Graduation is, in some ways, similar to being shot repeatedly in the kidneys with a high-powered crossbow. People will cry, you will be moving on to a new stage of life and you start to really wonder where you can fit into the world. Also, there are large amounts of blood and people in camouflage with beers congratulating each other, but I believe that to be a simple quirk of Wisconsin, rather than the norm. In the end, a person is left wondering only two things; “Was my English degree worth it?” and “Why, oh sweet merciful Thor, why have I been impaled through my wonderful organ-meats?”
The answers to those two questions are simple; yes, and because proper shooting technique is to aim for the center of mass in the target, thus ensuring a greater chance of an incapacitating shot. Some of you, however, may wonder how an English degree, or anything pertaining to literary analysis, may be useful in the REAL WORLD that we are approaching after this drunken, examination-filled haze referred to as the Modern American Collegiate Experience (Motto: Nothing leaves you staggering like being hit with a MACE!). Here to answer that question is I, TC MASK, masked luchador writer and proponent of overcomplicated literary analysis.
To be honest, I was once like you — weak, unmasked and unable to comprehend why in the name of Sif anyone would want to carefully analyze the meanings behind things. That was, of course, before I met a man who changed my life and showed me that everything exists to be analyzed in an over-complicated fashion. My story begins at the local-ish chain restaurant Five Guys on State Street, where I was enjoying a delicious burger, alone but for my thoughts. Then, in a flash of beard, this man appeared before me and began to speak, giving a voice to my doubts and fears over my prospective major of Luchador Writing and assuaging them, all at once. At first I was skeptical, but because he had one hell of a beard, I decided to listen, and it was there I learned that there is nothing that an English major cannot analyze, over-analyze and ascribe meaning to.
What, then, should we analyze with this newfound revelation steaming in our minds like a deliciously cooked burger? I will use the same technique that he first dazzled me with, by analyzing the delicious cheeseburger that I am enjoying at the moment of composing this article. To begin, it is the standard dual-patty’d, bacon-adorned, grease-slathered piece of gastronomic delight normally dispensed by those brave men at Five Guys when a student, weary from a long day of study, presents himself before the crimson counter and requests sustenance in a voice weakened by the demands of academia. This creation itself, taken as a whole, can be seen as a symbol of our own struggle against the inevitable clutches of death; while we may live for now, keeping our goo-filled bodies going by giving them the sustenance that they crave, it is ultimately a pointless and repetitious path, only ending with a death not unlike that of the cow that is now being consumed. It is a reminder of our mortality and the strange paradox that we, of humans, can revel in such things by enjoying such an excellent piece of cooked foodstuffs.
It is now, however, that we must look deeper, as I once did — what do the individual parts represent to the hungry individuals now contemplating them? Look, then, to the beef patties and bacon; their existence excludes those of a vegetarian bent, as well as devout Hindus and Jewish people seeking to keep kosher. These two meats, paired together, are a symbol of oppression and privilege created by an Anglo-centric society in order to enforce their own cultural norms! How cruel that these things should even exist in America! Worse yet, the cheeseburger is considered a symbol of America, and so, we as a country are saying that we are PROUD to exclude others!
Undaunted by this shocking information, we must pry deeper into the inner meaning of the burger, seeking out the lesser toppings that make up this meal, hoping they will somehow invalidate or refute our previous discovery. The next toppings sealed beneath this bun of repression are mushrooms, whose painfully obvious caricature of masculine anatomy speaks of a deeply rooted insecurities regarding the same. Oh, woe is the consumer, for this terrible news shows the inherent homophobia in this food item; it seeks for the customer to annihilate the hated masculine through consumption of it, the like destroying the like all due to intolerance. Finally, there is the lettuce, a few green leaves standing against the glistening meats and fungus of the rest of the burger. This, too, is a symbol of man’s oppression and trivialization of all those who consume not the meats; see how it is small in size when compared to the slaughtered animals!
So, then, the real meaning of a bacon cheeseburger with lettuce and mushrooms is now known to you, through the magic of literary analysis. I ask you, gentle readers; could you have discovered this deeply rooted injustice without this powerful art? So take heart, English majors, and realize that what you do is something that bears with it a greater purpose than all of those other students, for it is by your keen mind alone that these injustices can be exposed to the world!
TC Mask ([email protected]) is a luchador writer.
