Misinterpreting Literature

[Shwenn]

I guess everybody interprets literature in their own way. I do agree that, to a great extent, it should be what you want it to be. The author puts it out there and shouldn't tell you what it means. That is for you to decide.

However, possibly for personal reasons, there are some common interpretations that annoy me. For instance, "The Road Less Travelled". I find that poem very ironic and mocking of people who say things like that but it seems like every other person thinks it's inspirational. I don't know why it bothers me so much but it does.

Also, Nabokov's Lolita. People who talk about that story, talk about Lolita like she is a seductress. Almost across the board. It gets under my skin like nobody's business. She didn't seduce anybody. You know, grrr. I read Invitation to a Beheading and, in the forward, I got the feeling it really bothred Nabokov as well. Basically, he said the book was for those few reader who understood him and everybody else could fuck off. And that was a much later work.

So, I am very curious if anybody else has anything like that. A widely read piece that you feel that most people get completely wrong. And it just bothers you to no end.

Anybody else have that with anything?

 

[impressive]

A widely read piece that you feel that most people get completely wrong. And it just bothers you to no end.

Anybody else have that with anything?

The Bible.

 

[Shwenn]

The Bible.

Well played!

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I had a literature teacher that completely misinterpreted Lord of the Flies. she insisted on all of these symbolisms for each character that didn't make any sense. This lead to my answering the essay questions on the test for this book, disproving each of her zany thoughts.

I think I got a D for my effort...

 

[past_perfect]

I suppose unless you are the author, you can never know who is interpreting what wrongly.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Lotsa stuff gets misinterpreted. The language changes over time. Customs change.

As much as I respect Shakespeare, he wasnt a deep thinker. The meaning of his plays are pretty much what you see and hear. He dramatized human issues nearly everyone recognized. Yet most people believe the meaning of his plays are as subterranean as Dante's inferno. They arent.

 

[rgraham666]

Hell, I don't know what my stuff means. Why should I expect that others will?

That said, I'll reiterate my opinion that most 'literature' is just experts showing off their expertise to other experts. Which makes most of the literature I've read deadly dull.

The only time I put a 'deep metaphor' in one of my works, nobody got it. It was read tens of thousands of times here on Lit, and a couple of hundred times when it was published. But as far as I know, nobody got it.

So I don't do that shit no more.

 

[Remec]

The Bible.

*much hearty laughter with mental applause*

Good answer...very good...

*thinking of any material for my own response*

 

[Remec]

I suppose unless you are the author, you can never know who is interpreting what wrongly.

And even then you never quite know.

I can recall having asked some visiting writer or poet when I was in college a question regarding one of their pieces and they paused and gave me a look and said, "You know, I suppose that's a pretty valid thought. I wonder why no one's mentioned that before."

 

[Remec]

The only time I put a 'deep metaphor' in one of my works, nobody got it. It was read tens of thousands of times here on Lit, and a couple of hundred times when it was published. But as far as I know, nobody got it.

The closest I come to that sort of thing is to go to a book of names or an dictionary of root meanings, and choose names for some of the characters that are symbolic (in a subtle way) of something about their nature or their appearance.

 

[Shwenn]

As much as I respect Shakespeare, he wasnt a deep thinker. The meaning of his plays are pretty much what you see and hear. He dramatized human issues nearly everyone recognized. Yet most people believe the meaning of his plays are as subterranean as Dante's inferno. They arent.

I am so with you on this. What I love about him is his efficacy. There are feelings I know everybody has had. It would take me a couple of pages to explain it. Will could do it in a sentence. I have always felt that was his true genius.

"there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

Who else could possibly explian that thought in twelve words?

That guy just did not fuck around.

 

[CharleyH]

I guess everybody interprets literature in their own way. I do agree that, to a great extent, it should be what you want it to be. The author puts it out there and shouldn't tell you what it means. That is for you to decide.

However, possibly for personal reasons, there are some common interpretations that annoy me. For instance, "The Road Less Travelled". I find that poem very ironic and mocking of people who say things like that but it seems like every other person thinks it's inspirational. I don't know why it bothers me so much but it does.

Also, Nabokov's Lolita. People who talk about that story, talk about Lolita like she is a seductress. Almost across the board. It gets under my skin like nobody's business. She didn't seduce anybody. You know, grrr. I read Invitation to a Beheading and, in the forward, I got the feeling it really bothred Nabokov as well. Basically, he said the book was for those few reader who understood him and everybody else could fuck off. And that was a much later work.

So, I am very curious if anybody else has anything like that. A widely read piece that you feel that most people get completely wrong. And it just bothers you to no end.

Anybody else have that with anything?

IMP, LOL, near perfect! However, by whose standard is the bible misinterpreted? The bible isn't unlike an ad campaign and maybe the people who wrote it were after the lowest common denominator too.

 

[gauchecritic]

Depends almost entirely on how you read it.

If you think King Lear is about an old man losing his marbles or that Romeo and Juliette is about as demanding as West Side Story, then you've missed a hell of a lot of entertainment and thoughtful analysis on the 'human condition'.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

SHWENN

THAT was his genius, the ability to compress, congeal, and simplify complex experiences.

 

[off2bed]

The Bible.

The U.S. Constitution.

 

[CharleyH]

The U.S. Constitution.

Especially the right to bear arms.

 

[Munachi]

a friend of my parents once told me about someone analyzed one of his novels as her magister or phd thesis, comparing it to certain motives in anderson's stories etc. ... he said that thesis was a fascinating read for him, because all that was said in there was new to him... which didn't meant to him it was wrong...

 

[Shwenn]

a friend of my parents once told me about someone analyzed one of his novels as her magister or phd thesis, comparing it to certain motives in anderson's stories etc. ... he said that thesis was a fascinating read for him, because all that was said in there was new to him... which didn't meant to him it was wrong...

Presumably, this woman didn't claim your friend's work excused pedophilia.

Are you picking up what I'm putting down?

Sometimes, you really do want to just say, "Fuck it, that interpretation is wrong".

 

[Munachi]

yeah i understood your questions. sorry for not answering it. i guess this was just what it made me think of, and i wrote it even though it was off-topic.

 

[Shwenn]

yeah i understood your questions. sorry for not answering it. i guess this was just what it made me think of, and i wrote it even though it was off-topic.

It's totally cool.

It's just that a few people have made that point. And I agree.

But, dammit, sometimes it is just wrong.

 

[Munachi]

well i never really try to interprete things too much, so i can't think of anything that gets commonly misinterpreted but i understand...

except my own stories on which i sometimes get feedback that makes me just shake my head... there i am the author though... though i think i agree that if someone takes it like meaning the opposite of what the author means, it can be wrong indeed...

 

[Stella_Omega]

Presumably, this woman didn't claim your friend's work excused pedophilia.

Are you picking up what I'm putting down?

Sometimes, you really do want to just say, "Fuck it, that interpretation is wrong".

You're still on about Lolita? I am so with you there!

 

[DeeZire]

In high school English class, our teacher, a youngish women, decided to discuss Bob Dylan's 'Everybody Must Get Stoned', assuming 'stoned' was a metaphor for persecution. Several of the potheads in the class straightened her out. Funny thing is, I ran into her at a hippie party a year after high school, draped on the arm of one of the local pot dealers. Apparently, she got the message.

Dylan himself said he just wrote what came to mind, without any thought to hidden meanings or messages. I'm sure there are writers who toil over such things, (I've attempted it in songwriting) but, for the most part, I think it's just an exercise in mental gymnastics for the critics.

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

Then there's the BS about the Wizard of Oz being an allegory of gilded age populist politics.

http://weber.ucsd.edu/~jlbroz/oz.html

 

[WRJames]

Hell, I don't know what my stuff means. Why should I expect that others will?

Amen to that. I'm still trying to figure out where some of the themes in my stuff come from.