Thursday, August 7, 2008

Hidden Meaning

Yes, I know I'm getting tiring. But I wanted to write down something that I thought of today in class—very much on the "hidden meaning" wavelength.

The other day I watched a movie adaptation of Dorothy Sayers' Nine Tailors. In this drama, Lord Peter Wimsey, an amateur detective, sets out to find some missing jewels. (Warning: plot spoiler ahead) He finally does solve the mystery. To do so he must:

1. Figure out that a gibberish letter is really some form of code.
2. Figure out that the code is really a notation for bell patterns in British change ringing.
3. Figure out which of several possible methods might have been used for the change ringing notation
4. Figure out which bell to follow through the changes.
5. Figure out that the code really is writing out two quotations from the Bible.
6. Find the place in the church where those quotations are inscribed.
7. Learn that the church used to have a balcony.
8. Climb up to the place where the inscription indicated, and finally
9. Figure out what to open up once he got up there.

THAT'S a hidden meaning! To unlock it, one had to be a trained bell-ringer AND have lived in the parish when there was a balcony twenty years previously AND known that the bell to follow was named "Tailor Paul." (Not to mention having a certain familiarity with the Bible.)

Many of my students write as if poems and plays worked much the same way. No—it's not like Indiana Jones or National Treasure. It's more like a letter from your mother, mentioning things that make you both happy. Or maybe like someone visiting a zoo and seeing a lot of animals that remind him of frightening predators, then moving on to wonder whether a good God could create things that eat small animals.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could form thy fearful symmetry?

Well maybe that's more obscure than "I looked at the tiger and wondered if God could make something that scary." But Blake's poem isn't hidden. Just deep.