Let's Talk: Authorial Intent and the Death of the Author

Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Chainsaw Man up to chapter 210.

Throughout elementary, middle, and high school, I was taught that there is always a "correct" way to interpret a piece of literature. Whether it was the color of a character's dress or someone's choice of words, there was only one set of things that each concept symbolized. Whenever I was assigned questions to answer after reading a poem or book chapter, they were given with the expectation that I should arrive at a particular answer. And if I didn't, well, then I was wrong. I had made a mistake in my analysis of the text. 

And WOW, that was an absolutely awful way to be exposed to creative analysis. Taking something as fluid as the arts and boiling them down to a dichotomy of right and wrong is blasphemy. This practice strictly follows authorial intent, in which one's analysis of a work is supposed to be dictated by its creator's life, politics, attitudes, and intent. The positioning of the creator as an authority figure therefore separates interpretations into "correct" ones that align with the creator's intentions and "incorrect" ones that do not.

In my opinion, this system is uniquely terrible at exposing students to literature as well as the arts as a whole. It demands that students view a work from a particular perspective and punishes them if they view it from their own. Worse yet, by using questions created by some random educator who just happens to be compiling the pieces for a textbook or for a class syllabus, you are not even using the piece's creator as your source of authority. And don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to attack educators. They are patient, self-sacrificing, and in many ways wonderful. But there is nothing in the world that can grant someone completely removed from a work's creation the right to tell another that they have to interpret the work "this way" and not "that way".

Despite my disgust with it, though, I do understand the approach to some extent. In an education system built around standardized testing and benchmarking, educators have to find some way to assign grades that can be easily compared and assessed. But while objective topics like mathematics fit very easily into such a paradigm, the arts do not. The rigidity of American school systems and the nebulous nature of the arts are incompatible. The arts are amorphous, ever-changing colonies of heart and soul. To force them through a square or round hole the way you would the ever-constant physics or chemistry is to shred them into shadows of their former selves. 

And these shadows are, for most students, totally unappealing. Many Americans graduate high school with a bitter taste of creative analysis in their mouths. They are highly unlikely to ever meaningfully engage with the process in their adult lives.

And I don't blame them. They grew up constantly being told that their way of perceiving a work was wrong and that the only correct way was the one listed in their textbook's answer key or told to them by their teacher. Who in their right mind would want to continue to subject themselves to that? This distaste breeds generation after generation of American adults who never analyze the media they consume. They are so woefully under-practiced that they become incapable of any creative analysis beyond the most surface-level interpretations.

This frustration of mine ultimately brings me to the idea of the death of the author. It is freedom. It is liberation. It is the idea that a reader's interpretation of a work does not give consideration to the life, politics, attitude, time period, and most importantly, intent, of its creator. And, just to clarify, the death of the author is not confined to just written work. It can apply to any creative work.

Basically, one approaches a work as if it spontaneously materialized out of thin air with no creator to attribute it to. The message that a reader gleans from it is determined solely by their own experiences, attitudes, and feelings. And by way of the author's death, the reader is born! No longer are they chained by the ideas of right and wrong interpretations. They are free to feel the sun on their own skin and look at the sky through their own eyes.

It is incredible that two people can read the exact same passage or look at the exact same painting but walk away with two different interpretations. It speaks to the variety and breadth of our experiences that the red strokes of a brush may seem angry to one viewer but heartfelt to another. It allows a book to lovingly envelop one reader, light a fire in the heart of another, and pry open the heavy eyelids of a third. It is the ultimate and most empowering manifestation of the human condition.

Some will argue that creators have an inherent right to absolutely dictate how their work is interpreted down to the last minute detail. They made it, after all. They are the reason it exists. Therefore, they should get to determine what it is about. But when a chef makes a meal, who has the final say on how it tastes? When a musician performs, who has the final say on how their piece sounds?  When your grandma knits you a sweater, who has the final say on how it feels to wear it? Some people give visual artists and especially writers this bizarrely authoritative pass that would be completely absurd if given to other kinds of creators.

Art is a form of communication. It exists to be experienced by others. Writing exists to be read, sculptures to be viewed, music to be heard. The reader, viewer, or listener is a necessary component in these processes. To insist that the thoughts of a work's creator can absolutely overrule the thoughts of its consumers is so disrespectful to the act of sharing one's work.  The arts are conversations. You CANNOT approach them with the desire to monologue and to shush anyone who speaks up. Why even share your art at all at that point?

Additionally, our world is constantly changing. The circumstances and contexts in which we live vary wildly from century to century and even decade to decade. Our world today would be nigh unrecognizable to, say, Emily Dickinson. But the death of the author allows works to evolve, ensuring that the work doesn't die with the passage of time. It allows a sixteen-year-old girl reading Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with feathers" to be inspired to continue pursuing her dream of becoming an airline pilot. Airplanes did not exist in Dickinson's time. The hope to become a pilot was something Dickson could never have considered. Such a hope plays zero role in the background or context of her writing. It is the death of the author that allows the poem to live on.

Simply put, it is impossible for both the author and the work to simultaneously live untethered. If the author metaphorically "lives" without restraint, then the authority of their intent strangles and kills a piece as it attempts to advance with the flow of time. However, if a piece IS freely advancing with the flow of time, then it is clearly no longer leashed by its author's intent and, therefore, the author has died.

However, as much as I adore the death of the author, I do not think it should be an absolute. Yes, the audiences of the arts should let their experiences and perspectives guide the way they interpret a work. Ultimately, though, creative analysis should be a collaboration, influenced by both the reader's perspectives and the author's intent.

I have a few reasons for my belief in a hybrid approach. First of all, behind every work is someone with their own personal beliefs and experiences that should be acknowledged. They are a unique person whose creation of their work was guided by their own perspectives, likely ones that you will never have the actual opportunity to experience in your life. The betterment of our world is dependent on our ability to listen, to sympathize, to acknowledge that there are millions of pairs of shoes in the world yet each individual human walks in only a handful of them. It would be ignorant to look at Frida Kahlo's Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird without considering her agonies that inspired it.

Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940

Not only that, but it would be quite a demoralizing prospect for a creator to believe that they should hold zero sway over how the world views their work. I believe that most creators hope that audiences will filter their work through their own attitudes and experiences while also recognizing the creator's intent. Like I said, art is a conversation. Both a creator and their audience should be able to speak. A monologue is not acceptable from either side.

Furthermore, there are definitely some works in which it is clearly, undeniably mandatory to consider the author's circumstances. Autobiographies and memoirs are easy examples. They are quite literally dictations of the author's life. You can't reject authorial context in these cases because the writings themselves are authorial context. It would be utterly stupid to read Elie Wiesel's Night and not acknowledge the events of the Holocaust. Also, every creative work is, in a way, a very convoluted autobiography or memoir. Every decision that a creator makes is influenced by their life, experiences, and attitudes. The reason a painter opts for warm shadows instead of cool shadows is a reason unique to them. So is the reason why a composer chose to write a piece in G major instead of D major. Every choice that goes into a work is essentially a bit of the creator's DNA. If, in a parallel universe, someone else ended up making a work instead of the original creator, then all those choices and bits of DNA would change. It would no longer be the same work that exists in the original universe.

However, authorial intent should ultimately not be reserved just for works that someone may consider to be of a sufficiently autobiographical nature. All creative works should be granted it to some extent. The death of the author, if left completely unchecked by authorial intent, has its share of problems. It is entirely dependent on a reader's interaction with a work being made in good faith. Therefore, it is highly susceptible to abuse.

Take for example a tenth grader who is raring to get out of school for the day and head home. He is stuck in eighth-period English and is asked what he thinks Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" is about and how it makes him feel. This is a very open approach to discussion that exempts students from the cruelty of a textbook answer key.

Let's suppose that, unfortunately, this student does not care about this class at all. He does not care about genuinely engaging with the material and does not care about some dead British guy from the 1800s. Such an attitude is quite common, after all. And so, he gives an answer of "some guy goes on a boating trip at like 9 PM and it makes me want to take a nap".

If we honor the death of the author, then his interpretation is just as valid as anyone else's.  But it is painfully obvious that he has made the shallowest, most surface-level interpretation possible. There is so much to possibly unpack in Tennyson's piece, yet our student is content to do practically nothing with it. Any teacher worth their salt would be infuriated by his statement.

And while I hate to make sweeping generalizations, I believe if middle and high school students were exposed to the idea of the death of the author, many would just pull some stupid bullshit out of their ass to get assignments over with using minimal effort. And ultimately, you don't really learn anything when you pull bullshit out of your ass. 

It's tricky then. The death of the author is empowering and would make more students actually want to analyze creative works. But with great power comes great responsibility, and it is SO difficult to tell which youths possess the analytical maturity to wield it. It will probably vary wildly within a single classroom. And it might likely fluctuate with each student on a work-by-work basis. I don't have a clue as to the solution to this issue. I'm just acknowledging that it exists and makes the death of the author a tricky topic to navigate.

Moreover, there are topics much more concerning than education. The death of the author can theoretically be used to fuel sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, nationalism, and a multitude of other forms of discriminatory attitudes.  If a creative work can potentially mean anything, then there is no stopping someone from using it to justify hateful beliefs. Someone whose upbringing and perspectives are embedded in such ideologies is most likely going to consume creative works through the lens of those ideologies. And for people who are deeply entrenched in them, whose family and social circles revolve around them, they are going to weaponize every unsanctioned crumb of media they can to support their world views. 

If we want to consider a very recent failure of the death of the author, let's look at Tatsuki Fujimoto's Chainsaw Man. In the world of Chainsaw Man, every one of humanity's fears has a corresponding devil. The greater humanity's fear of something is, the stronger that fear's devil will be. For example, the Tomato Devil is relatively non-threatening while the Darkness Devil is incredibly powerful.

Our protagonist, Denji, has the Chainsaw Devil as his alter ego. He can devour other devils and erase their corresponding fear from existence. Prior to the events of the story, the Chainsaw Devil had swallowed the Nuclear Weapons Devil, therefore erasing nuclear weapons (and everyone's knowledge and awareness of them) from existence.

At a certain point in the story, the War Devil has possessed Denji's love interest and manipulated the Chainsaw Devil into devouring the Death Devil. Now people literally cannot die. The War Devil desires this so that wars can be endlessly waged without armies ever losing their ranks. A world without an end to suffering, without the concept of a mercy kill or putting someone out of their misery, amplifies humanity's fear of war to an unimaginable level. This makes the War Devil magnitudes stronger.

At this time as well, the United States reinvents nuclear weapons. Everyone suddenly remembers what nuclear weapons are and the consequences of their use. This newfound fear is another massive boon to the War Devil's strength. She proclaims her love for America and begins belting out "The Star-Spangled Banner". Meanwhile, the reader is shown a destroyed city and rows upon rows of irradiated corpses with their skin burned off.

This is, of course, an extremely on-the-nose critique of the United States' perpetual involvement in war, its massive military spending, and the way in which American culture idolizes and romanticizes the military. It is on-the-nose to the point that it pins the reader down and unleashes a flurry of punches to their face. Yet there is a small percentage of readers who have found the War Devil's love of America to be patriotic. And according to the death of the author, they are entitled to such a view, no matter how idiotic it is. It is situations like these for which authorial intent is required, so that Fujimoto has the right to step in and say something like "Holy crap you guys, you are delusional. Nearly every other nation in the world thinks the United States is a cesspool of rabid, war-mongering wolves".

This statement then poses the question: How do you tell what percent of a work's interpretation should be based on authorial intent and what percent should be based on the reader's personal experiences? I don't think there is a correct answer. There are too many variables and circumstances to consider for someone to ever arrive at definitive numbers.

Rather, I think that authorial intent and the death of the author should be balanced on a case-by-case basis in a way that best helps an audience member grow. Life is filled with suffering and hardship. At its core, communication allows individuals to exchange information in a way that alleviates suffering and improves a particular situation. Meanwhile, society is a massive, tangled network of communication channels aimed at improving life overall, and the only way to effectively communicate is to both understand others and oneself.

Abiding by authorial intent helps us understand others. It lets you see why someone acts a certain way, believes certain things, and pursues certain desires. On the other hand, embracing the death of the author helps us understand ourselves. It helps you see why you act a certain way, believe certain things, and pursue certain desires. They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I have a feeling that many of those good intentions come from people stumbling through life with one eye shut.

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Cover image is from Ice Age: The Meltdown. It is available to stream on most platforms.

You can read more about Frida Kahlo and her work here

You can find physical volumes of Chainsaw Man at your local bookstore and online. You can read it digitally as well.