Hey guys, it's Amy Z!
In the play I agree with Ian that it's intersting how the characters compare illusions and reality. Also, it caught my interest when a character said that acting is not necessarily portraying the feelings of the character, but the actor's interpretation of the reactions to a scene. Everyone experiences different reactions and emotions in various situations and no one has the same experiences as another. It is impossible to mimic exactly what a character is going through. In the play the director and actors mention that in every representation of a play, the scriptor or the actor brings a part of their individual style into the performance.
I think that this also relates to how sometimes teachers say that a quote means a certain thing or this is symbolism that means this. Each work can be perceived in numerous ways and only the author could know the meaning of a phrase or idea. The most we can do is make a guess based on what we know from our environment or our personal education or experiences (which varies for everyone). It's like Mr. L's analogy, no one sees the same game. No one sees the same exact meaning in a certain idea. We all have our individual translations.
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3 comments:
Hey it's Erin. I agree with what Amy said, that each work can be perceived in numerous ways. I remember someone (I remember the incident, but not the person - kind of weird) saying that people find all these hidden meanings in Robert Frost's poem "Walking through the woods on a snowy evening", but when asked about it, he said that itwas about nothing more than the what the title says. The power of things to change upon interpretation is extraordinary. All this makes me think of reading "A Tale of Two Cities" in freshman year - there are so many connections and interpretations you can draw from any particular line of the text and who's to say if you're right or wrong? I think that's true of all literature. All you need to do is back up your claim and you're right, even if what you think is something the author never intended.
Hey its Cristy.
I totally agree with Amy, in that not everyone has to see the symoblism that teachers see in books. I might have used this example before so I apologize....but in the story the Red Pony!? that book is like half an inch thick; however, the symbolism my teacher saw in it could have filled a book 3x that size! In 7/8th grade I was very skeptical of this "symbolism" but I think I appreciate it much more now because it lets us see how others interpreted the words and realize that our own interpretation is anything but absolute.
Like Erin says it doesn't matter if the author didn't intend symbolism because it can still become real to the reader. Symbolism can make the story more "3D" to us. The Westing Game is one of my absolute favorite books. I think this is partly because of all the symbolism I attach to the characters and events in the story. But then some people don't like the book at all, they can't even finish reading it! At first it may have made me question the book, but now I know better and instead realize that the difference is probably just in their individual interpretation.
Who knows there might be someone out there who absolutely loves the Red Pony...but I doubt it. ;)
Hi it's Allison.
I agree with everyone in that the minute you write something down, it is up for interpretation. In Latin, we are reading The Aeneid, an epic by Virgil. During class, Ms. Allen goes through the translation and the text itself to find rhetorical devices. She comes up with an innumerable amount of them, and some of which must have been unintentionally written in by Virgil, and then interpreted by Ms.Allen. On a test, we were asked to identify rhetorical devices in a passage, and I wrote about one that she hadn't thought of or mentioned before. It fit the definition of the rhetorical device, and since I had evidence to support my case, she accepted my answer.
I don't think there's any way that Virgil could have conciously included so many rhetorical devices in his epic, and it's all based on your interpretation of the text.
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