a monster and his seeming desire to conform to societal standards of crime and punishment without complaint).

Often people do terrible things for reasons we'll never understand, but not Casey. Casey simply wanted to see what it'd feel like to kill a human being, and so he did.

Arguably the simplicity of Casey's reasoning is beyond understanding for most people. Surely there must be some reason that Casey felt compelled to kill a human being out of sheer curiosity, but we may never know that reason because Casey does not acknowledge that there is any ulterior motive. The use of a third-person-limited narration is very clever, because it gives the impression of objectivity while actually being subjective to the character's own conscious thought process. Casey sees his situation in a very straightforward light, but the reader knows that there must be some cause for Casey's specific desire to kill, whether that means external stimuli or internal abnormality.

Also, who is the victim? By giving no details about the person who has been killed and dismembered, the author prompts the reader to speculate, and the lack of distinction tells us more about Casey's apparent sociopathy.

This sounds like something that Lemony Snicket would write.

The Peace Officer in his duties is to catch criminals. Murder is a crime. The Peace Officer has to take murderers into custody for trial. The Peace Officer is called as such because it Is a blanket term for all persons with legal arresting powers.

This Peace Officer got a radio ransmission from the Dispatcher. The dispatcher communicates information to the Peace Officer from the 911 operator. 911 is an emergency phone system for persons to request civil aid.

One such person utilized said system to alert law enforcement that this person neighbor seemed to be in duress. He sounded in duress becuase he was screaming. The person gave the 911 operator the information for the neighbor. They also gave thier name and address as standard procedure in this type of situation.

The 911 operator then gave the dispatcher the information, who then relayed the information to the Peace Officer. It was not done in a rapid succession, as calmness and briefness is important in being a dispatcher.

The Peace Officer then transported himself to the described location as is the Peace Officers required task. The Peace Officer had thier hand on thier weapon, also known as a side arm, becuase being a Peace Officer is sometimes a profession which may be targeted by a criminal entity. This is becuase Peace Officers arrest criminals. Criminals typically do not want to face trial and incarceration, and may react in a violent manner. The Peace Officer also ade the deductive reasoning that if a muder had taken place, the person or persons involved may still be hositle.

The Peace Officer on arrival observed Casey. Casey was covered in a red substance. The bag Casey was carrying was covered on a red substance. The Peace Officer then concluded the red substance was likely blood, due to the Peace Officer connecting a likely story of the homeowner reported to be screaming, then silenced, by murder. Murder tend to leave blood. And the Peace Officer had experience with prior homocides, so could easily identify blood that had been excreted recently.

Are you Lemony Snicket?

Please write a one page paper in the same literal style of what happened to Casey in prison class. Class dismissed.

I am laughing because that's what one does when someone else writes something so utterly amusing that it forces air from the reader's mouth.

Any english teacher I ever had would have a field day with this.

Worksheet:

Is the narrator reliable or not?

If the narrator isn't reliable, why do you think Casey committed murder?

Who do you think Casey murdered?

Why are the officer and Casey acting so casual with each other? Do they know each other? Why did the officer happen to stand just outside?

What is the significance of the color red?

And so on...

I like this....minimalist writing. Are there any good examples or writing like this?

this reads like a lemony snicket book and it's wonderful

This has a very lemony snicket feel to it, I love it.

this is clearly an allegory for consumerism.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/casey-bat

should have taken up golf or something instead.

This reminds me greatly of the new Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix lol. Some of the script sounds a lot like this lol

I read this in my head with Patrick Warburton narrating

My name is Casey, so all I got out of this was "Fuck, how'd they find out?"

I sincerely thank you Mr. Sterling Archer.

Is this a reference to Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe?

I'm questioning alot of things with this one.

Reminds me of one of those SNL Jack Handy skits, which were some of my favorite stupid little things they did...especially this one always gets me:

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/my-big-thick-novel/2872702?snl=1

This sounds like "Welcome to Nightvale" in the best possible way.

"blood-red"

You need the hyphen because "blood" is describing "red," not "carpet"

Were you going for a Lemony Snicket vibe?

okay*

I laughed so hard

I haven't read anything this ever.. what is so magical that you wrote.. I can't define.. but I felt terrible after reading these lines. Probably the most terrible I'll feel after such few words. It took me 6 books to feel this bad about Dumbuldore.

this sounds like the narrator in a series of unfortunate events (netflix version)

This reads like a Lemony Snicket book

If Lemony Snicket collaborated with Perd Hapley, this would be the result.

This reminds me of Lemony Snicket.

The carpet was blood red because Casey had just murdered a man.

Often people do terrible things for reasons we'll never understand, but not Casey.

"Murdered a man" and "never understand" practically rhyme.

I feel a deep connection to the hidden meaning of a clockwork life.

First 3 lines fuck up the rhyming scheme. It's a metaphor for how the beginning of our lives can make a huge impact on our whole lives if we mess them up, even if the rest of our lives are perfect.

[deleted]

This poem's deeper meaning in the second stanza also applies to how fast a day can pass, leaving you questioning time and if your day really had a point it. What is time? Is it all just something in our heads? The author's time structure in this poem is specific one moment then vague the next giving the reader a multitude of paces to the person in the poem's day.

A poem about how a monotonous, structured life can be comfortable, but effectively shortens our lives since we spend so much time doing things we don't care enough to remember. The fact that you can recall the exact time you woke up, how you ate your eggs, and your bed time routine; but not a single detail from work shows how insignificant that part of your life is, even though it takes up most of your day. The lack of a call to action and the cyclical nature of the poem suggests that our current society is designed to keep everyone in a clockwork lifestyle where they go through the motions so they can afford simple pleasures like clocks, eggs, and pillows. Escaping the cycle isn't even given a thought. The poem will repeat thousands of times for billions of people across the globe, and hundreds of years worth of Life will be lost to soul-less work.

The poem describes the monotony of the character's life. The egg represents the character's "unborn" desire for adventure and excitement, but the fork represents the failure to reach the goals in his life and how he ruined his desire. Did I do good teach?

The consumption of the eggs using the utensil of a fork when the choice of a spoon, knife, or even chopstick was available shows the narrator's internal motivations and tendencies towards violence. The ideas that the author had four choices of utensils to choose from, that there are four letters in the word "fork", that there are four prongs on the fork itself, and that the fact that the author woke up at 7:38am (8 + 3 - 7 = 4) represent and evinces the author's struggle in the crossroads he/she has reached in waking up, day time, night time, and sleeping.

/r/lifeofnorman

Woke up, fell out of bed Dragged a comb across my head Found my way downstairs and drank a cup And looking up, I noticed I was late

Found my coat and grabbed my hat Made the bus in seconds flat Found my way upstairs and had a smoke

Very Beatles-esque

Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head Found my way downstairs and drank a cup, and looking up I noticed I was late. Found my coat and grabbed my hat made the bus in seconds flat ...

This poem is about a general day of stuff. It fits the brief well Nice work OP did good.

Describe what you mean by "got ready for work" and what "work" is.

This is dadist art about the mechanical bureaucracy of the school system's approach to poetry

I really felt the author's message about the futility of trying to create nuanced meaning in a world that is increasingly losing its shades of gray.

Easy. It's an ironic poem about how all poems have a deeper meaning, with a series of matter-of-factly observations made by a pragmatic narrator culminating in the narrator acknowledging that they will get a poor grade because they, unlike the author and the audience, are unable to see the nuances. As highlighted in the third line, they see everything in black and white.

Of course, the "author's note" part is an ironic meta-statement from the perspective of a second narrator. The message of the poem up to that point is underlined through repetition; the poem does have a deeper meaning, so by claiming otherwise this second narrator confirms that they have fallen into the same trap as the first one.

What makes this interesting is that most sentences become more interesting because they carry some implied meaning along with the literal one.

Immediately we're confronted with the knowledge that what we are reading is not black ink on white paper, but digital pixels. The ink/paper imagery here evokes handwritten work, which implies a kind of intimacy. In the context of the rest of the poem (and its self-deprecating nature), we can take this ink and paper as a symbol of the personal diary. Here is this ink, the author says, by which I write my confessional.

Needing to do laundry isn't, in of itself, lazy: immediately this hints at a broader narrative, without needing to explicitly spell it out. The audience immediately and implicitly understands why, or can guess at why, the author might say that they need to do do laundry because they are lazy: because they have procrastinated, most likely, and now can no longer avoid it. This can only be understood by an audience that has, like the author, waited until the last possible moment to do their laundry.

Most interesting, though, is the statement that "I am just being honest that I am lazy." Why would it be necessary to spell this out? What is implied by stating that such a self-deprecating position would be the most honest? On one level, at least, there is the tendency to make excuses, to claim a reason to procrastinate; what the author is saying here is that such statements would be false claims.

This is to say nothing, of course, of the embedded associations, for both author and audience, in getting a poor grade.

An unreliable narrator is immediately established: the ink could not have been used to print out the paper prior to those words being typed, so at the time of typing, those words were untrue. This calls the rest of the poem into question; the assertion that "[T]his poem is not an empty shell./It is literally just words I threw down..." may not be true either.

It's a moral in how procrastination leads to lackluster results, right?

So this poem is not an empty shell.

'Shell' is clearly being used metaphorically here.

Just from the first three lines... Repetition of this, creates a sense of completeness, defeat. The fact that he buys ink, and points out that the ink is indeed 'black' refers to slave buying. Paper refers to the White 'slave owners'. The fact that the paper was printed using ink and paper together refers to how society can only survive through cooperation.

The white paper represents a blank slate for growth of the author, and the black ink represents his bad tendencies, such as laziness. The laundry is symbolic of removing the laziness, or ink so the author may grow.

I infer when the poem states "a poor grade" it implies a poor soul. A soul who rushes everywhere (30 seconds) and never cherishes life for what it is.

You literally "threw down" words?

It's about how we can face massive problems and overcome them (such as a big shit coming all of a sudden), and even though we defeat those problems something small that would have affected us even if we didn't have the original problem can be our downfall.

Defecation is something that is fundamentally natural. Dogs poop. Birds poop. Even the bacteria inside your poop has its own poop.

Human beings distance themselves from it, however. "Dropping the kids off at the poo." "Number two." "Use the restroom." Even in a self-described "crass" poem, the narrator will not say that he or she actually pooped - the poem cuts from "I would need to take a shit" to the consequences of the unspoken act.

Why? The author of this poem challenges readers to face the exaggerated horror of pooping without the simple modern convenience of toilet paper and by doing so invites the them to question what other delusions we harbor about our place in the natural order.

We can face our strongest difficulties if we persevere and act to the best of our abilities. While the outcome may seem grim, in reality, it is better than not acting at all.

[deleted]

The lack of colons and periods and the usage of enjambment poses an odd juxtaposition when analyzing a poem based on bodily byproducts. Also because there is no period throughout the entirety of the poem, but merely a moment of hamartia marked by a singular comma, it portrays the endless nature of the embarrassment or sadness felt by the narrator/protagonist. The usage of first person also does a fantastic job at establishing pathos, or emotional appeal to the reader, by conveying a universal message of the plight and comedic yet tragic error of the human condition.

This poem describes life as a series of never-ending problems. When the narrator barely solves his first problem (making it to the toilet), he is immediately faced with another problem. Us humans face a cycle of problems and resolutions in even the most temporary contexts.

I wish I could just save comments, instead of the whole post for this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCFYJNC2yNw

I'm not usually into toilet humor, but I laughed out loud at this. Bravo.

(The fourth line kinda breaks the cadence of poem though, IMO. It's a bit long. Could benefit from a rewording.)

An existential crisis. Do I use my hand? Which one? My shirt? My undies, then I leave them. Existential crisis averted.

The haiku is clearly about showing that poems don't have to break boundaries, and can just stick to the formula.

The first poem represents how something of such effortless beauty and elegance as a flower, of whose existence seems so apparently simple, can derive a more complex meaning even when presented in the form of a well-known child's poem.

The flowers, whether they are the noble rose or the dainty daisy, face the same challenges as we do, as humans. In the same way that both a King or subject must face the struggles to grow, become older, and overcome adversity, so too do the rose and daisy.

The metaphor is supported by the lines: "they grow from small seeds" representing the forward movement from embryo to baby to child and so forth; "get eaten by bugs" representing the threats we are faced with in human society (i.e. enemies, debt, disease, etc.) which can ruin or "eat up" the life of someone who is not able to protect themselves; and the final affirmation "sometimes have leaves," which is a clever jeu de mots on the necessity of having "leaves" (a metaphor for greenbacks, or money) as a means of continuing vitality, with an obscured pun that without "leaves", a person must leave.

Overall, the author presents a grand vision of human society as being as simple as flowers, and brings to mind the old adage that one must "stop and smell the roses." In other words, to not chase the pitfalls of money, or run from the threats we face, before we grow too old.

---

The second poem is a scathing deconstruction of the Haiku form, to its most basic and simple rules. The poem offers the reader no clues about its true meaning, instead opting to describe itself only in short detail.

One might guess that the author is creating a narrative that challenges the Western understanding of the Haiku. The reader is left asking if the Haiku's beauty is lost in the translation from Japanese to English. This leads to the metaphor that as a global race of people, we will never be able to truly understand each other. Whether it be different languages or cultures, the only way two foreign communities can communicate is to "boil down" their meanings and intentions to their most base level. In other words, our intentions must be delivered as simply as possible, like the author demonstrated in the poem.

The first poem is a commentary on the complexity that simple templates can contain when looking at another context. "Roses are red" is a common poem starter, but the statement can be greatly explored in the scientific context.

The second poem emphasizes the power that meta-commentary can have. The conciseness and power of a haiku is shown simply by referring to the properties of the medium itself

I think I get it - Spot represents man's eternal struggle to better the world, and through that, himself?

This is actually deeper than any meaning my teachers assigned to a text.

I totally read this in the voice of the Stanley Parable narrator.

I'm gonna do a Derridean deconstructive analysis:

Spot clearly represents the attempt to communicate language in a clear manner with no leftover ambiguity - a leftover that would allow for metaphors to be drawn out of the text. His very name, 'spot', recalls a stain - something that 'sticks out' and ruins something that is otherwise "clear." In the same way, by the very act of writing, you have already given away any "clear, 100% ambiguous" meaning the text could have had. Spot is the dog, and "the spot" is also writing itself. From one's "spot" as the author, they can't control the text's interpretation by an audience.

So the cat scratching Spot at the end of his eternal chase represents the hollow nature of monetary success and, by extension, Spot dying adorably and surrounded by loved ones represents a truly fulfilling and successful life?

This piece is a satirical take on English teachers who assign implicit meaning where none is present.

Ever watched one of those really old educational videos from the 1950s? Because that's exactly how I read your story and it was fantastic. Or rather, exactly narrated by this dude:

https://youtu.be/BnQQkrWyFjM

This is just brilliant. It actually made me cry.

This piece is about deism and how things are the way they are and no matter what we do we can't change it.

Their reads like a series of unfortunate events book. Well done!

That's a good one!

thought up a story for the mutt to warm the hearts of readers.

Goddammit now I have heartburn

I'd rather see this movie instead of A Dog's Purpose.

So Spot... Represents... The duality of man?

So the chase is the metaphorical part. The object of the chase is irrelevant. The chaser is irrelevant. All that matters is the chase occurs. And ain't that the truth?

Spot represents a statement against religion in mankind's eternal fruitless journey to find meaning in anything.

Very humanist of you Spot.

I didn't expect emotions in this prompt.

I actually feel sad now. I honestly want to know more about Spot.

Saw the "he liked to chase balls" and thought this was a write up of 'Goodbye Sparky' as heard in How i met your mother.

This story reads like it was written by someone who is trying to cope with her loss of a dog they loved. And instead of using hope and heaven as ways to reconcile with the idea of a dead loved one, the writer ended up being incredibly nihilistic and thinking that there is no reason or purpose for life. There is no extra meaning. No metaphors. Life is just what is is. People live and die.

You could also infer that there might have been some guilt. Maybe the dog did die when it ran into the road. But the writer, trying to make themselves feel better, wrote about how the dog would die anyway even if the dog did survive the accident.

Mayhe the writer was Alex. As there was time spent talking about how exhausted she was from school and rationalising about how it was normal for everyone to feel that way. Maybe her exhaustion led to neglect of her dog and not noticing that the dog had gone off.

Alex now feels responsible for spot's death and has no idea how to deal with the immense guilt and loss. So she writes this seemingly nihilistic passage about how nothing has meaning.

Dogs live and die.

And it was definitely not her fault.

If dogs don't go to heaven then, when I die, I want to go where they went.

Warm the hearts of readers? Literally?

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Well done Alex, another brilliant story from you :)

Every time I see your username, I get so excited, great story!

By specifically mentioning that the eggs should be preferably free range, the author places emphasis on the cruelty of the modern farming industry with respect to the way they treat their livestock. The author continues on this metaphor by specifying whole milk should be used rather than the more commonly purchased 2% found in most middle-class homes. The fact that the milk is precisely mentioned to be whole articulates that the author believes we need to shy away from stripping nutrients from our food and embrace things as they are and not what we force them to be. This is an obvious cry for action for society to break the norms we have chained ourselves to and rise with the dough and harvest the raging fire within us that burns at 200*F

Interesting. The author challenges traditional perceptions of gender norms by having the highest-ranking person (head foreman) a woman (Jill), so at first blush this appears to be an attempt at normalizing a progressive power structure on a traditionally masculine job site. However, by drawing attention to the fact that Jill has created a new rule (that seems to not only serve no purpose relevant to the company but also inconvenience her employees) for selfish reasons, the author suggests that women are unfit to hold positions of authority because they act on impulse and damage the morale of subordinates.

Of course, Jill's decision to ban certain speech patterns could also be more general commentary on the ruling class imposing seemingly-nonsensical laws upon the lower classes. Jim, in this case, is the middle class, exercising his own authority while preserving his position by unquestioningly obeying the will of an unseen authority figure AND trying to be friends with the working class. Stan is the working class, busting his ass and getting reprimanded for his mistake primarily because it inconveniences the middle class (Jim). Stan recognizes that Jim is a stooge of the upper classes, and rebelliously rejects Jim's attempt to pretend that they are socioeconomic equals. For such a brief story, the author has managed to effortlessly stack a few intriguing social commentaries into the narrative.

Blazing with all the wrath of a young star, the afternoon sun fiercely beat upon the partially shaded buildings of Ricks & Wracks Bricklaying Co..

Here, the author begins by creating a juxtaposition between light and darkness. The young Sun represents the wistful freedom of untrammeled youth, while the shade of the building is is intended to remind us of the shadowed world of the working adult, stuck within the darkened rooms of the factory. The decision to make the factory a brickworks is an obvious nod towards the metaphorical weight on the shoulders of the worker in an inherently unforgiving and capitalistic society.

and Said buildings had briefly experienced a complete lack of shade under the midday sun but such a time had already come to pass.

Here, we see the author illustrating the hope of the working man - and that this hope has already faded in the drudgery of the job. Even the name, Ricks & Wracks, makes reference to the inherent struggle - The country hay rick, (with hay, of course, being an ingredient in ancient bricks) built by a struggling farmer, juxtaposed with the wracking struggle of the city man, living in his house of brick.

Stan was loading his company's finished product onto a truck when he made a mistake. A bag fell like a sack of bricks and clattered to the ground with the sound a collective of bricks makes when it hits the ground, accompanied by the swear words of a by now audibly and visibly frustrated and hot forklift operator.

The illustration of the working man's struggle continues. Here, the bricks are a reference to the daily battle we all face with improvement, and how quickly we can slide back (as demonstrated by Stan's swearing). Again, we see him burdened by imagery of capitalism - in this case, the sack, a colloquialism referring to the termination of employment, a spectre looming over him.

Partially shaded by the truck that had been receiving the bricks, Stan walked over to the fallen merchandise and stated "I will need to tell someone about this incident."

In talking to the bricks, Stan is evidencing his hopeless desire to change the status quo. He knows that the capitalistic system he slaves under is uncaring to his lone plight, so rather than communicating his worries to a fellow worker, he cries impotently at the very system that shackles him.

However, Stan was incorrect. Jim the foreman had also heard the sounds of bricks falling from a height of around 2 metres and had come over sporting a pace one would expect a foreman to be able to muster up while partially shaded in the afternoon sun. He looked at the bricks, now broken.

Stan has, metaphorically, shattered the capitalistic system. He has a chance to escape, but the system, now personified by Jim, is backed up by The Authority. In this case, the meaning of the shade and sun has changed. Stan is in Hell, while Jim observes him like Mephistophles.

"I see you have made a mistake. This means that I am going to be annoyed with you because of the extra paperwork I now have to do because of your broken...ah...pieces of company merchandise."

The system reinforces its control over the working man here. The extra paperwork is a metaphorical mountain, like the hill of Sisyphus.

Stan was confused about Jim's odd choice of words. "They're bricks, Jim. You don't have to call them company merchandise."

The everyman is now challenging the system directly. The bricks have changed - in their redness, they are now a metaphor for communism. Stan has discovered a new path, and is fighting back against his capitalist Mephistoples with this new knowledge.

Jim scratched his elbow, but only because it was itchy. "I do. Jill the head foreman passed a mandate saying that we couldn't say words that started with the same letter next to each other. She...claimed that it made her...noggin hurt."

We now have proof here that the imagery of hell is literal. Stan is dead, and trapped in a nonsensical Tartarus of his own making.

"Oh well," Stan answered. "I will clean up the broken pieces of company merchandise. I am sorry for making you do extra paperwork."

Stan, realising that he is in Hell, resigns himself. he has taken the role of Sisyphus now, and is preparing to begin his endless chore - but makes one final attempt to impose his freshly communist values on the capitalistic tormentor.

"It is not a big deal. Perhaps you inconveniencing me now might result in you buying me a drink later tonight -- a means of apologizing?" Jim replied.

The devil is now telling Stan that his ploy has failed. The burgeoning hope of an escape from this capitalistic hell has been shot down by the bourgeoisie devil.

"Fuck off." Stan gave Jim the middle finger such that Jim got Stan's message verbally and visually.

At this point, there is a final paradigm shift in power. The everyman, having been damned (both literally and figuratively) to the imprisoning hell of capitalism, builds his own cage for protection. The strong vertical line of the finger indicates a wall between himself and his tormentor. Yet, at the same time, he falls short of using alliteration in a final blow against his tormentors - he knows the power they wield over him, so this show of force is purely temporary. He now knows that the dreams of the working man cannot stand alone, like a single finger, against the tyranny of the capitalistic devil.

Did you want to avoid alliteration altogether? Because:

audibly and

and Jim even says:

It is

Your piece illustrates the weakness of poetry: in its attempt to be profound and create a web of connotation, assonance, and allusion, poems often elide the actual wonder of the very phenomena they purport to describe. Sunshine, and its role in life as we know it, is a fabulously complex and multivalent force. Any attempt to capture it in poetry is doomed to fail. Your poem acknowledges this by retreating into an inane platitude for its conclusion. Poetry strives for, but never achieves, a coherent yet transcendent understanding of the nature of things.

And yet good poetry is transformative: the simpleminded narrator, whose focus is initially on what sunlight means to him/her, and no one else, experiences a revelation in the third stanza, and after catching just a glimpse of sunlight's true sublimity and significance, is able to look heavenward toward the moon. Poetry is a pale reflection of the true, like the moon is a pale reflection of the sun, and yet it still has the power to uplift us.

Thank you.

The author is obviously referring to the right to bear arms. He/She believes that being a gun enthusiast doesnt automatically make you an evil person, rather that you should be judged by your actions. The narrarator here, for example, specifically points out that he has never shot a person; He/She just likes his gun

I don't understand this. What does it mean?

This is clearly about French foreign policy and the end of the E.U.

The zipper, meant to hold two sides together, represents the E.U.'s attempts at diplomacy. That the man from France couldn't make it work, given that France has been one of the key players in the E.U., speaks volumes about the inevitability of its collapse.

The man's feeling 'like a jerk' may refer to the remorse of some of France's people at the collapse in international relations, and at their own nation's treatment of refugees. It may also reflect the author's own opinions of the far right – they are passing judgement on Le Pen, and referring to her and her party as 'a jerk'.

The final line offers little hope for international relations after the collapse of the E.U. The man from France – and indeed his equivalents worldwide – will have to rely on 'buttons' in the aftermath. 'Buttons', in this context, have a military meaning. They can be interpreted as referring to the brilliant buttons of a Général, or perhaps the buttons used to launch nuclear weapons. In the first interpretation, the officer represents a harsher approach to diplomacy, wherein France will be less inclined to compromise on her own interests. The second interpretation is much more pessimistic, as if the buttons of war are pressed, there may be no going back.

The final sentence gives credibility to that second, gloomier, interpretation. The author states that there will be 'no chance' of returning to the diplomacy of the zipper, which would be highly plausible in the case of nuclear war.

Ultimately, whether we agree with the author's prognosis or not, the pessimism of this limerick cannot be denied.

NB: I really should talk about poetic form, but my skills are rusty.

This piece demonstrates the need for balance in creativity and practicality. The author writes about how by putting simple practical things together we can create something beautiful and creative like a poem, by fyrther epaborating that he, "thought it was more economical to have one stanza" he shows us that a long and tedius epic is no more important than a short and simple story. We should all look at the practical things we have in life and try to vreate something kew akd beautiful with them, as the author did here.

This piece is a deep representation of the creative process, put into the form of the story of a simple decision in poetry for clarity. The "one stanza versus two stanzas" dilemma of the author is representative of larger creative decisions in many other poems are stories, and the massive impact such decisions can have on the work as a whole.

S O M E T A

The colors cannot be each other, or be anything more than what they are. However, when they work together, they can create new things. A great metaphor for how important unity is in today's society, bravo!

The author of this contemplative piece illustrates the power of the uniquely human act of written communication.

Written communication can bridge time and space; a feature that the author exploits by leaving the poem itself incomplete until the reader finishes the poem (the poem also impresses on the reader the importance of writing legibly - bringing to light the symbiotic relationship between the writer and the reader, regardless of the distance between them).

A beautiful reflection of how crucial nourishment is to humans and what a strange amount of weight it put on it in todays society. In the 12+ hours we are awake we must spend a significant time cooking and eating.

It can also reflect some sense of intrusive thoughts in the author from the repetitive mention of the number three, and insistence that it must be so. It reflects our habits and routine lives, stuck in our ways, over and over and over again, with little change. How every day is a relfection of the previous one, through such a simple medium as food.

Man, you're right. We are so disconnected from a natural way of eating food. We make our tools, and all we do is distance ourselves from a more direct and beautiful way of living.

What a depressing poem.

The entire town here is obviously a metaphor for the human body (specifically the lungs), and the megative impact that smoking can have on it. But lets dive deeper:

"The sleeping dog wakes," is obviously a reference to pavlovs dogs who were brainwashed into becoming addicted to the sound of a bell, which promised of food. This is very similar to how Nicotine brainwashes humans and creates an addiction that controls one's life. In this case it is at the quiet hour 3:30AM that Ted is beckoned by his nicotine addiction to come and smoke.

"The whole town is burning," shows us how teds body is degrading from the poisonous attack of this assailant. "Nobody knows why," because these toxins should not naturally appear, Ted's immune system is confused as to why Ted is slowly killing himself, whilst ted remains careless and ignorant of what he is really doing.

In the next line we can see the neighbors waking, which shows teds immune system making a futile attempt to fight off the toxins that TED himself is welcoming into his system, and we get the visual imagery of smoke filling his lungs.

In the final line we can see that Ted has dropped his cigarette midsmoke, and that due to his carelessness and ignorance our young Ted has almost surely met his unseemly demise.

A wonderful representation of the modern day's unnatural way of life ad how it can affect humans.

The gloomy day sets up a feeling of sadness and dystopia right of the bat, followed by an inability to go to work because of something as mundane as traffic. Yet unlike in the past his inability to work wasn't the end of the world, it did not mean starvation. Indeed it's just something we do out of habit and in truth it has no real effect on the world, show by the lack of concern over failing to get to work. Finally getting high shows us the disconnect between us from the real world. How broken and bored must the imagined character be to, living in a rainy work, going to work every day, being stup in traffic, and finally when all his (lazy and not really imaginative) plans for going to work failed, he decided to indulge himself in a particularly depressing way. Drugs. How sad a life when the highlight of an unexpected free day is doing drugs and escaping from the dreary reality built around us.

:(

Dick's mom takes to the bottle? That's not literal! That's an idiom!

A wonderfully somber work that touches upon the fragility of human life, as well as the importance of remaining aware of your surroundings (both in a literal and figurative sense). One that does not notice the intricacies of human interaction around them can easily become harmed (such as Dick, when the car hits him because he is distracted by Spot running-a metaphor for our unhealthy fixation on celebrity culture that eats away at our own lives). The madness of Dick's mom, too, puts on full display the lengths humans will go to find meaning in that which happens around them. Her attempts to prove that Dick's death was intentional provide an analogue for the human search for meaning in a universe where there is none. This work is a true masterpiece of existentialist thought, created by a surely troubled genius known only by AVerySexyDorito trying to understand their place in the world.

In a soulless, corporate retail store, how could you not wish to have the innocence of your childhood back? This is heatbreakingly metaphorical.

This piece clearly speaks to the silliness of judging someone by what color they are. It doesnt matter if a person is White, Black, Yellow, Red, Green, Purple, or any other shade or hue of equally important colors. What we should judge them on is what the inside of their own personal "house" looks like, not the outside, however beautiful or crude it may be.

This is a wonderful allegory for addiction. A dairy farmer, a man who you would assume is used to butter by now, simply demands to have more butter, despite having already eaten a large quantity of bread. His unsatiable thirst for "butter" makes it so that it control his whole life. In the same way a meth junkie becomes a meth dealer, a man addicted to butter becomes a dairy farmer.

This peice was an interesting one to dissect. Normally the color White represents purity and goodness, however, this interpretation does not fit well in this particular case. Rather, I think the author is trying to use the color white in a simlar way that George Orwell did in his famous book: 1984, to be devoid of all defining characteristics.

By using this interpretation we can infer that this piece is speaking against the rampant mob mentality which has become a problem worldwide. The subject of this peoce becomes oitraged at the news almost as soon as he opens it, without any kind of personal research or fact checking into the matter at hand. This blind outrage formed and nurtured by society has stopped him from being able to enjoy the little things in life and find happiness for himself.

If the Author were here today he would surely advocate against blind belief in commonly over-dramaticized public media, and encourage people to do their own extensive research, make up their own minds, and be their own individual; not a mindless body in a raging mob.

The Author's statment, "It's so that someonw may try to find deeper meaning though I only wrote facts" is the most interesting one to me. I currently have two prevailing theories on what this means:

A.) It is referencing the Authors depression (as previosly mentioned, and how he is struggling to find meaning in his life

B.) It is referencing how we as humans may try to think ti much about things and constantly try to find meaning where there is none. Instead of sittig and analyzing for days on end we should take action, and take control of our lives!

It doesn't look like anything to me.