Is possible to misinterpret a story?

I know Death OF the Author and True art is Incomprehensible are annoying tropes but is it possible to miss the point of a story or misinterpret the story's themes?

Yes. Assuming deliberate symbolism by misunderstanding the things you believe are being symbolised, for example.

Compare Applicability.

edited 28th Oct '14 2:06:41 PM by Noaqiyeum

That's not having a "wrong" interpretation though, it's just being wrong about it being intended.

No, it is not possible to have a wrong answer; but just because everything is possible does not mean everything is equally valid.

The more supporting detail and evidence you can marshal for your answer the more convincing it will be. No answer is wrong (or right), but some are less likely to be right than others.

edited 28th Oct '14 4:03:56 PM by Night

Of course, happens all the time, Misaimed Fandom has many examples, and you don't even have to be dead.

I recall a story I read on a trope page, (Can't find it now for the life of me.) where Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 went on some campus tours to talk about the book and the students started arguing with him about the intended message of the book. He's the author, the intended message is whatever he says it is, so he eventually walked out.

The assumption there being that an author is totally control of their biases and other subconscious issues, like no human ever has been or will be.

In other words, you know, an author can be wrong about such things.

Irrelevant. The intended message is determined by the author's conscious mind, not their subconscious. Even supposing the subconsciousness plays a role, any random reader would not have better knowledge of the author's mind to overrule the author himself on what the intended message is. An exception might be made for readers who have a degree in psychology.

Now how well the author carries out their intended message in their work will depend in things like biases and issues and such.

edited 28th Oct '14 4:38:14 PM by shiro_okami

I'm reminded of the story where an anthropologist was telling Hamlet to the Tiv people in West Africa, after being told by her friend that the works of Shakespeare were universal. After constant interruptions from her audience, the anthropologist was told by the tribal elders that she clearly didn't understand the story she was telling, and they set about rectifying her.

To make a long story short, the Tiv arrived to a lot of different conclusions about the story based on their own cultural perspective. You'd be surprised how much of Hamlet gets twisted when your audience has no concept of ghosts, thinks Claudius was perfectly right to marry Gertrude as soon her husband died, and interpreted Hamlet's seeming madness as one of the other characters having bewitched him.

I just finished reading "How To Read Literature Like A Professor" and based on that, there may be no right answers but there are some extremely clever ones.

Slysheen - I'm assuming that's the recurring one where everyone else argues it's about censorship and Bradbury insists it's only true for self-censorship?

That's actually a really good example here - Fahrenheit 451 is pretty explicit about the fact that the changes to the fire department originated in social and market pressures against works that might be offensive, with increasingly broad definitions of offensiveness, before it became a government policy. It's known almost entirely for being a warning against the anti-intellectualism of dictatorships instead.

"Look, children. SYMBOLISM!" type lit teaching plays a big part in such things. This is the reason the trope "What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?" exists. Teacher swears up and down that the blue curtains mean the character is depressed, while the author just liked blue curtains.

A lot of my lit ends up being misinterpreted. When I'm not being symbolic, they see a deeper meaning, and vice versa.

You're arguing that the author is a completely rational and truthful actor, and can be entirely sure of their own motivations. This is manifestly untrue; no human ever born has been such a thing.

The author means to put on the page all that they have put on the page, and if there is a gap between their stated intents and their output, that does not mean that they did not intend that gap; it means that their stated intent is not what they actually meant to do. After all, they wrote what is on the page and cannot escape responsibility for it. If they truly meant something else, they would have written something else. They may even be aware of the fact they are lying when that gap emerges. Or they may not. Regardless, your argument founders on even the most basic examination.

edited 28th Oct '14 11:42:09 PM by Night

Now now, we're all friends here.

What I meant by my example was that people can have very different takes on even the most allegedly clear subjects so I don't think there's really a "right" or "wrong" way to interpret a story, the experience is mostly the reader's to make of what they will. Cultural differences, personal values, beliefs, they all influence how we interact with the world so two people can have drastically different conclusions on the same story.

Rationality and surety of their own motivations is irrelevant. Any random reader would not know the author's motivations better then themselves. Truthfulness actually is valid, but that would involve calling the author a liar.

Your statement contradicts itself. Intent is what someone means, just not always communicated well. In some cases, it does mean that the author did not intend that gap.

This implies that what is written has an explicit meaning and is thus not open to interpretation. In that case, discussion on any sort of meaning is pointless anyways. What I am talking about is more in reference to implicit meaning and thus interpretable rather than interpretless.

edited 29th Oct '14 4:31:04 PM by shiro_okami

And of course there are works of satire where the written message is heavily Played for Laughs and completely opposite the intended one.

Bear in mind that once an author releases a work to the public, it doesn't really belong to them anymore. Any member of the audience is justified in claiming that a particular reading of that work is meaningful to them, regardless of the author's own interpretation of it. Everyone's subjective impressions are true, to them.

This is true. The whole issue of the relevance of the voice of the author in decoding his work becomes more and more relevant depending on how much the author is willing to chime in to "explain" the work or if it is even possible to ask the author (he is anonymous or literally dead, in which case surviving meta-texts about the work also matter). It is essentially also an issue of your approach to discussing art. Seeing the work as a manifestation of the authors psychology is in some cases maybe valid. Indeed in visual art I've heard of diagnoses of psychological conditions being based on the work of the author. In many cases, though, this is too reductionist, based on unfounded opinions about the author, guesswork, or simply impossible due to the lack of information about the author. This also does not take into account the relationship between the public and the work, which may be grossly different, especially if the work has survived for a long time and is constantly re-interpreted in a new cultural context. Us and the author both are products of our own unique cultural environment.

In such cases it makes much more sense to simply look at the work itself and base all analysis on what is inherently in the work. This gave rise to the structuralist approach to analyzing texts, which corresponds with the death of the author. This is a powerful tool, since we are not constrained by the opinions of the author and also we are going by what is actually there in the work, empirically. Naturally explanations and interpretations will vary, but they are not completely relative, since there are ones which are more based on the inherent qualities of the work. Structuralist approach is also pretty reductionistic though, so a balance between that and viewing the cultural context that the work is generated in and in which it interacts with an audience is also very important.

This has to do with analysis more than interpretation, but I guess the two share some common ground. Interpretation is a personal analysis and it too probably comes about in a similar curve. Trying to figure out an authors personal message, trying to see what is actually "there" in the text and also seeing what others think about the work.

I have to also bring out an important pair of concepts proposed by Umberto Eco, sort of as an addendum to the death of the author. He speaks of "implicit" and "explicit" author. In most cases, through the text we only have access to the first of these: we construct the author and his intentions through the text. We envision the one abstract person who made the art with a certain message, we decode the text as his message and intent. He is, however, different from the actual physical person, the explicit author.

edited 30th Oct '14 9:27:13 AM by Yachar

All story interpretations are equal, but there are some more equal than others

Some are more competent than others.

Just writing tongue in cheek there. I do not mean to be taken seriously with such a silly quote.

All of this is actually inspiring but could you still enojy a story even if you don't understand all the references?

Sure. Otherwise nobody would enjoy T. S. Eliot. :P

Or a Tarantino movie.

Heh, very true. Most of the time references work simply as Genius Bonus: you can enjoy a work without knowing the stuff it references, but when you do know them, you will enjoy the work even more.

If on the other hand the whole point of the work is to comment other works or if it's a pastiche that imitates the style of other artists, then there is the possibility that you won't be able to enjoy it. For example, if you've never seen a single horror movie, The Cabin in the Woods will probably just look like a not very scary scary movie.

I had this problem with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror the first time I saw it. I just couldn't grasp the camp value of the movie. Now that I've seen more movies like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series I'd imagine the movie would be a lot more enjoyable experience.

edited 31st Oct '14 5:50:01 AM by Paradisesnake