The Pen is Blue

  Come on, you've all seen it, that thing on the internet about symbolism and analyzing:

• The student's response: "The pen is blue."
• The English teacher's response: "The blue of the pen represents the man's loneliness, and the fact that it's not in the cup with the other pens represents how he's isolated from his fellow man. The way that it is a click-pen with the point inward represents how shy the man is."
• The author's meaning: "The pen is freaking blue."

  Yeah, I thought you might have seen that. I was thinking about it myself the other day because I write all the time, and I was wondering how much symbolism people might read into my work when there's really none there. In the eyes of English teachers, professors, and other intellectual stuffed-shirts everywhere (not that all English teachers are stuffed shirts, but you know what I mean), everything must contain symbolism, even if they have to assign it themselves. 
  I mean, sometimes I read stuff in class and I can easily see some symbolism in there, but other things the teacher might point out I'm like, huh? I mean, I just can't see it. And that made me wonder if half the time, the authors didn't realize that a specific symbol was being used, or that people could interpret their main character as being a Jesus figure or something like that. Maybe the author didn't mean half the stuff we have to find in English class or risk failing for the year. Maybe the author just didn't care.
   I mean, looking back through some of the stuff I've written I'm found symbolism that honestly wasn't there--or, at least, I wasn't thinking about it--when I wrote it. I wasn't thinking, Hm, let me make it snow here to represent the coldness of the human soul, and then let me make the sun come out to represent that changes a person can make to better themselves. No. I had it snow because my characters were climbing a mountain in the middle of winter, and I had the sun come up because that's what the sun does every morning. Although I suppose an English teacher could say the soul represented the hardships a person has to go through before their personal sun can come out....
  But you see? I didn't write it to mean that. Sure, sometimes I use weather to reflect moods or events, or I use symbolism of another kind to make my writing better; most writers do. But what I'm saying is, sometimes they don't, or they don't mean to, and people read stuff into it that's not really there. That's kind of why I don't want my writing to be school-reading, in the school I came from or any other (if, you know, a school suddenly got cool and added sci-fi/fantasy to the assigned reading list). I know, from going back over some of the stuff I'm written and am trying to get published, that they'll find some things in it that could be misconstrued as something else. 
  Sure, I made it storm once to represent my main character's internal conflict with dark magic. But once I also made it storm because it was summer and, in summer, storms happen. Once I made another character's boyfriend take an arrow to the throat, but it wasn't to show how hard love can be--it was because they were fighting bad guys. But you can guarantee that someone out there is gonna say it's because love has many obstacles to overcome, and the arrow represents those obstacles....
  Really, people, don't bust a brain vessel. Sometimes it's really not as hard as it seems, and just because something seems like it means something else doesn't mean it does. Don't assign meanings to something just because you think it should have one. Sometimes it really just is that simple. Sometimes a mountain is just a mountain. Sometimes a storm is just a storm. And sometimes the pen is just freaking blue.