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I have to say, I really agree with the last statment. 3nodding

You raise an interesting point, Fairgrass. It reminds me of when I first started getting interested in Clive Barker's works. I found something where he had been asked what the proper pronounciation of names in his novel Imajica were and he said that it was up to the reader to say it how they felt it should be said. I think that this can also be applied to analyzing what books can be about, or even other artistic mediums like movies.

I have to believe that like beauty, meaning, is in the eye of the beholder. What means something to you, may mean something completely different to someone else. The author, in the beginning, may not have meant to give a piece significant meaning at all. Perhaps they were just trying to tell a good story, but in some cases there is a specific concept they are trying to get across.

As what has already been highlighted, interpretations of text is based entirely on the individual and no one else. Although many people might find a same conclusion, there are alwards others that will point out different meaning and underlying themes. I would argue that people's interpretations are linked by their own experiances as, as we all learn differently in life through events that are only linked to ourselves, it would susbsequently cause us to view material in our own personal light. Should this own personal view be radically different from another's, the interpretation of a text/event will also be different.

I have difficulty assigning meanings to pieces of art. I don't think there is a meaning for them. I think the observer takes away and impression, idea, or lesson that to them is an individual relation to the object being observed.

Agreed. 3nodding
As an artist, I have a lot of pictures that could have so much meaning to it. I usually grab from my personal experiences, so I get flustered and keep rejecting guesses as to their true meaning from my friends. I don't want to explain something that's dear to me.

The same is with this book we read in class, called "Wish you Well" and the simple question was, "Who was the main protagonist" and I believed there was more than one; each of which are the main characters to the story which contribute symbiotically to the plot. I still got it correct on the test. o.o

hmm, I understand, but you can't always believe that art in it's entirety is naive to it's own purpose and meaning... much of classic poetry is defined and has one meaning, one purpose, yet modern poetry, or poetry of young minds has a tendency to be too vague or too figurative to have enough substance for one single interpretation... so I do not believe you should attempt to identify what art is, to then figure out how it's meaning is found, because no one has agreed on it's boundaries and qualities since art was first conceived of....so just accept that some art allows you to explore new meanings within yourself, but also know that you must not be so care-free when analyzing certain pieces of art that exist for one single purpose, because if I write a book called the plague.... in which the story details the bubonic plague, and I am talking about world war 2 and the plague fascade is just an extended metaphor for it, if you say the meaning of the story lies within the aspects of the plague in and of itself, then you are wrong, but if you realize why I wrote the piece and the relationship between the plague I wrote about and world war 2, then you are discovering the true meaning behind my piece

i hope you understand...

The Plague is an actual novel...sorry if I bent everything just to create an argument