That's Not What I Meant!

“For literature to happen, the reader is quite as vital as the author” (65).

American Hermeneuticist, E. D. Hirsch Jr. has argued that “an author’s meaning is his own, and should not be stolen or trespassed upon by the reader. The meaning of the text is not to be socialized, made the public property of its various readers; it belongs solely to the author…” (59). My response to such an elitist remark is: then why write? What is the point of writing (at least in the “creative” genre) if the author’s “meaning” (which is in itself complex and debatable) is already established?

If we are all reading to understand a single, non-debatable meaning created by the author, then essentially we are saying that this meaning is authoritative and true. As a result, the author becomes an all-knowing, powerful voice with whom we cannot argue. This is dangerously close to a dictatorship type of literary world. If the reader is not allowed to trespass into the author’s text – meaning the reader is not able to come to his/her own interpretation – then, there is no reader. One can only be called a ‘reader’ if there is interaction with the text. When the meaning is already given by the author, then interaction cannot happen. Instead of intellectual freedom there will suppression.

Hirsch’s argument that “meaning is unchangeable because it is always the intentional act of an individual at some particular point in time” is also problematic (61). Meanings do change. They change depending on context and time.



As the above image suggests, one cannot fully grasp the “pure” intention of the author (or speaker) even when there is a unanimous understanding of the language. These two figures in the image are both imagining a tree, but their interpretations are quite different. The one on the left visualizes a complex, large, healthy tree. The other character…not so much. What is the reason for this difference? I insist that one’s background, including education, experience, and imaginations are at least in part responsible for such a different conception of a single word.

The understanding and interpretation of literature is a lot like that image above. As readers, we cannot fully grasp the “intended” meaning of the author. Understanding is “realizing new potential in the text, making a difference to it” (62). It is alright to have a different understanding than the one the author originally intended. To me, this is the art of literature, “for readers do not of course encounter texts in a void: all readers are socially and historically positioned, and how they interpret literary works will be deeply shaped by this fact” (72).

Works Cited:
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Print.