'Assume' Makes an Ass out of You and Me

"You're not looking within the writing, Joseph," the instructor said, rapping her hands against the table, "It's clear that the character had a reason behind killing his father. He must have some psychological deficiency to do this. No one kills their paternal family members without reasoning." The man next to her, apparently named Joseph, sighed heavily and slouched, defeated at his own game.

"Now, who else has interpreted this work? You can tell by the heavy symbolism the author uses in the first line how he feels like a fish deprived of water, gasping for air, unable to find the right source of life. How can he, as a person, feel deprived of water or air? Now, in the next line he describes the suffering of the fish as the gills "move in an out as if the currents would continue to fill his lungs". Come on people! You have to see through this nonsense. You have to make it sound real. Does it sound like he was really writing about a fish?" The bell rings, signaling the adult group that the literature discussion session was over. Everyone exits the classroom and the instructor strides over towards the chalkboard, hands furiously scratching against the surface, scribbling analytical notes.

But not everyone has left the room. A man, sitting in the far back corner, a pen tucked neatly behind his ear and a cigarette between his teeth, simply laughs at their naivety. At the sound, the woman turns to look at him, a piece of half gone chalk still intertwined with her fingers.

"You're over-analyzing it," the man says, tossing the cigarette to the ground and putting out the slight blaze with the ball of his foot. "What if things are exactly what they seem?" She raises a hand to interject. "I know." He doesn't allow her to speak. "Your book says that poetry is never what it seems to be. But what if the author felt like writing about a fish because it was better than writing about a dead person, one without feeling?" She looked slightly stunned at his proposal. He did not reply to her reaction, merely walked to the door and pulled the pen from behind his ear, using it to gesture towards the teacher. "Put that in your book."