Why exactly are college books so expensive?

Reading some questions here brought back an issue I had throughout high school and college. Why does every English class force a student to interpret or analyze "symbolism" in books. What if the author wrote exactly what he meant? Why do we look for more?

• Answer:

  Since humans are a highly symbolic species, there is symbolism in everything we do. Literature appeals because it carries meaning at the symbolic level, where we feel, rather than literal level, which we see. While there are books without symbolic levels ("The cat sat on the mat"), they are pretty flat books and convey little more than a technical manual. Your English teacher is trying to get you to see and understand how good books talk to you on many levels, whereas bad books are flat and single-level.