This Troper has two novels he is making, one dealing with ideals and reality, another dealing with a Troper becoming a seventh and eigth grader.

The first novel, {{KIKEN}}, could be considered an allegory to the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism, with one group representing Idealism, another representing Cynicism, and two more groups representing those stuck in the middle--one of which are composed of Knights In Sour Armor.

The other novel, EPICOretachi however, averts this. Its just composed of TroperTales entries, to say the least.

This troper once drew a random picture and then wrung every bit of moral-guardian style hang-wringing out of it he possibly could. The entire thing was intended to be a TakeThat against some idiot who has since been banned from dA. For perspective, he's a fairly devout Christian and ''still'' found their arguments against nude photography silly. He's currently working on a similar essay-for fun this time, about SpongebobSquarepants.

Link us when you finish it?

Done.

This troper once wrote an essay about the evolution of culture and religion, and cited (under different but technically correct names - eg, Marilyn Manson became Brian Warner) quotes from utterly innapropriate sources (such as songs, comic books, and his uncle) and got an A. I also claimed in an essay that ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' was an allegory for the rise of big business (and again, got an damn good mark).

MAD Magazine released an article in 1996 that analyzed a normal essay with citations from video games and TV shows of the day. One citation I remember is "...win her over" being footnoted and cited under Duke Nukem 3D and other citations came from {{Beavis and Butthead}} and {{Jerry Springer}}.

Subverted by one of this troper's English professors, who saw it fit to remind us that "not everyone is Jesus" after some students had been jokingly(?) attributing the symbolic roles of Adam, Eve, Jesus, Mary, and other archetypal figures to characters almost at random.

Played with in a more recent class of this troper's, in which she and a few classmates figured out that this sixteen-word minimalist poem is an allegory for Christian salvation through baptism and the Protestant work ethic(the white chickens, by the way, are the Holy Spirit).

ThisTroper is taking a University Creative Writing class, in which students are supposed to analyze and critique each others work as a group, without any input from the original writer. Almost every week, it turns out that all the deep subtext people are reading into stories was completely unintentional. The best one was a fallen tree supposedly representing the state of a couple's relationship (it was just a pretty scene setting).

This troper sees subtext in everything, which is why she's an English major. She has a theory that ''LordOfTheRings'' is a combination Christian/World War II allegory and has assigned most of the characters specific roles (even though Tolkien {{Jossed}} it), theorized that the ''{{Supernatural}}'' [=DVDs=] are so popular with U. S. troops overseas because they see Sam and Dean Winchester as two guys just like them who were roped into fighting a war against monsters (which represent the insurgents in their minds), and another theory that Lemony Snicket's ''ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' book series was really a commentary on the foster care system. And once, when she was sporking a really bad ''{{Supernatural}}'' FanFic on [=LiveJournal=], she wrote this sentence: "Everyone is Captain Jack Harkness in Hell."

I have claimed that Hester Prynne was Jesus, jokingly, and gotten away with it. (It may have helped that I bullshitted evidence to back it up.)

This Troper was jokingly contemplating on doing a cultural studies essay on the feminist/queer theory reading (viewing?) of ''OuranHighschoolHostClub''.

Similarly, when this troper gets to college, she wants to write some kind of essay on the psychological state of Akito Sohma from ''FruitsBasket''

Also, thinking further, This Troper also remembers one student doing their doctorate thesis on "Management By Sauron: Leadership in ''TheLordOfTheRings''"

That's awesome. Did it work?

This troper got full marks on an essay question on the endurance of ASeparatePeace by making an analysis of it as a metaphor for Christianity, with Finny of all people as Jesus, and Gene as the dual roles of Judas and sinners.

That's fairly obvious. I mean, Geez, Finny's the ONLY one who could be Jesus and Gene betrayed him. I almost tried to write a sumary of that essay off the fly because of how much it makes sense.

The way this troper sees this page, all of the people comparing the works are sinners because they are infringing on the line "Do not judge, or you too will be judged." (Matthew 7:1) and are infringing on the will of god, while the ones who do the opposite are examples of Jesus because they are following the will of god.

Note the repeated use of "this troper" rather than "I", which symbolizes the dehumanizing influence of modern technology and the rise of a paradigm where people are merely numbers rather than living beings.

This troper once commented to his Literature teacher in High School about how he felt Don Quixote is Literature's first geek/fanboy/cosplayer main character; the teacher was not amused.

This Troper has been converted to the above viewpoint after reading it. It seriously makes perfect sense to me.

This troper is tempted to, if she were to ever get an appropriate prompt, write an essay detailing just how the characters of Metal Gear Solid are parallel to certain Biblical characters. She is, however, having trouble decided whether Big Boss would be God or Jesus.

Why not both? The Holy Trinity and all that.

HarryPotter is Jesus.

Which would make Hermione Mary Magdalene, and He-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Said-Or-Whatever Satan! IT MAKES SENSE.

There are people who don't read Harry Potter that way? "The last enemy to be conquered is death." Harry, after a crisis of faith in the Garden of Geths...er...Bagshot's house, puts aside his doubts and puts all his faith in Dumbledore and his plan, laying down his life in the process. Harry's unswerving loyalty and faith in the plan allows him to come back, while his sacrifice prevents Voldemort from claiming any more souls. "O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? But thanks be to Dumbledore who giveth us the victory through our Lord Harry Potter." In the illustrations, you even get both an Ecce Homo and a Pieta (when Hagrid is carrying Harry's dead body: compare to any Pieta ever done, it's the same pose).

Several times, from completely different sources, I have heard stories of English teachers demanding essays on the deep symbolism in Huckleberry Finn, and slapping an F on anyone who refused. The author has stated, in so many words, that there is none. I also had an English teacher who spent several classes on an analysis of Stairway To Heaven. She was 'very' unamused by my alternative interpretation at the end: "...or maybe it was 1971, they were known for being into heavy psychedelics, the entire thing was written in a single day at a famous den of iniquity for starving musicians, and it sounds really cool to someone under those influences?"

One wonders if these teachers ever actually bothered to read the book in question, or did they just skip over the author note on the first page, in which Twain explicitly denies that the book posses a hidden meaning, and threatens legal action against anyone who claims otherwise.

It's Mark Twain. He was joking. (Even if you reject the deepest/craziest readings, it's still obviously a satire, which by definition has a message about society.)

A well deserved F indeed.

There's a difference between satire and symbolism. In Huck Finn, the large numbers of racist white people in the South represent...the large numbers of racist white people in the South. Jim, a black slave, represents...black slaves. The book's meaning isn't "hidden". It's ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. Well, it's exactly what it looks like when you read it, so you have to open the tin, but...

In her essay about ToKillAMockingbird this troper wrote that the scene with Atticus shooting the dog is essentially a representation of how easy it is to kill something that you consider to be abnormal and non-human, pretty much as black people were regarded in the 1930s when this book was set. In reality, her opinion was that the scene was a nice piece of character development but nothing symbolic.

You said that about ATTICUS FINCH?

You don't dis Atticus Finch. Especially since he's, like, Jesus.

in Purgatory.

This troper has, honest to God, seen an interpretation of the Water 7 arc of ''OnePiece'' where someone compared Franky to Jesus. It actually made sense to her.

This troper once made and defended the claim that Jack And The Beanstalk is about drugs. The main character sacrifices his family's most prized possession and the approval of his mother for the "magic beans", and then gets quite ''high'' on the beanstalk. The giant trying to kill him is a bad trip, yet Jack only finds what makes him truly happy (the harp or the goose or whatever he steals from the giant in the version you know) after he takes drugs. It makes total sense.

Even better, the Giant represents death/incarceration and the treasure represents sobriety. After narrowly avoiding the giant(death) he takes his 'treasure', comes down from the high, saves himself from the giant, and lives happily ever after back on earth

This troper's English teacher told her class flat out that Moby Dick was the search for universal truth, and the boat was Earth, and the sea was the Universe. This seemed a little stupid to this troper and her friend, and they started a game called "the whale is" where they list all the things the whale could be. Her personal favorites? Communism, English teachers who make you read Moby Dick, and, in a surprise twist, a ''black'' whale.

This troper is writing a SilentHill fanfic in which Alessa Gillespie actually ''is'' TheMessiah. And if some people interpret the town itself as Purgatory . . .

Pick a story, any story, and give this editor's ex-boyfriend (an English teacher working on his Doctorate) a month to read, analyze, re-analyze, deconstruct, ReverseThePolarity, and reconstruct Every. Single. Word...and then read it again, and he will write a convincing 20-page article on how the main character is a latent homosexual.

I'd write that I'm probably your boyfriend by that but I've never had a girlfriend. Not that I'm gay. NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat. And I'm 17. But I managed to make every single story about the main character slowly realizing his homosexuality (my favorite- TheCatcherInTheRye, horrible book, SO MUCH SUBTEXT), and all of the analyzed poems are about people losing faith in god and suicide. Although most poems are about losing faith in god/depression, so it isn't hard. Poets are whiny bitches.

This troper ''did not'' bother reading ''LordOfTheFlies'' for school, which meant that, for her English class, she had to make up stuff for sheets on the allegory. Somehow, despite not having read far enough to get to the Simon parts in the book, she managed to guess right that he (and the Navy guy at the end) represented Jesus...through ''sheer bullshitting''. She also is horribly ashamed to admit that she actually said on one of the sheets that Simon was "JESUS IN PURGATORY."

Gendo Ikari is Satan. Literally. His entire plot arc revolves around rebelling against God (and the divine messengers, the Angels). Gendo seeks to bring about the end of humanity by creating his own Gods, the Evas (living beings created from Adam's...not really rib, but you know...Eva, Eve). Gendo and Satan both...um...have beards. And they both come to bad ends.

This Troper has serious issues with this trope. No matter what he is watching, reading, or playing, he ALWAYS finds some sort of religious or political cogitation. No. Matter. What. He fervently believes that Bolt is about a disillusioned conservative Christian accepting atheism, and ''TheMarvelousMisadventuresOfFlapjack'' is about the dangers of mindless self-indulgence. Also, Hank Hill is Jesus in Hell

Maybe so, but it sure is a clean-burning Hell, I tell you what.

This troper loves to find (read: occasionally see, and occasionally bullshit) examples of triple-goddess imagery in fiction, as well as the Holy Trinity. She almost got to make an essay out of her argument that Raskolnikov is the untested, sexless warrior-Maiden, Svidrigailov is a perversion of the archetype of Mother, and Porfiry is the world-weary but wiser Crone. Or alternately, Porfiry is the Father, Svidrigailov is the Son, and Raskolnikov is the Holy Spirit. Or Dunia is the Father, Razumikhin is the Son, and Sonia is the Holy Spirit. Or Raskolnikov is Mind, Svidrigailov is Body, and Porfiry is Spirit. But it was deemed too abstract. Alas.

For an essay, this troper had to write a commentary on a poem called "Wild Bees". It ended up with comparing the destruction of the hive to the destruction of Israel, the city of Ai from the book of Exodus, Atlantis, Carthage and Troy. This troper just needs to wait for the grade.

After hearing "You Know My Name" by Chris Cornell, this troper automatically interpreted it as Lucifer chiding an overly ambitious 'recruit'. He then learned that it was actually a James Bond theme song...

I managed, in a literature test, to get every single story and poem to mean that God didn't exist. I extrapolated from any information anywhere in the text, and got a B. My teacher wrote "You obviously hate this class."

I was once assigned ''Watership Down'' as an essay subject in high school; I wrote the damn essay, all about how it symbolized Fascism and Democracy and all that, but got pretty pissed when I found out that the author himself denied any allegorical meaning to it. It's just a fucking story about some fucking rabbits. Literary Criticism is 90% bullshit.

This was astonishingly inverted in my high school English class when we read Shelley's "Ozymandius." Everyone managed to get the whole "There used to be an awesome king-guy that everyone was afraid of" bit down okay. I was the only one--teacher included--to get the "Even your empire will crumble to dust" part. Honestly, the ''one time'' when there actually was something legitimately in the text...

This troper's English teacher was once telling us about her old boyfriends and current husband, and how she'd wanted to be a nun before she met the first one. A night hadn't passed before we decided her first boyfriend was the snake, seducing her away from God, and her subsequent boyfriends were false idols. Her husband was Jesus.

This troper and all his classmates read the short story ''Detroit - New York'' by Dorothy Parker, about a girl calling her boyfriend and wanting him to come back to her. We were then to analyze it. Remembering this trope, this troper stated that the girl was humanity and the guy was Jesus. The result? Spontaneous applause from the class and praise from the teacher.

This Troper's English teacher assigned the class to prove that Gregor Samsa from Kafka's ''Metamorphosis'' was not, in fact, a bug. The class was supposed to prove that he was actually insane. This Troper, however, remembered this trope, and argued that he was actually Jesus.

This troper has a girl in her Core class that thinks that every single Beatles song is about drugs. (How do you explain 'When I'm 64' or 'Let It Be', then?)

Poetry class. Analyzing and interpreting other people's poems. The teacher tells the students not to explain their poem; it destroys the analysis. This troper led the way on exploring one poem's metaphoric sexual imagery. It was obvious. It was all about sex. The whole class agreed. ...except the author, strangely. In fact, when they began exploring the metaphors in this troper's poems... well, everyone was Jesus. In Purgatory.

This troper and his sister once spent an hour going through a RichardScarry storybook and analyzing every page for some deep, allegorical meaning. What we got out of it was Scarry's idea of a new, socialist world order and how society must work to achieve this end. It was fucking hilarious.

This troper is convinced that this trope (and WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic) have warped her. In a recent story she was writing, she was suddenly tempted to go back and examine the symbolism of ''feet''. And from there extrapolate that her piece demonstrated the meaninglessness of human existence in the face of societal institutions and the forces of nature alike. ''She was writing TeamFortress2 fanfic.''

Beta Maxis here. I once had to write a paper comparing a tv show to medieval romanticism. He picked XiaolinShowdown, that's right, a show based on the far and ancient east. 'Cause it made sense. The teacher gave me an A so she agreed.

I'm not sure what to classify this as, but in our literature class, we were analyzing Hawthorne's "The Birthmark." The instructor mentioned that there was an alternate explanation that people had in which Georgiana represents Jesus. He asked if anyone could see it. Silence. "Yeah...I don't buy it either."

This Troper was forced to do a final essay, the topic was a literary analysis of any book. I despised both the class and the teacher. I made sure that she meant any book, then wrote about how The Cat In the Hat was really all about Freudian Psychology and several characters were directly representative of the id, ego, and super ego. The teacher begrudgingly gave me an A and said it was easily one of the most well thought out essays she had ever read. I consider it my own {{Crowning Moment Of Awesome}}.

My Friends and I did this for laughs while playing Super Monkey Ball 2. To wit:

The game is set in Purgatory; the characters are the leaders of the Soviet Union:

Aiai is Lenin.

Gongon is Stalin.

Mimi is Kruschev.

Baby is Gorbachov.

Dr. Badboon is an angel responsible for giving them their penance.

The first entry on the WMG page for Death of a Salesman? I wrote that. And then converted it to essay form and turned it in. The teacher loved it and asked me to read it in front of the class.

This Troper once saw someone wonderful rebuttal to the notion that Tolkien's ''TheLordOfTheRings'' is World War II allegory by applying allegory to First Age Beleriand in ''TheSilmarillion'': Angband is Germany, ruled by Morgoth. Italy is the Isle of Werewolves, ruled by Sauron. Staunchly neutral Doriath, fenced in and surrounded by the Girdle of Melian, is Switzerland. After the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Morgoth controlled almost all off Beleriand save Cirdan's Isle of Balar, so they're England in 1943. In the final hour, America, out of the western hemisphere, comes to push out the Germans. So, America is the Blessed Realm of Valinor! Obviously, this is simply a lesson in that one is capable of drawing false allegory however they would like.

ThisTroper's English teacher did that. Literally. TheLionKing? Jesus. HarryPotter? Jesus. OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest? JESUS!

This Troper, while watching GurrenLagann, began to wonder "Is the Anti-Spiral {{God}}?" There was the whole probability-manipulation thing, and the warships looked like some sort of religious figurines. This theory has the side effect of making the show ''even more awesome'' than it already was.

Oh God, This Troper takes the EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory trope, turns it UpToEleven, flings it out of the window, and then set on fire. Twice. 40000}} With chainsaws. This Troper just likes placing symbolic imagery, ranging from religious to Freudian, and he has an emphasis on religious ones. People who died in the series? Jesus. Self-sacrificing characters? Jesus. Self-sacrificing Moe characters? Jesus. Self-sacrificing Moe characters who contemplated their navels and died in a HeroicSacrifice? Jesus. Anime and Manga? Jesus. Film? Jesus. Literature? Jesus. All protagonists? Jesus. Heck: Even TV Tropes Wiki? Jesus. Trope-Tan, who is the MoeAnthropomorphism of both Jesus and a Time Lord, provides an ingenious, idiomatic and fun outlet for people who have been slaves to both Wikipedian coldness and renegade trolls yet was crucified by the Great Server Crash coupled with viewers being morons. Don't get me started on Freud: Cigars? Penis. Towers? Penis. Bottles? Penis. Columns? Penis. Bananas? Penis. Knives? Penis. Pens? Penis. Basically, everyone is Jesus in a land of penises........

This Troper saw a series of religious and evangelical reviews on the Dragon Ball franchise on how Goku is Jesus, and that faith in him makes everyone stronger (like with his Spirit Bomb). In retaliation, I wrote up a quick essay on how Dragon Ball GT's entire Baby Saga was pro-abortion.

What is this GT you speak of? There is no Baby Saga in Dragon Ball or Dragon Ball Z. Regardless, I'm not sure why you needed to retaliate. Claiming Goku IS Jesus takes things a little far, but he certainly fits the messianic archetype to the t. Goku also parallels Superman in many ways, and that's another character who gets compared to Jesus.

This Troper avoids this as much as possible. He will never assume anything is anything unless it is stated outright that it is that object. That big sword he's carrying? Unless the artist, author, director, developer, etc. explicitly states that it's CompensatingForSomething or something, than it's JUST A SWORD to him.

This troper once made a bet with a classmate that the literature teacher will somehow find an analogy for life and death in a children's lullaby. ''He won.''

Don't know if this goes here, but my friend once told me he saw a Youtube video of a band being interviewed, and one of the band members talks about one of their songs, what it's about, its message, etc. Cue most of the comments on the video saying "What an idiot. ''This'' is what that song is ''really'' about!"

This (German) troper usually liked literature classes in highschool, because we used to discuss a lot of theater works and dramas, so there's a realistic chance that the author was trying to express something other than the obvious. But I ''hated'' discussing poems. There was an 8 line poem about a harbor with some boats and the movement of their sails. I spent 20 minutes arguing with my teacher that, no, this poem was not about two lovers and their emotional back-and-forth, but just about some boats and their freaking sails.

Apparently, JenniferConnelly is Jesus in Purgatory according to film sync nutjobs.

This Troper's English teacher loves this trope, and will do it to anything. One time she made up so much nonsense and contradicted herself so many times it actually made me ''dislike the story.''

This troper once made a dream-sequence video for her film class, and invoked/lampshaded this trope with her friends, in the vain hope that someone would try to find the meaning in things:

In the opening sequence, there is a chessboard with a glass skull, SYMBOLIZING THE INEVITABILITY OF DEATH IN BATTLE!

In the dream, friend is wearing a black shirt, and is crushed by a clear chess piece SYMBOLIZING THAT SOMETIMES PEOPLE ARE PULLED INTO BAD SITUATIONS THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN, AND DARKNESS IS NOT ALWAYS EVIL!!!!!

I think there were a few more like that, but I can't remember them.

Hyperlinks are stigmata. My mind is blown.

You can also note that the yellow background of this page symbolizes impurity by way of human excrement...liquid excrement, that which passes and spreads to cover all.

Also, the recent epidemic of TroperTales pages having all instances of "ThisTroper" replaced with "I" in the most half-assed hatchet job possible is in fact a political statement against pointless censorship of the media by MoralGuardians.

This troper was teacher that she had took a younger class to meet the author of ''{{Skellig}}'' (David Almond) a book they were studying. They told him how they liked how he used great imagery and the subtext etc. And he replied "I didn't I just wrote a book."

This troper, to make fun of his English teacher's pretentiousness, once wrote a completely meaningless story will with eight-syllable words, and then accompanied it with an essay analyzing its meaning, written completely after I finished the story. I got an A+.

So during one of my tabletop games I had a monster dig up and attack a town from underground. One of the players thought of the commonly used Underground-hell links to say that this monster was a demon, thus representing peoples inner demons, which needed to be driven away, much like the monster, making him, and some others, believe the only way to beat it is to repent their sins and seek forgiveness. Yeeaah, about 20 minutes later I had to tell them that the answer was a mob stabbing. One of them thought the mob stabbing I recommended was about the rights of the people (the players) over the tyrants (being the monster) it was another 10 minutes until they actually got around to killing the monster.

This troper has thought of Die Hard as an analogy for religion, the terrorist are the devil, the FBI are god, the cop is jesus, John McClain/hostages are humanity, and the reporters are the church.

This troper took two courses in Shakespeare (a play a week) in college. ''Othello'' was the play one week, and the week's quiz asked what was Iago's motivation. I'd read the play, and spent most of the test period racking my brain to come up with a) a motivation and b) textual support for it. Finally, I gave up and wrote one paragraph about how Iago acted out of motiveless malignity. Result: I aced the quiz, and the prof wrote on my blue book that I was the only one to see it, and how the other students were writing their own version of ''Othello''.

Exploited by this troper. My English class came up with four or five possible themes when peer-editing my essay draft5. One of them was much better than my intended theme, so I fleshed it out in the next draft of my essay.

My English teacher in 12th grade was very bad with this. For example, she insisted that the snow at the end of the story "The Dead" in "Dubliners" represented life and rebirth, despite the rest of the class insisting that it meant death; after all, it was "smothering" the city as the protagonist watched. But no, she insisted that water is ALWAYS life no matter what, even when trapped in snow.

This troper, who aspires to be a college literature professor, does ''not'' do this, at least not seriously (it helps that I've only had one English teacher that did). As dorky as it sounds, I like drawing goofy parallels with stuff like this for fun, like a time when I wrote an essay about how the Eagles' song Hotel California was the modern equivalent to Dante's version of Hell and the narrator was DeadAllAlong. I got an A.

This troper recently came up with a theory stating that Ash in {{Pokemon}}: The First Movie is Jesus, Mewtwo and the clones are humanity, and Mew is God. All of this is really rather obvious. It started getting a little out of hand when I worked out that Mew's Psybeam attack near the end of the movie was Judas...