Roots to branches · 12:48am May 9th, 2016
Bookplayer wrote an essay called "Darling, you know better than to trust a pack of cards" which you should all go read (bonus: cool song). It's an eloquent and passionate exercise in extended metaphor and I like it enormously--not least because it's the sort of thing I try to write myself. Her argument is that fantasy literature functions like Tarot in that it presents you with symbols, with archetypes, that can be interpreted in a variety of ways according to your particular psychological needs. Fantasy literature, thus understood, is a thing empowered by the reader.
I can ride along with that argument for a pretty fair distance. There's literary merit in metaphor that can be interpreted in more than one way, and popular merit in work that encourages readers to invest themselves in it psychologically (which can lead to readers investing themselves in it financially. That's important if you have a publisher, i.e., someone who is using other peoples' money to try and get you read).
The point where I step off, though, is right here:
And in spite of what it might indicate in the texts, there are no wrong answers to these questions.
Now, eloquence needs license to use hyperbole, otherwise you end up with bureaucratic prose and no one wants to read that unless they're paid to (and even then...). So I'm not about to take that literally. But plenty of people do. They believe that there is no one correct text and that therefore the author's intent means nothing. In other words, he or she may as well be shuffling a deck of tropes, randomly dealing them out for us to make sense of.
And I think that's wrong: believe you may that all fantasy tropes are realizations of some archetype, yet the author does not deal them out randomly like the Tarot reader her deck but in a specific order and association that he or she chooses. Likewise those tropes do not come in a preprinted package but are depicted by the author. It is as if a tarot dealer illustrated their own cards and then picked exactly which ones to lay down in front of you in which order. Then you proceed with your reading.
Good grief.
In evidence of the importance of authorial intent and the reality of the true text, let me submit Exhibit A: Narnia.
C.S. Lewis wrote the Narnia series as explicit Christian allegory. We have his own word for that but let's discount it because we're talking about the reader's interpretation here. Some readers love the Narnia series because it's Christian allegory. Other has hate it for exactly that reason. But despite their opinions differing so much and so violently they both agree that it's Christian allegory. And they would both scoff at people who claim--as you may be sure some do--that the Narnia series is the work of Satan because God did not intend animals to talk.
There is such a thing as authorial intent. It is discernible to the reader. And so there are wrong answers.
I would go further and say that intent can be discernible even if we don't have the author's word--or so much as the author's name. In Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics Tolkien made a case for the authorial intent of the Beowulf poet, and made so good a case that he overturned critical thinking about the poem.
But...but...here we draw near to a species of fantasy literature that is in fact like a randomly-dealt hand of cards, one in which authorial intent is not so much indiscernible as absent. It is the literature of myth. And its interpretation has no wrong answers--but people have gotten many really, really bad ones.
Myth has no one author, nor is it written with intent. It was created by illiterates and transmitted by word of mouth, getting amended, emended, abbreviated and farced out in the ordinary way of oral tradition. At some point it was written down, usually in questionable form by even more questionable scribes. Then it was translated, mistranslated, misinterpreted for propaganda purposes as well as more innocently, and finally popularized as mass entertainment.
What? No, we've just about gotten up to classical Greece here. We're not even close to Disney.
My point is that by the time it got to us, myth has passed through so many hands and been taken so far out of its original context, that it may as well be randomly-generated and interpreted at will. Which is exactly what people do.
With widely varying results. Exhibit B: the Volsungs Saga.
This work, the earliest legends of the Germanic peoples, fascinated the West at the dawn of the 20th century. And it profoundly influenced two men, both Catholics, both of humble origins, who went on to become renowned scholars, Doctors of Philosophy from some of the most prestigious universities in Europe. Each of them made that myth the basis of his life's work, which work in both their cases would go on to have profound effects upon Western culture.
One was J.R.R. Tolkien. The other was Josef Goebbels.
Tolkien, as an Oxford Don and author, used the Volsungs Saga as the basis for a re-examination of early Germanic literture, and for The Lord of the Rings. Goebbels, as Hitler's Reichsminister für Propaganda, used it as the rationale for the blitzkrieg and the Holocaust.
It's sobering to think that both of them loved that very same anarchic, amoral saga. And that both had plenty of education to guide their thinking on it. And that both came to such very different conclusions.
Darling, you know better than to trust a pack of cards...
Is this a metaphor for fantasy's various grimoirs and Necronomicons, the books that make their readers into monsters? Possibly. It could be made to bear that freight if you'd a mind to. But in the end, books--stories, legends, myths--are only words. The monster-making is something we do all on our own.
Isn't that a relief.
You are correct, but I have nothing witty to add. The wit in this comment is therefore an exercise left to the reader.
On Exhibit A, I'm going to have to double down here. Yes, the author lays out their symbols carefully, with intent. C.S.Lewis was indeed writing Christian allegory, and we can all see that.
However, I've talked to people who read Narnia as children and didn't realize that it was allegory until they were adults. That's probably not that uncommon, even-- Narnia is frequently marketed towards children, who aren't really looking for literary stylistic choices, and these days might not even have been to church.
To them, Aslan can be just as strong a symbol, but he's not going to be the symbol that Lewis intended. And that's a perfectly valid way of reading the story. You can also read the story and disagree with the allegory, and see Aslan as a symbol of.. I don't know, religious conformity. And that's a valid way of interpreting that symbol as well.
My point was that within a story, the symbols and metaphors that fantasy uses will obviously play out in terms of authorial intention, and as a story, textually, that's perfectly valid to engage with. But on a deeper, subtextual level, you can find the way the author used the symbol to be wrong (like my JK Rowling/Slytherin example in the post) or even not understand what the author was representing (like my people-who-read-Narnia-as-children example above) and the symbols can still come through and mean something to you.
Then, on top of that, if you don't like Lewis' symbolic look at religion, you can go over to Terry Pratchett's Small Gods and read about a very different Christ figure. Once again, there's not "right" one, even if Lewis' text says there is.
As to Exhibit B, I'll grant you that. Whether there's understood and realized authorial intent or not, the symbols can lead to ethically wrong (or just psychologically unhealthy) answers in interpretation. But, as you point out, that's up to the person deciding how to interpret them.
Or, as someone else said about picking and interpreting a symbol:
This is great, and I hadn't thought of it. Yes, there are wrong interpretations of stories by Authors; yes, I like your idea that there are no wrong interpretations of myth. This quote stunned me for a moment:
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You're refuting yourself. You were arguing that there's no one right interpretation of Lewis' Aslan. That would mean there's no need to read Small Gods; you can find Pratchett's Christ in Lewis' Narnia.
If you can't find Pratchett's gods in Lewis' Narnia, then some interpretations are wrong.
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That doesn't follow. Obviously some readings are more natural, and might be right on a textual level. But on a personal level, if you do, somehow, find Pratchett's gods in Narnia, that's not wrong. Strange and unlikely, but not wrong.
It's much easier to find them in Pratchett, of course.
So if you interpret the symbols for your personal use, and the interpretations you came to are something you don't like or find useful or interesting, you go looking for other symbols. That doesn't mean you interpreted the original symbols in a way that's "right" or "wrong," just that what you ended up with didn't meet your needs.
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I have to side with Bad Horse and Good Horse on this one. I agree with some of what you're saying, but textual interpretation isn't as loose as you're painting it. The main reason you needed to invoke children reading Narnia for your alternate view is that children don't have the same capacity to understand allegory that adults do, so they might be confused by the story or miss relevant details.
Jewel (my fiance) and I have both had the experience of reading the Narnia books as children, enjoying them for the most part, then re-reading them as adults and finding them absolutely atrocious. Lewis tried to turn a bad story into a good story, and in doing so he ended up with a still-bad story that makes even less sense. There is absolutely no reason for Aslan's resurrection in the book, period. It makes no sense whatsoever. It's a deus ex that Lewis barely even tries to explain. This really hit me hard when I watched the movie, the explanation was so trite it ripped me out of the narrative. I felt embarrassed to be in the theater.
The idea of Aslan sacrificing himself to save a child makes very little sense to begin with as he's the general of an army where thousands of people are dying. It makes less sense that the Queen would meet with him in his encampment without being attacked. But then the lion came back to life because "he could read the stone runes on the table and knew he would come back to life"? Seriously? So his magic power is literacy? Better still, he didn't really sacrifice himself since he already knew he wasn't going to die!
These are serious flaws with Narnia as a story, and anypony old enough to understand allegory can see it. The only way the story makes any reasonable sense is if you know the specific allegory it's referring to, and even then it's a stretch because the allegory doesn't hold up on its own. I honestly don't think you can interpret Narnia as anything but Jesuscat and have it be a reasonable story. This is a case where there is a correct interpretation because it's the only one that makes any sense. Other works of literature share this characteristic, but usually in a less blatant fashion.
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I think you're missing my point about textual vs personal subtextual interpretation. As stated in the blog post TheJediMasterEd was referring to, the point of subtextual symbols is the way you, personally make sense of something that doesn't translate directly to your external reality. Jesuscat makes as much sense as drawing the 2 of Cups when you're doing a tarot spread about your finances, but giving your brain something with questionable context is sometimes just what you need.
You seem to be talking about it as a story, and as I've said repeatedly, you're correct there. But that's not what I was talking about.
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Thank you: that distinction wasn't quite clear to me and it's important.
Who'd've thought you'd stir up such a hornet's nest with the phrase "there are no wrong answers?" It's almost as if you were talking to a bunch of...a bunch of nerds, or something.
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You're...you're one of those guys who thinks Gandalf should've just gotten Gwahir to fly over Mordor and drop the One Ring into the fires of Mt. Doom, am I right?
Downside; then you wouldn't have had a story.
Upside: it would've sounded a lot like this--
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"That's not wrong" is not a refutation of the assertion that something is wrong. That's because reading doesn't take place in a world of binary logic. When you say "That's not wrong", you're operating in a non-binary paradigm. It's shorthand for, "The Pratchett interpretation has some tiny degree of legitimacy, or has a tiny probability of being an interesting interpretation rather than just reader stupidity". But then when you twist it around to say "The claim that some interpretations are wrong is wrong", you're jumping back into binary world. You can't do that. If "all interpretations are okay" isn't wrong, neither is "some interpretations are wrong", because the claim that all interpretations can be valid relies on rejecting binary logic and the law of the excluded middle.
In real life, a large percentage of alternate interpretations I get from readers of my stories are just factually dead wrong. They are readers overlooking things in the text, like getting two characters confused, or forgetting that somebody died in chapter 5, or not knowing the meaning of an obscure word, or just not reading the part of the story with the critical information. Those are just wrong. If somebody tries to read Grendel without knowing Beowulf, I think it's correct to call whatever interpretation they come up with "wrong".
"Wrong" doesn't mean what you're pretending it means. This is not math. "Wrong" means something like "a lazy interpretation that makes a story boring" or "an interpretation that you would gladly give up in favor of another one." Accidental interpretations usually make stories boring. You should know this from being in the write-offs. Think of all the "wrong" interpretations of stories you've seen in comments, where the author later said, "No, that was not what that meant." Usually, the author's version is more interesting. Often we can blame the failure to communicate on the author, but often any reasonable jury would rule otherwise.
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(Apparently, 1970's Bill Murray had a cameo in a 1950's Hitchcock movie. The man was a genius.)
3933643 We are talking about two different things. You are talking about interpreting a story, I'm talking about the private use of a symbol in your personal "mythology." (Or, put another way, as it applies to your understanding of yourself and how you interpret it as applying to the real world.)
I totally agree with you on interpreting a story. I totally disagree with you on interpreting a symbol for your personal use.
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Um...as the author of the words in contention, I'm not sure where to go from here.
You guys are good folks and should be friends. And I'm thinking, if my words make you angry with one another, I'll just delete them. Nothing I have to say is that important.
This isn't me NOBLY SACRIFICING MY PRICELESS WORDS FOR YOUR BENEFIT!1!!! I know I'll write something else just as good next week, if not tomorrow. This is just me not wanting to be the cause of trouble between nice people.
3933723 I'm not mad, sorry If I came off that way. I got a new tablet, so my writing is slightly less natural to start with. (Touchscreens. Ugh.) I just think there was a misunderstanding at the start, but I hope it's straightened out now, and if folks had further questions or comments that would be fine with me.
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Okay, no problem.
I guess I should give people more credit about knowing their limits, but when I'm the one handing out drinks, so to speak...
3933706 I don't know if I have an opinion on interpreting a symbol for your personal use.
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That can be rationalized. There were more winged Nazgul than great eagles, and they were far more powerful. Or, more likely, the eagles would have stolen the ring because being sapient makes them corruptable. Hobbits were used as unlikely heroes specifically because they were childlike in how innocently they viewed the world around them. They were the only creatures who stood a chance of not being corrupted, and Gandalf expected Frodo to be corrupted (Sam was intended to be there to throw him, or them both, into the volcano).
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Er, and I'm loopy from post-surgery mental ouchies so I've completely been pulled into the wrong argument. Aslan's resurrection makes no sense, period. This has nothing to do with
Black peopleorcs andsaintsWizards. Catreturn isn't a part of the narrative I can forgive because it's the freaking climax of the entire tale.