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Comment on I don't care much for symbolism in ~creative
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Comment on How did you learn to read? in ~humanities.languages
Wallcroft LinkWhen i was in first year of elementary school, we learned individual letters, first the sound, then writing them a whole bunch as an exercise. I've had some previous experience with just single...When i was in first year of elementary school, we learned individual letters, first the sound, then writing them a whole bunch as an exercise. I've had some previous experience with just single characters too, from building blocks with letters on them and whatnot, so that part was pretty easy for me, but i couldn't grasp the concept of actually reading full words. Unusually vivid memory for me from that part of childhood is sitting in the living room for a really long time before my parents understood what i was struggling with and started being like "Okay, can you read this character? What about this one? And this? Okay, now what if you read them all together quickly?" and then it finally clicked for me. First language has an ortography that very strongly follows pronunciation, so there wasn't much to learn after that.
I see both the sentiment you share in your post and the opposite of it fairly frequently online, especially lately. "it's not that deep" vs "it IS that deep" is a really weird discussion to me, because to me, analyzing literature is something you do purely for yourself, as a way of enjoying said piece of work.
I think the issue you're describing is prescriptivism - the idea that a work has any "correct" way to enjoy it. Someone else mentioned lit classes in school, and I had the same experience of having to learn a work's well defined themes and meaning, all without having to put much thought into it myself. This issue was only accentuated when we had to go through a huge curriculum in a very limited amount of time, so we'd only actually have to read a select few books/novels, only learning a bit of history/context for the rest before diving into themes, symbolism etc. Now that i read (and occasionally analyze) what i want at my own pace, i find it really enjoyable and rewarding.
I don't write myself, but i would think this is a fairly universal experience among authors. If your story leaves any room for interpretation at all, you'll have people interpreting your work in a way that you personally didn't intend. imo this is a great thing, there are a lot of stories from a completely different situation or time period that i can still personally relate to, even though the direct, word for word situation would never happen to me or anyone i knew.
In the same vein, i don't think what the author intended when writing the book matters much at all. Every throwaway line or bit of scene setting you add can mean a lot to someone reading the book, and telling them that the curtains ARE just blue, or that the position of a doorknob is just a bit of whimsical set dressing, is the different side of the same coin as saying that you HAVE to hyper-scrutinize a book or you're a fake fan, shallow, a tourist, or what have you.
Personally, i like symbolism, similes, metaphors etc. a lot, i think a story straight up trying to tell you what its themes are and how you should read it is really lame.