Why Be an English major?

Why be an English major? How about that it makes you into a better person? Reason enough, don’t you think?

An excerpt from Mark Edmundson’s marvelous essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

The English major at her best isn't used by language; she uses it. She bends it, inflects it with irony, and lets hyperbole bloom like a firework flower when the time's right. She knows that language isn't there merely to represent the world but to interpret it. Language lets her say how she feels. The English major believes in talk and writing and knows that any worthwhile event in life requires commentary and analysis in giant proportion. She believes that the uncommented-on life is not worth living. Then, of course, there is the commentary on the comments. There must be, as Eliot says, a hundred visions and revisions before the taking of the toast and tea—and a few after as well.