Unfinished Masterpieces

When a reader encounters ambiguity in a text, there is a tendency to dismiss it as a mistake or lack of foresight. One assumes an idea or plot point was not addressed because it was not important. The reader must instead do the more difficult, yet more fulfilling, task: sit down and take the time to fully understand the implications of the author not explaining that point. Sometimes an unanswered question or unfinished sentence can be much more profound than a painstakingly explained idea.

I am reminded of a story that ran on NPR a few days ago entitled, You Gonna Finish That? What We Can Learn From Artworks In Progress. The piece reminds us that artists can, and will, express themselves through the absence of paint, pencil mark, or color, leaving their audience to ponder upon the glimmering essence of the piece, stripped of all frivolity.

In this way, the artist seems to say, "This is as far as I'm willing to take you, you'll have to find your way from here." The viewer feels abandoned, shortchanged, or perhaps even conned at first, but soon they see that the piece is, in fact, finished. It says all it was meant to say; it reveals what the artist felt, and for that reason, it is finished in every way that matters.

The artist used this ambiguity in the same way a writer might, in order to force the viewer into filling in the blanks and understanding the piece in their own way.

Ambiguity

When an author leaves details unknown or does not specify a part in a story, it leaves the reader guessing and using their imagination to figure out what is happening or what a scene looks like. Ambiguity lets the audience pick and choose parts of the book, creating the imagines in their heads as they read along. By giving the audience the opportunity to create characters and how the book may play out, it lets them enjoy the book and continues to keep them interested and invested.

In The Book Thief, Markus Zusak gives the audience to take a chance as use the power of imagination to create the image of the town and what the characters look like. Zusak gives a sufficient amount of detail and describes the characters enough to provide an image of them, but lets the reader’s imagination create the rest. Zusak keeps the readers on their feet the whole time, leaving questions unanswered, character relationships hidden, and giving the reader leeway to create what the characters looked like and their personality.

Leaving room for the reader to imagine the text in the way they want is how ambiguity works with literature. The author gets to write the book and imagine the book the way they want to and lets the audience imagine it the same or differently. By letting the reader imagine, is gives them a better appreciation of the book and how an author is able to give the reader control of the text too.

Connecting Stories

When I was a freshman, I was told that there was no new idea possible and that any idea thought of is connected to an already existing thought. As Foster stated, all stories have a connection to another one, making parts of the story already existing. With this, Foster means that parts of a story can relate back to an already existing story, such as the plot of Grease and High School Musical. In both stories the audience sees that the two main characters have a summer fling at the very beginning that ends when the two have to go back to school. The female lead shows up to the male leads school as a transfer student and they still show those feelings for each other. However, peer pressure forces them to not get back together immediately, and then they sing and dance to show their angst and the love they share for the other character. At the very end, they end up together and everything is well. This is a prime example that stories and plots become recycled over time and that no ideas are original.

By realizing that most stories correlate, the readers are able to possible figure out future actions in the book or get a better understanding of what plot the book is based around. By Foster explaining this in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, he lets his audience know that there is always more meaning to the story and there is more than one version to the story than what the reader thinks.

Complexity in the Simple

     In Thomas Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster writes, “Every reader’s experience of every work is unique.”  In order to create an experience for the reader with this degree of complexity, the author must attempt to be as simple as possible with phrasing and construction.  In other words, creating an intricate and complicated piece requires a degree of ambiguity, or inexactness in language.  With this ambiguity, readers are allowed to take certain elements of literature and perceive them in entirely different ways based on their own experiences and beliefs. 

     This ambiguity leaves some aspects of the piece up to the interpretation of each individual reader, allowing them to have wildly varied understandings of the same text.  According to Foster, numerous personal characteristics can affect the way a piece is received by the reader.  These include personal history, previous readings, “educational attainment, gender, race, class, faith, social involvement, and philosophical inclination.” No two people share all of these characteristics, thus, no two people can share the exact same understanding of a text either.

     With this said, this added element of uncertainty and simplicity demands much greater attention and thought from the reader.  A reader must first process the superficial elements of the writing; that is, what the author appears to be saying.  The reader must then dissect the true underlying meaning of the superficial writing.  They must, however, be careful so as not to read too far into the meaning of a passage.  Foster recounts Sigmund Freud’s famous quote, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”  Even with this word of caution, all can appreciate the incredible dynamic that ambiguity can add to the relationship between the author, the text, and the audience.

There is Nothing New Under the Sun

According to Foster, all “writing and telling belong to one big story,” because ultimately, there is only one story about the human experience.  Literature attempts to encompass these struggles and experiences as a way to understand the world around us. Naturally, they all slightly vary from one another because the human experience is so complex.  Differences in race, environment, class, and etc. have a profound effect on our quality of life and cause us all to have varying experiences that still share a few commonalities.  Foster emphasized that writers borrow from their experiences when writing stories which are essentially the same.  This explains why it is so easy to trace stories back to one another, notice similar themes, and why all writing belongs to “one big story.”  Our attempt to make sense of the world and things around us continues to be a topic of discussion. Everything we have to say about it will be more or less the same.  Literature is one medium of this.  Although there a numerous books that all vary in plot and characters, many of them hold similar themes such as the loss of innocence, the American dream, a character’s internal struggle with himself, a possible dystopian world, and an overall observation of our society’s current ideals or environments, and practically everyone is writing about it in hopes that they might understand it better. In fact, they really aren’t writing about anything new.  According to Foster, part of becoming a professional reader is being more aware of this.  

Ambiguity

Unresolved endings in literature encourage readers to actively take part in the story; the ambiguity allows the reader to decide on the ending and what they think the book actually means.  Naturally, every reader will have a different take on how the story actually ends.  Lois Lowry’s The Giver doesn’t have a fixed ending.  The reader decides if whether or not Jonas and Gabriel make it to Elsewhere or if they die from starvation or exposure in the freezing snow.  Considering that the novel mentions the word Elsewhere not only as way to refer to death but also the surrounding area outside of the community, it simply depends on what the reader considers Elsewhere to symbolize.  Though, by withholding this information Lowry was able to write a complex story with multifaceted characters.  They are endless possibilities as to what might have happened and it’s crucial for readers to be flexible with this.  Literature is ingenuous.  Foster stresses his readers to not be blinded by their present context and worldview when attempting to analyze the possible meanings of a book or piece of literature.  Even when regarding symbols, he notes how students always have something particular in mind which isn’t always the case; they often have a range of meanings or interpretations.  This ambiguity challenges readers and prevents stories or pieces of literature from being one dimensional, and it allows us to be more flexible when we are reading.  Becoming a professional reader asks us to be more aware of this.

The Realization from Really, Really Reading

There are truly only two ways to read, one can read affectively or one can read like a professor. The difference between these two being that affective reading simply means reading a nice story, casually making your way through the begging, middle, and end. To read like a professor though is to have the same nice story but on your way from start to finish you see symbols, intertextuality, and a thousand other layers to a seemingly simple book. With that many more elements occurring in just one text it’s no wonder that Foster says “reading literature is a highly intellectual activity” because to catch all the aspects in the text one must be alert and always thinking as they go. Foster is also correct in his claim that there is a specific “language of reading.” When a flood comes through destroying a town us, as readers, know instantly that a cleansing has just occurred and now there is a chance for the characters to have new beginnings. No one has to tell us what a flood means, or rain, or drowning (although Foster helpfully does) because once we know it we recognize it ourselves as we shift from stagnant readers into active, professor-like reading.

              Anyone can read literature and enjoy the story but only those trained to really read have the complete joy from a story that the author intended. To just simply read is like going to the beach and staying on the shore, you’ll have a lovely time, but you’ll never discover the treasures that lay under the water. Being able to read “like a professor” not only helps in English classes but unlocks a whole new world for a reader’s mind to explore.

Intertextuality as a Whole

In his book How to Read Literature Like a Professional, Thomas Foster states that “there’s no such thing as a wholly original work of literature.” This, called intertextuality, is described  as the crossing of old and new stories to create a new piece of writing. Authors pull ideas from multiple works and manipulate them into a story of their own. The idea that no piece of literature is completely original has been explored for years among English classes. Look at a piece of work such as West Side Story compared to the Shakespearean play Romeo and Juliet. There are major differences displayed such as the setting of each story and the way the events of the climax took place, but the overall relationship between the plot of both are very similar, one just had a modern twist. Two people fell in love but were forbidden to be together because of family or gang relations, leading to a tragic end for both sets of main characters. The element of intertextuality creates layers that bring themes and symbols together to add a deeper meaning to the text. Meaning speaks to the reader explaining that the rivalry between New York gangs is not only destroying family and friends, but the possibilities of love, life, and order in life. Foster ends  by saying just because an author draws ideas from other great literary works does not automatically mean it is “good” by association and also overlooking the reference does not mean the reader is not intelligent or not a skilled reader. The goal of intertextuality is to enrich the piece of literature and further draw the eye of the reader. 

Ambiguity in Literature

Ambiguity is possible in literature, ideas, statements, arts, music, and math. In literature, though, ambiguity serves the purpose of lending a deeper meaning to a literary work. By introducing ambiguity in their works, writers allow for more freedom for the readers to use their imagination to explore meanings. This active participation of the readers involves them on a deeper level in the prose or poetry they read. The decision about how the reader interprets the piece of writing thus reflects on the reader’s own psychology. If a reader is an optimistic person, for example, she or he might decide that things ended well, or if the reader has recently experienced a rough time in her or his life, she or he might decide that a betrayal was intentional rather than accidental. Authors sometimes write ambiguous endings in their books precisely to create situations that ask the readers to bring their own experience to bear to decide what happened. If all questions and thoughts were answered in the writing, how would the readers ponder and further think upon the journey literature had sent them on? There is also a difference in being confused and/or not understanding the text and interpreting something differently than someone else. From personal experience, I know misunderstanding and confusion often leads to frustration, ruining a book for me. Being unsure is acceptable to some extent but too much doubt and false impression is not pleasing. Personal interpretation is very important in literature and ambiguity is the key to allow this to occur in literary works. 

Connectivity is as Necessary as Oxygen

"Intertextuality," as Foster writes, is an effect of a greater force at work. It reflects the human mind and its desire to connect and relate to its fellow man. Textual connectivity is pleasing to a reader because it makes the writing circular and full. Textual connection gives meaning to the study of literature. If people didn't understand how texts reflected and related to each other, then people would simply be reading isolated works that appear to have no contribution to the grand design of life. People usually want to feel some sort of connection to a force larger than themselves. This is how intertextuality enhances the reading experience. Intertextuality can be both intentional and serendipitous. When it is intentional, the author is more than likely trying to make a very clear point. When it is serendipitous, it may seem coincidental, but it can also be a testament that the human condition is a keystone theme in art and literature.

Intertextuality is incredibly evident in typical archetypes and symbols. There are timeless elements of literature that people of  every generation relate and connect to. A love story, a rags to riches tale, a hero: these  are all elements of literature that have remained relevant throughout history. Life is a fine example of the connectitivity of texts. Art imitates life, so any intertextuality is taken right from life itself. Also, it is often said that history repeats itself.  This idea of cyclicality is found in some of mankind's earliest accounts of storytelling, mythology. Myths often reflect the best and worst characteristics of mankind in a hyperbolic manner.  The way these myths crossover and reflect each other is a fine example of the connectedness of cultures and values.

Art is Communication

In How to Read Literature like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster writes, "writing and telling belong to one big story." Foster is referring to the story of humanity and the idea that people have a natural affinity for communication and expression. It is part of our biological make-up as human beings. Humans are pack creatures. They crave socialization and interaction. One way to achieve a harmonious interaction is for humans to connect to one another. This connection is established by finding a common ground. Humans want to feel that they are not alone, so they look for people who have shared an experience, emotion, or happening. Art is a medium for communication and a medium for reaching out. This applies to the richness of the reading experience. Our society values literature and the discussion of it because it is a shared appreciation of artistic expression and what it represents. The artistry of literature is that more than one person can connect, relate, and be stirred by the writing. This is the "one big story." It is the shared human experience, and the articulation of it through words is art. 

The exciting and beautiful part of art and expression is that they can be interpreted through so many mediums and disciplines. Even in AP Language, which focused on writing and verbal composition, the class studied works like paintings and photographs. Many of the messages are the same, and that relates back to the idea of the human experience and the "one big story," but it is a testament to human ingenuity and creativity that there are so many ways to express oneself. 

Ambiguity

As humans, we strive to discover answers to key questions. We work to find understanding, and it is only after gaining this understanding that we feel accomplished. It’s in our nature. This habit is evident in readers, too. As one reads, they attempt to figure out the ending, and they try to understand and interpret the characters and symbols. This journey requires mystery.

So, if the writer were to blatantly explain every aspect of his or her writing, reveal each and every symbol, and spoil the ending, there would be no quest for the reader. What would be left for them to discover? With all of the answers, there would no longer be questions to answer. They would have already have arrived at their destination, and they would not have been able to enjoy the adventure.

Therefore, ambiguity provides the path for the trek every reader must take. The writer provides enough to lure in a reader, enough to light the path, but after that, it’s all about interpretation. The reader must make the journey alone, using fragments of understanding provided by the author as their guides. When they reach a crossroads, they choose to go left or right. They decide which pieces of information they pick up along the way, and ultimately, they choose their own destination.

Ambiguity provides the reader with freedom, and additionally, it enhances a reader’s appreciation of the story. After all, they had to work hard to arrive at their destination, making their discoveries that much sweeter.

What it Means to Read Great Literature

General entertainment like sports, television shows, movies, video games, etc. maybe more popular among people across the world than classic literature, but literature affects society in a much different way. Great literature has longevity and lasts hundreds and even thousands of years. Not because of it’s entertainment factor, but because of it’s effect on society. Literature provides the foundation of man’s morals and what is right and wrong. It holds messages that resonate through many generations that affect the common philosophy of societies.

    The television show and the series of books Game of Thrones is one of the most popular series in the world. It is very entertaining to watch and read, but it won’t be a piece of literature that will be commonly known in hundreds of years. It lacks a message to the audience that great literature provides. The Holy Bible has lasted thousands of years as the basis of one the most popular religions in the world. It has a code of morals that have been followed by a huge proportion of the world for hundreds of years that not only Christians follow, but also many non religious people. By reading The Bible it embeds morals into a person that makes them a better human being.

    Reading great literature creates a better and more productive human to society. If one is able to appreciate the meanings and messages that the author is expressing in his text, it will change how they think and what kind of person they are. Literature is the basis of morals and philosophy that mold the world into a better place.

In the Eye of The Beholder

There has never been nor will there ever be a single interpretation of a text. In fact, I’m inclined to believe that no interpretation of any text will ever be a carbon copy of another. That’s the beauty of literature: a text is more than the words on each page.

As cliché as it sounds, a reader has the ability to read between the lines. This is where imagination comes into play. Using the text provided by the writer, a reader can, in turn, expand on ideas and plot. So, for example, in The Odyssey, a reader may come to the conclusion that Odysseus is a habitual liar by analyzing his storytelling scenes. The idea that Odysseus is an unreliable source of information is one of the most frequently discussed details of The Odyssey. However, Homer, the author, does not call Odysseus’s bluff outright.

The most interesting component of reader/writer relationship is the idea that the writer had no intention of a reader having a specific interpretation. So, to use the same example, Homer may not have wanted his readers to distrust Odysseus.

Still, the idea that art, even literature, is in the eye of the beholder is fascinating. It suggests that, regardless of intention, a writer can and often does influence a reader to draw from their own experience and make assumptions about a text. This, however, does make a writer’s task that much more complex. After all, they must take extra precautions to ensure that a reader does not come to a conclusion that they did not intend.

Delving Deeper: Interconnectedness of Texts

     Thomas C. Foster’s claim, “writing and telling belong to the one big story,” raises significant question about the ability of one writer to be original and individual.  Can one write something entirely unrelated to and independent of what they have read or experienced before?  Or are they chained to the past, the history of themselves and mankind?

     To delve deeper into the meaning and implications of Foster’s claim, one must first explore scenarios in which this assertion is true.  Take, as an example, Virgil’s Aeneid.  Since the epic poem’s publishing at least two thousand years ago, hundreds of references have been made to the piece in other forms of literature and film.  An obvious example is found in Ursula K. LeGuin’s Lavinia, a novel focused on the life of one of Virgil’s characters in the Aeneid.  Books with such blatant, obvious, and intentional intertextuality are common; however, does the statement still hold true when the intent is nonexistent, when the author is attempting to be entirely original?

     To explore this, let’s take a hypothetical man living in complete isolation his entire life.  For some reason, he writes a book.  Foster's nation that his book can "grow" out of other stories unbeknownst to him might seem far fetched, but is it?  If he writes about anything that has descended through generations, that has at one point or another felt the effects of other human beings, he is a part of this bigger story.  If he write about birds, trees, water, or the sky, he is fulfilling this requirement, as men before him have had control of the same birds, trees, water and sky that he writes about now.  With this said, even if the man somehow manages to write about something entirely unrelated, but his piece is read by a human later on, he has become a part of a much bigger story.

     With this truth in mind, a reader is able to experience reading in an entirely new and enriching light.  This knowledge affords the reader the ability to process much more than the plot and apply much more than solely their definitional knowledge of words in the piece.  They are able to make a text even richer than the author might have ever intended, and learn more about books they closed months before.

What Does That Mean?

After pouring over the pages of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, it was as if I couldn’t take three steps outside of my house without being savagely bombarded by symbolism. It was everywhere! All but one flower has bloomed: symbolism! Two people stand talking to each other, one in the shade, and the other in the sunlight: symbolism! A little boy accidentally drops his last animal cracker, losing it forever to the cruel sidewalk: overflowing with symbolism!

Instead of seeing the figures in front of me, I was seeing what they could represent, what they might allude to if I were in a story. I was connecting what I saw to what I had read, and assigning meaning, because this is how a professor sees the world (at least I hope it is, or I should probably reread that book).

As readers, making connections is what we do. Each word is run through our own personal database of meanings, compiled from all we’ve experienced, in reading and in life. Every teapot, every dance step, every style of scarf has profound meaning because it reminds the reader of something else they’ve seen or heard or read. Words do not gain significance until they are repeated; before that they are only clusters of sound, they are only flat, two dimensional piles of letters. And while there are some that have been repeated to the point of becoming cliché, there is no shame in using a word that holds meaning to a great many people; its power is in its repetition.  

There Is Nothing New Under the Sun

Whenever a writer is told a story, it is put back into their memory. Whenever they write, these memories subconsciously or sometimes purposefully appear in their own works. This kind of incident is what Foster is referring to whenever he says that all “writing and telling belong to one big story.” Since these stories the writer once heard have now been put into their writings, their readers can now experience this “one big story”. This is interesting to think about because this means that every time we read a text, it has somehow been influenced by past stories that the writer had been told. This truth adds to the whole reading experience because we can get a feel for many different genres of texts from different time periods that have different plots all from one reading. It seems impossible to think of how many texts could be infused into the one you are reading, making the text have a new kind of value. An example of the “one big story” principle that I have noticed is the recurrence of Cinderella. First, there was the original story Cinderella. After Cinderella, there are now many films that are inspired from the original story such as A Cinderella Story, Ella Enchanted, or even Another Cinderella Story. There are an abundance of films that play off of the classic evil stepmother and prince with a glass slipper scenario, but I have noticed that also appears in other forms of art such as plays because a few years ago I was in the play Ash Girl which shows a more twisted side of the original Cinderella story. After looking into where the original Cinderella story comes from I saw that the earliest recorded version of the Cinderella tale comes all the way from China. Now, today’s generation of children can watch the movie Ella Enchanted and hear a tale from China all through one big story.

The Relationship Between the Reader and the Author

Foster’s discussion of the relationship between the reader and the writer brings up interesting points as to how readers, even young children, interact with texts. Most people reading books will get clear images of what the characters and scenery look like as they read, almost like a movie in their head. This interaction suggests that the readers interact with the text individually, and bring a text to life in their own way, thus creating a different experience for every reader. Additionally, readers bring their own life experiences into reading, which may mean that one reader adores a character and another despises them for reminding them of someone they dislike. Because the reader who doesn’t like that character has made that connection, it brings a new level to the story and a deeper meaning for that reader, and it works in reverse. Perhaps if a reader really likes a character, they imagine the character as looking somewhat like them, or having traits that they share. Reading into characters and metaphors are an interaction for the reader between what the writer has written and what they have included themselves. By bringing a new level to the character, that reader has essentially created a story for the character that the author did not. This reaction and deeper level can spark something else creative in that reader, such as inspiring them to paint something or write something that reminds them of the book that they enjoyed, meaning that what Foster says in the quote “reading is an event of the imagination…a reader’s imagination is the act of one creative intelligence engaging another (the writer’s)”.

Your Characters

Think about any novel that has ever been written. For any novel to succeed, it must have characters, a main conflict, a climax, and a resolution—the usual elements found in any novel. Frodo Baggins, a hobbit from the Shire, must throw the ring into the volcano and destroy it so that the Dark Lord Sauron does not use it to conquer Middle-earth. (There’s more to it than that, but that’s not the point here.)

But the people who read The Lord of the Rings trilogy likely did not immediately envision Elijah Wood when reading about Frodo. The same goes with the Harry Potter series, the Hunger Game trilogy, and even the Twilight saga. The authors never wrote that their characters were spitting images of famous actors and actresses. Instead, they described their characters, noting their skin tone, mentioning the color of their hair, and pointing out the color of their eyes.

When an author vaguely describes a character, they are engaging their audience and making them use their imaginations. When the people of the Capitol are described in The Hunger Games, one reader may think that they are dressed as ridiculously as models on the runway at a fashion show while another reader may interpret them to be dressed like celebrities at an awards show.

Another way that an author engages their audience’s imaginations is when describing a landscape. Sure, authors write that there are “rolling hills” and “trickling streams,” but what about the leaves on the tress? Or the trees themselves? Are they deciduous or evergreens? Are they fruit trees? Are there any animals nearby? Maybe a lizard sunning itself on a rock by that trickling stream?

So much of the story is left open and undescribed that the reader is often forced to use their imagination when reading. Whether the author intentionally left scenes undescribed is up for debate. But when an author is writing, there has to be a certain level of consciousness about describing a character or place or action. That level of consciousness often includes spatial understanding. Authors could fill up a whole page describing a character’s eyes but why would they? What impact does it have on the story? Maybe if another character is admiring and falling in love with the aforementioned character and is fixating on their eyes, then the whole page of description is totally understandable. But more often than not, characters are too busy trying to resolve the main conflict to spend an unhealthy amount of time staring into another character’s eyes. And writing a book is hard enough without having to write about five hundred words about a character’s eyes unless it’s going to impact a character or the story as a whole.

So usually, leaving a scene only partially described saves time for the author, keeps the plot going, and leaves the reader engaged in the story as they dream up what type of trees are in the forest, what sort of animals hide in the underbrush, and how quickly the sunning lizard flees when the protagonist comes too close to it. 

What is the Meaning?

     Ambiguity is essential to the type of experience that the reader has when they are reading a book. Having doubt in the meaning of a book impacts a reader’s understanding by not letting the reader understand what is happening and what they are actually reading. Readers cannot fully appreciate a text if they do not understand and are unable to follow the story line of the book. No one wants to spend their time reading books that do not make sense to them. Most people would say that it was a waste of time and would rather look up what the plot of the story was rather than try to read through a book that they do not understand. Having some doubt in what is happening may be acceptable for some books, but not understanding all that is happening is not enjoyable. Being able to engage with a text is important so having no doubts about what the plot of a story is what is always wanted.

     Every book has a point or a purpose behind it and not understanding that makes the experience unpleasant. Not being able to comprehend what the story is about could work in a book if the book was a mystery or wanted suspense. In a mystery book, if a reader does not grasp what is happening completely it can help create the suspense of the story. In Agatha Christie’s book And Then There Were None, the beginning part was very hard to follow. There were many different characters and trying to keep up with all of their story lines was confusing. It was an amazing book overall, but the introduction of all the characters was perplexing. Ambiguity works in art pieces because it creates mystery about what the piece is about. Many times, buyers have to find their own meaning inside an art piece and that can be very inspirational for people.  

Intertextuality

Whenever an author creates a “dialogue between texts”, they create a whole new meaning, theme, or feeling for what they are writing. An example of this would be when Foster mentions that someone may see an author as more intelligent for quoting Shakespeare in their work. The reader would see that this person is quoting Shakespeare, and now the writing has more value to them because it is something they recognize and understand. The same thing happens with the Bible. Whenever someone can create a story that mirrors the bible it creates a sort of commonplace and the book has a lot more meaning. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe series is a prime example of this connection because it's an allegory of the Bible. When this connection is formed it makes a new type of value for its readers because they can pinpoint all of the symbols and their meanings which makes it so much more than a story about a few children who climb through a closet and find a magical world. Books like the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe series show that sometimes intertextuality is intentional, but sometimes it happens by accident. This is where Foster’s “one big story” theory comes into play. Writers accidentally reference past readings in their works all of the time making anything we read also part of past work. By reading one story we get a feel for maybe twenty other stories without even realizing that we are reading ”one big story”.This intertextuality lets us see way more stories than what is right in front of us giving it significance, value, and a whole new effect.

As Open As A Doorframe

In a society in which the best ending is a closed one, one where all loose strings are tied up, the bad guys in jail, the victim avenged, and the hero standing tall, proud, and awash in praise from his colleagues, an ambiguous ending is all at once refreshing, intriguing, and frustrating.

In Life of Pi, after being rescued, Pi is asked about what happened on the boat and tells the story that we had been reading: Pi and the tiger, stranded on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by flying fish and coming upon an island of carnivorous algae before arriving in Mexico. When he is doubted, he recounts a story full of parallels and cannibalism. As Pi points out, neither cannot be proven true, so which would his interviewers prefer?

Ambiguity is not always the choice between a story of survival and friendship or fear and cannibalism. Often, symbols and ambiguity go hand in hand. As Thomas C. Foster pointed out, authors often come up with their own symbols, symbols that no other author has ever used before and thus the reader does not have the context for what this symbol could mean outside of the story in which it appears. And, having no context for these newfound symbols, a reader can apply whatever meaning they want to them.

Ambiguity also allows for a bit of a custom reading experience. One person may believe that Pi was a liar and did indeed eat the Taiwanese sailor that ate his mother while another may believe that Pi experienced both stories he told, with the Taiwanese sailor having been eaten by Richard Parker who had been hiding and lying in wait for the humans to dwindle down to a small enough number to be easy prey.

Another example of ambiguity is The Grapes of Wrath. Where does Connie go after leaving the Joad family? He never gets a formal exit, simply a mention by Tom and Al later on that he had walked away from the camp and they had assumed him going off to relieve himself in peace. Rose of Sharon mentions his wishes to stay home and study machines rather than coming to California. The reader never finds out if Connie had abandoned his wife and her family or had gotten lost and separated (although the latter is a belief held only by Rose of Sharon) and must make assumptions on their own.

Films have also had their own amount of ambiguity, notably Rosemary’s Baby, when Rosemary sees her baby for the first time and demands to know what had happened to its eyes, and The Usual Suspects, as the real Keyser Söze is revealed and the reliability of Verbal’s story must be questioned.

Ambiguity allows for the author to send a message without being obvious while also allowing the reader to be left thinking over what they have just read, molding the open ending into their own ending. That’s the beauty of an ambiguous ending. It can be anything anyone wants it to be. 

The Logic of Reading

Merriam-Webster defines intellectual as “relating to the ability to think in a logical way.”  To be truly intellectual, one must be able to think through an idea step by step, in order to obtain the final solution to the problem in front of them. 

In this way, reading literature is, like Foster claims, a highly intellectual activity.  In order to effectively read literature, one must be able to uncover a set of symbols to truly grasp the meaning, which involves decrypting the author’s message using logic. 

To fully understand the author’s message, Foster says that readers must use what’s called the “language of reading.”  These are various devices that essentially work like tools on a tool belt; each one has its own specific use that can help to establish a structure, in this case the author’s true meaning.  Foster describes it as “a grammar of literature” made up of “a set of conventions and patterns, codes and rules” that can be used to further understand a textual message (xxiv).  This “grammar of literature” makes the analysis of a passage or story possible.  Typical conventions like character archetypes and plot structures help the reader fully understand what the author is really wanting to say with his story.  An example of this Marvel’s new “superhero” movie, Deadpool.  Although Marvel does it in a different fashion, they use the several character archetypes in order to illustrate the plot of the story, and make it more relatable to the reader.  Instead of having names of the actors, Marvel elected to have the archetype that each character played as their introduction to the audience.

This type of reading allows the reader to engage the text further than if he or she were to simply read it for the subject matter.  By really thinking about and engaging with the hidden messages, the reader can connect further with the author, and potentially engage further with what the author meant. 

When he says “reading like a professor,” Foster means to read closely and look for parts of the story that others would normally oversee.  In literature, this can be applied to the symbols and allegories that authors use to make their stories more intricate and involved.