• IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Sometimes, being bizarre and confusing is the point. In high school, I remember that our English teacher took an entire lesson taking us through a single page of prose. After reading it out loud once, we had no idea what it meant because it was written in a stream-of-consciousness format. He explained to us that the entire page takes place in the time the main character steps off of a curb, and to re-read it with that in mind.

    So many thoughts race through the main character’s head and get intermixed with real-life details that pop up as she sees them, and it makes for a chaotic mess. After reading it several more times, those details become more apparent, even if they’re full of racing, half-formed thoughts. You also get such an intimate understanding of the main character and how her brain works.

    You’re never going to get that when everything is simplified down to its base components - You miss out on the rest of the flavor.