Prairie Home Companion had a wonderfully amusing skit about English majors:
What's really amusing is that the English major in the skit doesn't actually use the ellipsis quite correctly. Technically, ellipses are supposed to be used when you are omitting information from an original quote or text. They can be used to trail off or pause in a sentence or create a melancholy sensation, but not officially.
I do realize how geeky I sound.
We were talking about ellipses in my Technical Writing course today. I use them incorrectly quite frenquently, but usually only with informal writing... like this...
Don't even get me started on commas. Semi-colons are amazing. And please figure out the difference between a dash and a hyphen.
Anyway, I started this English major rant because I
Fantastic. Now I'm paranoid about my own grammar and proper punctuation.
Once again, I started this English major rant because I am going to be writing about Raskolnikov and Razumikhin again and I thought I needed to explain why I talk about books and fictional characters so often.
As a reader, we would like to associate more with Razumikhin. He's the giving, simple, kind best friend. He's strong and wonderful and honest and intelligent. We all want to be the Razumikhin.
But I don't think he's possible. I think he's an idea.
Then there's Raskolnikov. He's crazy. Paranoid. A liar. A murderer. Anti-social and neurotic. Hateful with random bouts of empathy and compassion. We don't want to be like him. Sometimes we feel sorry for him. Sometimes we love him. And sometimes we want to punch him in the face.
He's also an idea.
These two friends remind me of the dualities so often used in literature. Black and white. Yin and yang. Masculine and feminine. Spiritual and earthly. You get the point.
We just read Faust by Goethe... so many dualities of amazingness... plus the salvific feminine. That's why dualities are on my mind.
But Razumikhin is everything Raskolnikov is not, and vice versa. I think that together they represent, well, us. Humans. Every one of us has a bit of Razumikhin and Raskolnikov. A touch of crazy. A touch of pure kindness and dignity.
Maybe I've completely missed the point, but to me this unpredictable but remarkable friendship in Crime and Punishment represents humanity. The beautiful and significant and fragile human soul.
Despite the title of this entry, I am not going to apologize for my English/Lit rants.
This brings to my next point. Apologizing.
I feel like people don't apologize sincerely anymore. We say "I'm sorry" all the time. I'm sorry for what? Be specific before the words lose their meaning.
And I'm guilty of the unspecific and generic "I'm sorry" crime too. Quite guilty. Guilty almost to the point of hypocrisy, which is even worse.
We say it because we feel bad. We say it because nothing else fits. We say it because we are actually very sorry.
On the receiving end, I hate having someone say "I'm sorry" to me when I don't think they have anything to be sorry about. But perhaps they really do need to say the words. Are they saying it to make themselves feel better or because they are sorry? Maybe a bit of both?
Ask why. Be clear. Apologize like you mean it.
I'll try too. Promise.
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