Sometimes a Smoke Is Just a Smoke

Students have long suspected that English teachers sit around just making crap up about the symbolism and theme and literary devices in pieces of literature.  That they just pull stuff out of thin air.  I'm here to say, it is true.  In my class today, we were doing an activity with a piece of artwork, and it involved analyzing the elements of the painting and the theme.  Here is the painting and some of the observations that were made:

• The man does not want his son to go off to college.  You can tell because the unlit cigarette in his mouth is symbolic.  If he wanted his son to go, he'd have it lit and be puffing away.  (Wait, wha??)
• The color (or pattern?) of the son's tie and socks shows that he is ambiguous about leaving home. (scratching head??)
• They are sitting on the running board of a truck.  This is symbolic because a running board is something to "assist" you in getting into the truck and moving forward, and college will "assist" the boy in moving forward.
• The color (red) of the flag and lantern is symbolic of the father wanting to "stop" the son from leaving, and of love and power.  The lantern symbolizes knowledge (light).  
• The title of the piece is "Breaking Home Ties" and that's an allusion to the railroad ties.

This piece of artwork has plenty of things to analyze without having to just make this kind of crap up!  You can look at body language, facial expressions, the physical proximity of the dad and son, their hands, how they are each looking in different directions with one weary and one hopeful, the hats, the difference in their clothes.  All of these things are legit ways to analyze what the artist was trying to say. You don't need to stretch that far.  Pretty sure that the flag is red because.... the flags they used to flag down a train back in the day were red!  It's not like the flags used to be purple but the artist changed it to red to make a statement.  Der.  Crazypants English teachers.  Actually, mostly just one or two crazypants.  And me in the back trying to not make WTF faces.