Nobody fucketh with thy Bard-
Recent events seem to have given English majors a bad name. For those of you who haven't heard (and you must have been on the moon if you missed this), a bat-shit insane English major killed 32 people at Virginia Tech this week and then shot himself. In spite of the tragedy, I found something darkly funny about the fact that this guy was an English major. Part of that is likely due to me being a totally insensitive douchebag, but part of it is that I've worked with English majors for some time now.
We're all on the verge of losing it.
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Now I don't mean this literally. I don't think anyone I know is planning to go on some shooting spree. That takes a special kind of insane right there. The worst our voices do is force us to volunteer for more work. Finnigan may be my invisible muse who takes the form of Abe Lincoln in a Hawaiian shirt, but dammit, he gets the papers written.
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This image of the gun-slinging English student is not helping us. On Tuesday evening, the headline (just below "Virginia Tech Massacre") was the following by-line: "English Major Kills 32 Students." Now why did it have to be worded like that? Interestingly enough, it's not out of the realm of possibility for an English grad student to be teaching a class of 32 freshmen in a writing class. This headline makes it sound like this guy had read one "its defiantly my beest writeng" too many and just mowed down his class.
We've all had fantasies, but we'd never act out on them. Besides, we don't have the money to purchase that kind of weaponry.
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But I've noticed my students looking at me strangely ever since the incident. Today probably didn't help matters. My little moppets were doing a peer review workshop, so while they were working on their papers, I was doing my own work. My own work, as it happens, is an analysis of adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This led me to a fascinating connection between that novella and Jack the Ripper. Turns out the Ripper murders occurred less than two years after Stevenson's book was published, and that may have been a big factor in its rising popularity.
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But I digress. As I said, I was doing my own work. It's at this point that I become aware that my students keep glancing up at me and my reading material. I set my book down and realize that the cover of my book is completely black with the words "JACK THE RIPPER" written in big, clearly visible red letters. It didn't help that the author of the book had a sense of humor, which led me to laugh at various points throughout the class.
But I digress. As I said, I was doing my own work. It's at this point that I become aware that my students keep glancing up at me and my reading material. I set my book down and realize that the cover of my book is completely black with the words "JACK THE RIPPER" written in big, clearly visible red letters. It didn't help that the author of the book had a sense of humor, which led me to laugh at various points throughout the class.
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I immediately understood their concern - I tried to imagine myself in their place, and I became intensely aware of how closely I resembled a sociopath at that moment. I explained why I was reading the book, but I don't think some of them were convinced. I can just imagine the evaluations now.
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I don't know how much the shooter's association with the English department led to his insanity. Even if the media hadn't given his major, I could have guessed. The explanation note found in his room railed against "rich kids," "debauchery," and "deceitful charlatans." That has English major written all over it. No normal person talks like that. Hell, most normal people don't know what those words mean. Only English majors and Bond villains talk like that.
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So the life of the English major just got a bit more interesting. The listserv is already abuzz with the socio-lingistic-political ramifications of the shooting. Every professor is trying to out-academic everyone else. I can't wait to see what kind of bullshit this will lead to in terms of department policy.
