Thursday, December 17, 2009

Waist-deep in student papers

I will not be posting anything very intelligent or even intelligible today, for that matter. I am waist-deep in student papers, in which slavery still existed in the South into the ’twenties, tragedy involves the death of the main character or protagonist near the end of the novel, Gatsby “turned out all right in the end” because passionate and adulterous amor vincit omnia, a bastard is how each of us is born, and grammar takes early retirement. By tomorrow morning I may have recovered.

Update: Best examination answer so far. Asked to identify the last words that Nick says to Gatsby (“They’re a rotten crowd. . . . You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together”), one student writes: “Jews living in New York.”

3 comments:

Dwight said...

Let us know if you come across something similar to one of my 'favorite' book reviews:

"All we need to understand the novel is to look at the title.

To the = Toward the
Lighthouse = huge phallic thing"

R/T said...

May I offer a whimsical correction to your logic: Good grammar must have been meaningfully and gainfully employed somewhere along the way before being eligible for early retirement. However, as is often the case in undergraduate (and even graduate) student writing, good grammar is not often adequately employed (or at best is under-employed on a part time basis); therefore, by definition, the grammar is not eligible to take early retirement.

D. G. Myers said...

Well, one student did argue from the authority of Marjorie Holmes. I was deeply persuaded.