2011-01-02
Explanation
A teacher is reading "The Great Gatsby" to a class. A student named Bobby eagerly says "Yes, Bobby?" and the student asks, "Can we start reading another book?" The teacher responds, "No. That'''s not how English class works." She then explains: "What we can do is pretend the book is a towering edifice of symbology designed so opaquely in its genius, yet so simplistic that it can be expressed in a single paragraph during a one-hour midterm." Bobby replies with a resigned "Gotcha. Gotcha." In the final panel, set "Later, in college," a now-grown Bobby says "Man, I hate novels," and his classmate responds, "Ugh, you too?!"
The comic satirizes how English classes in high school often kill students''' love of literature. Rather than encouraging genuine engagement with books, the system forces students to treat every novel as a puzzle box of hidden symbols that must be decoded and regurgitated in exam format. The teacher'''s brutally honest monologue exposes the absurdity: students are trained to reduce complex works of art into reductive one-paragraph interpretations for standardized testing, which sucks all the joy and genuine meaning out of reading.
The votey panel drives the point home with a related joke: a character declares "All math is repetitive arithmetic problems!" -- drawing a parallel to how other subjects are also reduced to their most tedious mechanical components in school settings, suggesting this is a systemic educational problem rather than one limited to English class.