Unintended Meaning
Jan. 28th, 2008 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magedragonfireI always have a problem when trying to analyze and write about things. I've been writing fictional stories for over six years, I can write research papers about hard facts easily enough, and I don't even mind making conjectures about facts that aren't quite so hard, but are facts nonetheless. Take my linguistics classes, for example: I'm taking a writing course on linguistic argumentation this semester, dealing primarily in how to write papers regarding syntactic analysis. That's all fine and dandy. You do have to write out every small detail and treat your audience as if they're two year olds, but that's fine. There's hard data there, still, with a minimum of hand-waving, and it's no big deal to write about it.
I even like writing. People seem to be surprised when I mention this fact, as if writing is some scary beast that's just waiting to gobble them up in the space between hitting the period key and the space bar. Pft. I'm not a genius at it, that I know. I've got far too many 'bad habits', such as writing more or less the way I talk when I'm not thinking too hard about it (and then, of course, when I do think too hard about it, I sound all stilted and pompous, which is just as unawesome). And there's always things that I write that are better than others. My professors think I'm too simplistic, and people over the Internet-in-general gush about how detailed my stories are. Can't please everyone, I suppose. But I can write fairly well, all the same, and it's not a huge chore for me to do it.
Except, that is, when it comes to reading something, analyzing the bejeezus out of it, and spewing verbal diarrhea all over the page about it. There is a reason my major is in linguistics, and not English.
I hate searching for hidden meaning in someone else's words. I will gladly read novels of umpteen-dozen pages, provided that they're not awful. I'll plow through a thousand-page book in six hours, give or take. If it's to my tastes, I'll probably enjoy it. But I just don't like taking a book and nitpicking and ripping out what the author possibly meant by it. I'm not the one that wrote it, after all. How am I supposed to figure out what they really meant by it? Everyone in the English classes I've ever taken has always talked about underlying meaning this and symbolism that and so on – and all the while, I'm sitting, and listening, and wondering how far off the mark they are. What if the author meant absolutely nothing at all in their writing? What if they meant something completely different from how everyone else sees it? It doesn't seem fair, exactly, to claim meaning that isn't necessarily correct or there to begin with.
That's not to say I don't enjoy literary devices like metaphors or allusions at all. I just don't like having to search out the meaning of them if I can't see it by the time I'm done the book, or if the detail is so small and obscure that only the most anal of writers would ever think to even put something there. There's a fine line to be trod when writing about buried meaning – you can't just throw exposition in your reader's face, if you think they're not likely to get it and it's really important to you that they do (take, for example, a section of Snow Crash near the end of the book, about ten pages long, where all it does is reiterate "HEY, HERE, HAVE SOME INFORMATION THAT YOU ALREADY KNEW IF YOU WERE PAYING THE LEAST AMOUNT OF ATTENTION TO THE ENTIRE LAST 300 PAGES OF THE BOOK"). It makes the reader feel bored if they've gotten it, and if they haven't by that point, then they might as well just be reading it for a good story anyways. Then there's the novels you read in English classes, or a good amount of the poetry out there, where things are either so foggy and mysterious that it's almost impossible to figure out what the point of reading the thing in question was, or where the detail just doesn't matter to most people to begin with. I, personally, don't care too much about the significance of the colour of the sky when Mr Rainbird sustains his accident in Yellow Flowers in the Antipodean Room.
Better to just take what you get out of what you're reading, and leave it at that, I think, than analyze it beyond all measure searching for some tidbit of information that will only matter to academics.
I even like writing. People seem to be surprised when I mention this fact, as if writing is some scary beast that's just waiting to gobble them up in the space between hitting the period key and the space bar. Pft. I'm not a genius at it, that I know. I've got far too many 'bad habits', such as writing more or less the way I talk when I'm not thinking too hard about it (and then, of course, when I do think too hard about it, I sound all stilted and pompous, which is just as unawesome). And there's always things that I write that are better than others. My professors think I'm too simplistic, and people over the Internet-in-general gush about how detailed my stories are. Can't please everyone, I suppose. But I can write fairly well, all the same, and it's not a huge chore for me to do it.
Except, that is, when it comes to reading something, analyzing the bejeezus out of it, and spewing verbal diarrhea all over the page about it. There is a reason my major is in linguistics, and not English.
I hate searching for hidden meaning in someone else's words. I will gladly read novels of umpteen-dozen pages, provided that they're not awful. I'll plow through a thousand-page book in six hours, give or take. If it's to my tastes, I'll probably enjoy it. But I just don't like taking a book and nitpicking and ripping out what the author possibly meant by it. I'm not the one that wrote it, after all. How am I supposed to figure out what they really meant by it? Everyone in the English classes I've ever taken has always talked about underlying meaning this and symbolism that and so on – and all the while, I'm sitting, and listening, and wondering how far off the mark they are. What if the author meant absolutely nothing at all in their writing? What if they meant something completely different from how everyone else sees it? It doesn't seem fair, exactly, to claim meaning that isn't necessarily correct or there to begin with.
That's not to say I don't enjoy literary devices like metaphors or allusions at all. I just don't like having to search out the meaning of them if I can't see it by the time I'm done the book, or if the detail is so small and obscure that only the most anal of writers would ever think to even put something there. There's a fine line to be trod when writing about buried meaning – you can't just throw exposition in your reader's face, if you think they're not likely to get it and it's really important to you that they do (take, for example, a section of Snow Crash near the end of the book, about ten pages long, where all it does is reiterate "HEY, HERE, HAVE SOME INFORMATION THAT YOU ALREADY KNEW IF YOU WERE PAYING THE LEAST AMOUNT OF ATTENTION TO THE ENTIRE LAST 300 PAGES OF THE BOOK"). It makes the reader feel bored if they've gotten it, and if they haven't by that point, then they might as well just be reading it for a good story anyways. Then there's the novels you read in English classes, or a good amount of the poetry out there, where things are either so foggy and mysterious that it's almost impossible to figure out what the point of reading the thing in question was, or where the detail just doesn't matter to most people to begin with. I, personally, don't care too much about the significance of the colour of the sky when Mr Rainbird sustains his accident in Yellow Flowers in the Antipodean Room.
Better to just take what you get out of what you're reading, and leave it at that, I think, than analyze it beyond all measure searching for some tidbit of information that will only matter to academics.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-29 05:30 am (UTC)I know when I write, it's just to tell a story. So trying to find the hidden meaning in other people's writing always makes me feel like I'm reading more into it than I should be. Especially with things like, say, Harry Potter or The Hobbit, where they are meant to be adventure stories.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-29 06:37 am (UTC)I mean, it's not always bad. Narnia or His Dark Materials, for instance (even though they're like the antithesis of each other). When I was little, Narnia was a cool storybook with talking lions and fauns (right up until Susan grew up, anyways, and then it wasn't so cool any more). It wasn't until later that I clued in to what it was actually talking about, but that was probably just as well.
HDM I read right around the time when I was questioning the whole religion business anyways, so it was a little easier for me to see what it was talking about, but the symbolism still wasn't rampant and awful. I still don't get where all of these "HOMG THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A BOOK ABOUT KILLING GOD AND SAYING THAT CHRISTIANITY/CATHOLICISM IS BAD" viewpoints are coming from. It's definitely anti-organized religion, but not necessarily anti-Christian.
But yeah, I totally understand about the writing stories business. If I insert a little extra meaning into something I write, I don't really care if anyone else gets it or not. Trying to invent or find some meaning where there isn't is just annoying.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-30 05:39 am (UTC)In the western world, as multicultural as we're getting, "organized religion" and "Christianity" are pretty much synonyms. Now we're all multicultural, so instead it means "Abrahamaic religions" (which is Islam, Judaism and *gasp* Christianity).
It's the same thing behind the Church of Satan calling themselves that when they don't believe in Satan, Christianity, or any quasi-deific entity whatsoever. They chose the name because they stand for the opposite of common cultural values, and in the western world, that means Christianity. It's a symbol and cultural reference, not a literal.
When you look at the church in HDM, it's completely built on the Catholic (which is Christian) Church, it's organization, structures, practices, beliefs and general whackjobbery (preemptive penance is a great example).
It doesn't matter that he's not attaching Christianity directly. It APPEARS he is, because he's attacking a type of belief structure (Authority-based, worshipful, obedient) which happens to match Christianity.
It's like I say "This game is about going through hallways collecting dots" and you go "Oh, you mean Pac-Man."
Doesn't matter how much I say "No, Pac-Man EATS dots in a maze, this game you collect them in halls." If it looks like Pac-Man, plays like Pac-Man and quacks like a duck, people will see it as Quack-Man.
And yes, the book blatantly is about killing god. That's what Asriel's stated purpose was pretty much from the start, and it was (accidentally plus deliberately) accomplished in the end.
Once you kill someone, they no longer can control or direct you. This was the point... kill the Authority, in order for man to live under man's own authority. Getting away from the Lord-on-High hierarchy, and forming a republic, where all are equals and lords are no longer wanted nor needed.
God is the ultimate Lord, and any true non-hierarchical republic cannot exist while any people consider themselves beneath another being, even an invisible cloud-riding senile old fogey of an other being. Until you remove the Authority, you cannot have The Republic.
So yes, it's quite obviously about killing god and christianity is bad. But those are (obvious) symbols for religion as a whole, and the evil things people will do when they believe that it's actually "good", according to religion.