Over the course of my English class, I've realized that I really hate fiction because I'm way too stupid to understand it. I will die on the hill that reading fiction is considerably harder than nonfiction.
Nonfiction is cut and dry. A is B because of C unless D, in that case E. Boom, I now know how something works.
But fiction is a tangled web of crap that leaves me confused. A is maybe B unless X, Y, and Z, but you can only have Z if F, but only if G, but of course you can't forget about H, and Y is only possible with J, and X is both possible and not possible because of L. Like wtf are we talking about?
I just don't understand anything about how people analyze media. For an assignment we have to make a claim about whether The Nickel Boys advocates for hope or survival, but it doesn't advocate for either but yet it advocates for both at the same time?! Elwood was hopeful that the system could change, made a brash choice and was killed, which shows that hope isn't always the correct choice, but Turner spent the rest of his life in fear because he chose survival, showing that survival isn't always the right choice. Boom, both suck and that's a claim. But at the same time, at the end of the book, Turner chooses to fight like Elwood, so I guess hope is the right choice? But then why did Elwood die, did he not "hope" hard enough? Maybe the answer is that you must have hope and survival. But Turner already tried that and it didn't work! He helped Elwood turn in the letter to call out Nickel because he hoped something could change while knowing he was safe because the letter wouldn't be traced back to him but that led to Elwood dying! So hope and survival are both the right and wrong choice and I'm back at square one but more confused.
People just act like this shit is supposed to be intuitive. Give you swords and armor to fight the big bad math dragon but the throw you to the English hydra with a pencil and dreams. There's so much to keep track of and all of it is related but not related and there's 100 themes and nobody wants to tell you how to find or figure out anything. "Just look for symbols!" Yeah, I SEE the symbols, but how do I figure out what they MEAN? "Find what motivates the character and watch how they change!" From what I can tell each character has a hundred different convoluted motives for what they're doing and stick to them the entire novel, how do I FIND a characters motivations?
Long rant because I'm at my limit. To the people who understand fiction, y'all are freaking awesome because this shit is HARD.