Stories with multiple possible interpretations: do you plan for it?

There is a joke that we always told each other in my school when we had to analyze texts or poetry that goes something like this:

Teacher: What did the author mean when he said that the curtains are blue?

Pupil 1: The curtains are a replacement for the endless skies that can't be seen from the inside. They are the narrators way to connect to the outside world by mimicking the world.

Pupil 2: Blue was obviously a color that symbolized being calm in the time the author lived. By making the curtains blue he allowed the reader to get a glimpse of the narrators state of mind, which is calm in the face of the upcoming storm.

Pupil 3: No, obviously it was just a barricade to shut himself out of the world and by making it blue he wanted to show to other people that he was normal and yearning for the outside, while deep inside his chest he knew that he would never want to leave his house again.

Teacher: You are all completely wrong. Blue is obviously part of the greater color scheme. If you had a look at the first pages of the book you would notice the turquoise boots, later these blue curtains and in the end the green grass. The curtains are merely a symbol for the change that is happening throughout the book. Remember this kids: metamorphosis is an important topic in basically all books of this time! It is a concept that you need to understand in order to pass the test.

...

Author: Blue is my favourite color.

And the moral of this story: it doesn't matter what your true intentions are, someone will find a way to interpret your writing in a way that profits them - and depending on their current situation, the general spirit of the time and the amount of people you are asking you will get far more interpretations than you could ever hope to put into this book deliberately.

posted about 6 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Secespitus‭

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No matter how hard you try to make sure that there is only one possible interpretation of your story, people will interpret it in different ways according to their experience, ideology, and circumstances. You don't need to plan for multiple interpretations; you are going to get them whether you like it or not.

A story is an experience. When different human beings have the same experience, they often interpret that experience differently. We can walk down the same street together and notice different people, buildings, plants, animals, etc. The fact that different people interpret a story in different ways, that they see different things and react to them differently as they travel through the story, is actually evidence that you have created a vivid and captivating experience.

People will, to one extent or another, take every experience, including literary ones, and try to use them as reasons to argue a political point. As an author, you may be intending for them to do this, and trying to direct them to a political opinion closer to your own, or you may be attempting to be strictly an artist and to depict life as you see it without a political agenda. Either way, some portion of your readership will disappoint you by extracting a policy statement from your work that you did not intend and perhaps find abhorrent. Welcome to art.

posted about 6 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Mark Baker‭

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