The Author, vs.

The Reader

Since the dawn of literature, there has always been a distinct line, a boundary drawn between the
two dignitaries, the author and the reader. Stories, novels, comics, manga, poetries, manuscripts, and
other countless forms of literature have influenced millions of people of all age over the world. These
works of text have made impacts in our lives, no matter small the change may be. We can’t deny their
value, with some works that have shown to withstand the test of time and remains relevant up to this
day. Works that are created by the author, for the readers.

Often people would think, in a work of literature it is the author who has the final say, the one
who gets to call the shots, decides what’s canon and what’s bogus. After all, they created it, they were
the mind behind the work’s conception along every step of the way. They got to be the one who decided
what happens to a character, to the plot of the next chapter, on how it ends, and what it all means. What
can we readers, do about it? We are only the receiving end of an absolute work by a creator. But often,
we tend to read things and yet, we get our own interpretations and understandings.

See, if you and your friend read the same book, chances are the two of you won’t have the exact
same definite understanding and expectation. It’s the reason for why across the internet, fan theories,
speculations, and predictions posted by different readers across the world, with each one differing from
the other, supporting and debunking others’ postulations, they all exist because every person interprets
a piece of work differently from one another. No two readers get the same experience from reading a
book. But here is where the argument starts, does your interpretation matter?

Logic wouldn’t agree so much, after all readers may all have different understandings, but at the
end of the day they all fall short of what the writer has to say about it, right? The author’s understanding
is the true and absolute meaning of a literary work. I mean, shouldn’t that be our goal for any piece of
literature that we read, to find what the author intends to say through his or her work?

This has actually been a topic debated and deliberated upon by many for years and years. The
battle of importance between an author, and a reader. The fact that the author holds the absolute and
final say of a work is an intuitive idea, but French philosopher and literary theorist Roland Barthes would
disagree with this notion, as he did with his work on his 1967 essay, The Death of the Author. In it, Barthes
explains that an author’s explanation and interpretation of their work is completely valid, but no more
valid than ours as the readers.

Literary works are meant to be read, so we, as the readers should be the ones to find meaning in
a work. Or as American author John Green puts it, “The book does not exist for the benefit of the author,
the book exists for the benefit of you!” And again, I want to stress here that this does not say that an
author’s intent is meaningless. It is indeed valuable, but what they believe the meaning of their work to
be is not ‘the’ interpretation, but ‘an’ interpretation.

This does not mean however, that every interpretation is valid. If theories and head canon are
based on flawed understandings of the text, then they are also flawed. I also can’t just propose an
interpretation that is completely random with nothing in the text to support it. That, is nonsense.
 In Stephen King’s craft novel, “On Writing”, he notes that a novel is a conversation across time
between a writer and a reader. The author is expressing his or her thoughts at one point in time, and the
reader is taking those thoughts at another point in time making sense of the author’s words. Both would
read the same words; however, the reader will also interpret the writer’s intentions based on what
information the writer does or does not give, based on the reader’s history. The writer at this point, has
no control over the reader’s interpretation because they are not with the reader and cannot share their
writing process with them. The writer cannot share why or why not they wrote a character a certain way,
or the reason why events in the novel happened the way they happened. The reader can only interpret
the writer’s decisions based on the words on the page, but with this interpretation the reader brings his
or her history and experiences to the novel.

Another big example that shows the flaw in the context of authorial intent can be seen in the
comic book industry. Comic book characters, events, plots, they all get tossed from one creative team to
the next constantly. A simple change in the writers can make a character feel almost completely different.
As comic writer Eric Larson puts it in an article of his, “The creative baton gets handed off to the next
runner and the next runner can take it anywhere he’s allowed to by the powers that be, even if it means
undermining the efforts of those who came before him. But all’s fair, his stories will inevitably be undone
by the next guy.” Authors who worked or are currently working on those books were at one point just like
you and me, readers. Readers who realize the original author’s intent is not law, there’s always some
wiggle room.

For me, the meaning behind a work is something I really find interesting. The intent from an
author in a piece of work is always fascinating, because any art with intent, be it just to tell a good story,
or to change the world, will be read by people who are bringing their own individual baggage to the story.
Everyone walks away from a book with their own meanings and apprehension. What’s amusing is that
those interpretations, will undoubtedly be different, in huge, or subtle ways, because we bring our own
experiences, knowledge, moral quotas, and ideals to our readings of it. I mean, how many times have you
seen a bad review for a movie or book that you really liked? If I read a book, I bring with it my own
experiences, vastly different to that of the author, and vastly different to that of the other readers, I take
my own meaning from the book, implied from their story. This for me, is the intriguing beauty of the world
of literature.