Life in colour
Graduate Buzz
Lauren Galligan
The Heath school
The thing about english as a subject is that it can not simply be defined by the study of a novel in anticipation for an exam on said novel. To study Tess of the D’Urbevilles is not to read the book and memorise quotes. To study Tess is to befriend a character we have never met; to become enthralled in the troubles and struggles of gender division, class division, moral and ethical dilemmas-to watch the life of a young girl, to whom we may relate to on a level that is entirely at the fault of the novelist, fall apart and crumble in our hands. English is the understanding that life does not always have a happy ending-as we have learnt from the undesirable and most unfortunate decline of Tess’ existence-the teaching of not just a language and its functions, but the teaching of an entire history. A historian may peer into a grave and discover the skull of an ancient poet, but they may never know the thoughts that lived for years within that very skull. How wonderful is it that we can look inside the mind of a single person just by opening the page of a novel? How is it that, as mere individuals in a world of black and white, we can peer inside a book and suddenly transform from this simplicity into screaming technicolour?
There is not a day that goes by when i am not fascinated by the privilege we have been given to have the ability to know a person just by the words they recall to us. How could it be that poets like Christina Rossetti who spent a lifetime terrified at the thought of being forgotten could live on in ink two hundred years later? There is so much to learn! English is not merely the subject of studying, it is the subject of knowing.