5th October 2013 9:00
By Tommo Fowler
In this world, not much is as it seems. Think about your day-to-day life: often, we say something without meaning it – even if that deception is with the very best of intentions. For instance, by looking at things other than the literal meaning of the words, we can tell that someone who says “I’m fine” might not be. Their body language, vocal tone and facial expression are all key indicators as to whether there’s a deeper meaning concealed behind what they’ve said. When it comes to literature, though, we don’t have that contextual information from the physical world, so must rely on our powers of interpretation.
Sometimes, an author will be subtle in the influence they exert over your understanding of their work. The formatting of poetry can often give an insight into what the poet is hoping to achieve. Take the beginning of the second stanza of ‘Letter to Husband’ by Mary Berry, for instance:
“Husband – Speech is a dark stain spreading
I have no telephone No one will give me a telephone
I lost your voice in dark places it is written
over and over that please come.”
Try reading this section aloud, pausing whenever there’s a gap. I imagine that the horizontal spacing which breaks up these short phrases gives your reading of the poem a breathlessness which might well suggest a disoriented, incoherent thought-pattern. Certainly, “please come” doesn’t make sense following directly on from “it is written over and over that”, so we might conclude that the thoughts of the character saying these words are becoming more and more overcome by the simple desire to see her husband again. The sentence ends, therefore, once this overriding thought has been expressed.
Berry doesn’t explicitly state that this is what’s happening, but by weaving the structure we’ve just discussed around images like “a dark stain spreading” (calling to mind, perhaps, blood on a carpet) and “dark places”, she achieves a fraught, sinister and out-of-control feeling in the poem which enables us to make certain assertions about the character and situation. Perhaps the husband has died (perhaps the character killed him!), or perhaps he just isn’t around. Even taking the whole poem into account (and I encourage you to read it), it’s difficult to tell definitively. What is certain, however, is that three people will interpret this poem in three different ways, and have three different emotional reactions to it. Presumably, the lack of specific pointers and style of writing mean that Berry intended her poem to have this effect, and the amount of other poets utilising similar levels of ambiguity in their work suggests that we are absolutely right to read our own meaning into the text.
Something you may be more familiar with, depending on your background, is a type of story known as a parable. These actually rely upon a personal interpretation from those who hear (or read) them. A fairly well-known man named Jesus of Nazareth taught extensively in parables, making sure that his followers were thinking carefully about his words. If you have to go away and think about the meaning of something, it’s far more likely that you’ll take something useful from the experience than if you were just given a bit of information or wisdom. Here’s an example from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus describes the various reactions of (potential) believers to his proclamations about the Kingdom of Heaven:
“A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” (13:3-8)
The disciples don’t feel they know exactly what Jesus means, so he tells them after they’ve had a chance to contemplate his words. Before he does so, however, he reassures them: “blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” (13:16-17)
Such methods of provoking thought are less common now, but the community in Jesus’ time were well used to it, and would have discerned the intended meaning far more easily than most people would today, Ultimately, the ease of interpreting texts and the layers of meaning you can uncover are all increased by practice. This is why English teachers have so much to say about something which seems so inconsequential – they know what they’re looking for.
It’s the same with art – particularly more modern works. Where I see a random mass of lines, shapes and colours, a seasoned art critic will discern a phenomenally intelligent rumination on the nature of human sexuality. Or something. If I became used to the artistic ‘languages’ being used by artists of the past few decades, though, I’d be far better at seeing these things for myself; I’d know what experiments were being done with form, what events or trends in the world were cause for concern, what artistic, philosophical or political movements were being overthrown, etc., and all of those things would inform my interpretation of what exactly Jackson Pollock was up to. But even if someone else had exactly the same knowledge, we’d still see two very different things in one of Pollock’s works – all of which raises the question, “Does anything have intrinsic meaning, or is its meaning only ever applied externally by the reader/viewer?” In other words, does a book, or artwork mean something in and of itself – something which will never change, no matter who interacts with it and when – or does it necessarily change depending upon the individual person reading or looking at it?
In the early 20th Century, it was the case that things had unalterable objective meanings. A piece of literature meant exactly what its author intended it to mean, as did any other artistic endeavour. The meaning and value of everything, therefore, was understood to be decided by whoever made it. About fifty years ago, however, people started moving away from this view. A new intellectual movement known as postmodernism developed, and this – among many other things – held that nothing had its own unchangeable meaning. For the postmodernists, the individual (made up every gene in their body and every social experience in their life) was key. With this new understanding, hermeneutics (the study of interpretation) entered an entirely new phase. For one of the most influential philosophers of hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer, language has no meaning on its own. We can see how true this is by thinking about what happens when we hear a foreign language: the sounds are completely meaningless to us, but mean something specific to a native speaker. With English, we probably understand the words, but may’ve learned them in different contexts and so have different reactions to them. Personally, I like the word ‘capricious’, which puts me in mind of a mischievous disposition (because I learned it from a play I did in GCSE Drama); when I’ve used it, people often think it’s unusual and therefore impressive/frightening, and so view me personally in a new way. The word is the same; its effect is different. Gadamer therefore seems to be absolutely right when he says that “language has no independent life apart from the world that comes to language within it”.
Lastly, it’s worth thinking about the idea of ‘fact’. Newspapers, if they are true to their purpose, act to inform rather than influence. In some newspapers (usually ‘red-top’ tabloids), you’ll find adjectives like “disgraceful” or “shameful” which tell you how you should be feeling about the topic of the article, and it’s useful to be sensitive to these subliminal prompts towards a moral stance. Even here, I’m trying to give an unbiased view of such reporting, but you’ll notice in my words a certain prejudice against it (‘subliminal’, for instance, is a word which often carries negative connotations). Most newspapers, however, will usually only report events, yet you still determine the external significance of these events. If a headline, for instance, says simply that “BADGERS ARE TO BE CULLED”, you have nothing but a statement of incontrovertible fact. Badgers will indeed, according to the Government’s plans, be culled. Some people will read this headline and think “This is awful!”, whereas some will react positively, thinking “Good riddance – there’re too many of the disease-ridden animals anyway!”. Despite the text having been constructed solely to provide information without suggesting any interpretation, we still – completely legitimately – apply further significance and layers of meaning to it.
So what does all this mean? Well, for me it means that I was wrong to think my English teachers were just trying to show off or make my life difficult when they taught me about the religious allegory in Lord of the Flies; it means that my understanding of something will be different to yours, and – crucially – that we will both be absolutely right. Of course a text means what it says, but it also means a whole lot of other things which make your personal reading richer, more informative, or more emotionally affective – and that’s why we bother studying it.