I am always irked when I hear someone talking about the 'hidden meaning' in a piece of literature. The idea that a writer would want someone to take their work and pull it into small pieces to be analyze makes me shake my head in disgust. If someone were to come up to me and ask me what the hidden meaning behind a piece of my own writing was I would just laugh in their faces and refuse to justify them with an answer.
One of my favorite book series is Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling, and there are a ton of different things she wants to get across to people, but many of the readers are not happy with finding the same meaning as everyone else. I have heard theories that the stories are about a mentally ill child, that Harry is only dreaming, etc. The fact that they are trying so hard to pump a meaning out of a story about a normal turned wizard is beyond irritating. The meaning in something is whatever the reader takes away from it, and everyone will connect to something different from a piece.
What makes me even more angry than the people who strip a work bare looking for a meaning is teachers who insist that a piece only contains one meaning. I have been in classrooms where the teacher made the class agonize over what meaning was the correct one. It was like trying to find a secret message and made me less likely to turn in my homework since I didn't want to disect someone's work just to find a meaning that would not be there.
A pox on the person who coined the idea of the 'hidden meaning'.
Some pieces have parts where we are meant to look deeper. Symbolism can be surface or it can be much deeper in the text. In The Awakening, Edna Pontellier argues with her husband over dinner and they never really have a complete meal together. While eating together, we are taking part in communion and in The Awakening, we are meant to recognize that they do not have communion together which is symbolic of a healthy relationship. While this might not be a "hidden meaning," it is a symbolic event that is connected to reality. It is there. It's written. It's not hiding anywhere, but the meaning sometimes isn't always spelled out. Instead of writing, "Edna and her husband were having marital issues," instead the author writes, "Edna's husband usually leaves the table and never finishes his food."
ReplyDelete