Reflection on Helen Echlin “Letter from Yale”

I’m sure that Helen Echlin had a good purpose in mind when she was writing the article “Letter from Yale”. The idea of Helen Echlin’s article, “Letter from Yale”, was to make people understand that when analyzing literature you should not say just anything that makes you sound good. One should actually appreciate the work of the author, rather than butchering the work so much that yon forget the point that you were trying to make.

“The ode must traverse the problem of solipsism before it can approach participating in the unity which is no longer accessible”, this is the sentence that Echlin seems to be still analyzing ever since her days in Yale. Echlin makes this sentence seem like it was spouted to a professor to only impress. She goes on to say, in English we are “educated to value clarity”. I understand why that sentence might have been confusing and unclear but maybe if she asked her professor or the student to clarify the statement, she might not have given up on literary criticism.

As an English communication major, I enjoy taking English classes and I love that Critical Theory and the Academy is blowing my mind away, because it’s forcing me to think outside the box. I might only understand a small part of Peter Barry’s, Beginning Theory or recognize what Dr. McGuire saying only for a second but those parts of understanding makes me appreciate literary theory even more.