English and Me Joel Herzfeld

I love English. I love its little quirks and idiosyncrasies, I love the etymology, I love the language. It all started back in the second grade when I checked Robinson Crusoe out of the school library. Every day, I would read a few pages on the bus ride to school, and before I knew it, I was finished. So I checked out Moby Dick. I devoured it. Treasure Island, The War of the Worlds, and Huckleberry Finn soon followed. They never stood a chance. After a few years of this, I began to slow down a bit, savoring the intricacies and meanings of the language. From there it was just a short jump to poetry - Dickinson, Frost, Poe, even a bit of Burns. I didn't understand some of the more difficult works, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. Next came etymology and linguistics. I took to memorizing Latin words on a daily basis. After that, I moved on to more complex poetry and prose such as Shakespeare, (The Taming of the Shrew was the first work of literature that ever made me laugh out loud, believe it or not) Nietzsche, and Bronte.

I have and always will love English because it is so dynamic. Take Death of a Salesman for example. There are literally dozens of different ways of interpreting this play, and no one way is more correct than...