Sometimes they have no substance to back up what they think they've found in the text, but then their inadequacies are easily evaluated as inadequate. Often, simply because they've not been inundated with Marxist New Historicist Postmodern Feminist Psycholanalytic theorizing, even high school students can bring a clear and wide-open eye to the text and find remarkable things in it.
Students are capable of thinking, too.
There are no doubt scores of essays out there from others who've done that and gotten it published. I've not happened to have read them. Nor has Kate. She simply did an extensive close reading, brought to bear her own experience as the daughter of an Episcopal priest, her classwork in 9th grade studying The Odyysey, and her excellent brain. I don't think so.