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Originally Posted by jbjb
Indeed, and that's fine so long as you're finding meanings that the author actually intended to convey. The way it currently seems to work, however, is that far too much is read into it, and deeper meanings are pronounced where there's no real indication that the author had the remotest intention of implying any of it.
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Exactly. The best example of this is Huckleberry Finn, which (at least when I was in school) was read, studied, and analyzed by American Lit students. The first page of the book reads:
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NOTICE
PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.
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I pointed this out to my teacher when it was assigned, and questioned why we would do something that the author so clearly did not wish to be done.
I got sent to the office for arguing with the teacher again.
Shari