you entirely pissed the point of the post.

anon is an idiot. he reads this book in two days, and knows nothing about it. he was not reading critically, he was blasting through each page and only 'reading' to say he read the novel to impress the teacher, and then he's so dumb he can't even remember the name of the horse.

you call it 'abitrary' I call it 'how can you do algebra if you can't do arithmetic'.

What's so wrong with our school system, is that we no longer teach fundamentals, and we wonder why kids can't do advanced work. knowing what the horse symbolizes requires know it's fucking name.

if anything, you, to me, sound like a result of our f'ed up education system in that you worry about high-minded bullshit and think that somehow it's more important than BASIC FACTS. then you probably bemoan how nobody knows facts anymore and just argues their feelings.... yeah because if you don't know facts of the novel all you have to argue about is your feelings.

have you ever taught? what if a student wrote an answer about chinese mythology in reply to a spanish novel? would that be a relevant answer? in today's school system, sadly, it would, because we can't 'punish children' or something.