Why I dislike interpretation

[Foxaèr]

I remember in school we always had to read classic literature and give our opinions on what we read. The teacher would tell us what experts had interpreted in relation to the literature.

I was just doing some dishes and a baby roach crossed the counter top. I killed it.

It reminded me of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

Maybe why he wrote what he really did was because he killed a roach in his own home and thought to himself, "That creature had a family and I just killed it."

Anyone who has read the work in question will understand.

[Rev. Rye]

Which is odd, considering that the only time the story hints at his species (at least in the original German), it’s a cleaning lady calling him a dung beetle. The word for cockroach (Kakerlake) is never used. Unless there’s a different word used in Prague German that I’m not finding.

[Sal]

I have not read that.

Seems to me that interpretation is inescapable if ya want a deeper understanding of pretty much any literary matter, I mean isn't that the case with pretty much any subject too?

[zebo-the-fat]

It always bugged me, at school they would ask "Why did that character do that?" I always thought, it's just a story, he did it because the author wrote it that way!
Maybe that's why I failed the exam!

[Rev. Rye]

Not going to lie, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is one of my favourite novels, and the biggest reason it is so is because of what happens once you read between the lines and realise that Humbert is completely full of shit and is bending over backwards to justify his abhorrent desires. Don't blame me, I have a disease that makes me want to fuck little girls! Besides, it's perfectly normal to want to fuck little girls; Petrarch became enamoured of Laura when she was 13 (note: one of the key points in my figuring it out is that this is flat-out wrong and Humbert, as a lit professor specialising in European poetry, should probably know this). And who said anything about little girls? I'm only attracted to nymphets! There's a difference, even if it does exist only in my own head! Hell, Lolita seduced me! And yet he still plays the reader like a fiddle.

Sadly, this is probably why neither of the two film adaptations really succeeded in capturing the essence of the book, even if one was directed by Stanley Fucking Kubrick, and the other didn't have the Hays Office to dilute the content, because to pull that off, you'd probably need to change the book's structure pretty radically, probably making it more akin to Fight Club or Election, because there's no moment of realisation like in the former and no room for alternate perspectives like in the latter.

[Ranjr]

Ishmael and Queequeg represent love between men of diverse cultures.  The white whale is your mom.

[brewer]

I remember in school we always had to read classic literature and give our opinions on what we read. The teacher would tell us what experts had interpreted in relation to the literature.

I was just doing some dishes and a baby roach crossed the counter top. I killed it.

It reminded me of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

Maybe why he wrote what he really did was because he killed a roach in his own home and thought to himself, "That creature had a family and I just killed it."

Anyone who has read the work in question will understand.

I think your responses should always be thru interpretive dance.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I remember in school we always had to read classic literature and give our opinions on what we read. The teacher would tell us what experts had interpreted in relation to the literature.

I was just doing some dishes and a baby roach crossed the counter top. I killed it.

It reminded me of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

Maybe why he wrote what he really did was because he killed a roach in his own home and thought to himself, "That creature had a family and I just killed it."

Anyone who has read the work in question will understand.

What always got up my nose regarding interpretation is that if you disagree with the experts, you’re somehow wrong.

While not all interpretations are equally valid, art is intensely personal. If a book or a play or a statue means such-and-such to you, then that’s what it means.

Boru

[GrandizerII]

I remember in school we always had to read classic literature and give our opinions on what we read. The teacher would tell us what experts had interpreted in relation to the literature.

I was just doing some dishes and a baby roach crossed the counter top. I killed it.

It reminded me of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

Maybe why he wrote what he really did was because he killed a roach in his own home and thought to himself, "That creature had a family and I just killed it."

Anyone who has read the work in question will understand.

Ok, well, I haven't read his work. So why do you dislike interpretation? Or do you mean you have an issue with the notion of "expert interpretation" being considered the true interpretation?

[Foxaèr]

Ok, well, I haven't read his work. So why do you dislike interpretation? Or do you mean you have an issue with the notion of "expert interpretation" being considered the true interpretation?

The latter. Also, as I already stated, perhaps the entire basis of him having created the story was merely to alleviate his conscience over having killed a bug, and that literary interpreters are thinking the man was a genius simply for having written it.