
Two texts can be very similar yet vary greatly from each other depending on someone’s views. It is not all about what the author wants it to be; it is mainly all about the reader. This is something that is found in common between the texts, “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes and “Is That a Symbol?” by Thomas C. Foster. They both argue similar points that the interpretation of a text is not necessarily what an author means for it to be. It is subject to the way a reader interprets it in their own mind based off of their own life and the way the writing is laid out. 

An author may purposefully organize his piece in a specific way but it is up to the reader to interpret the language of the text. This is the main glaring similarity between the two pieces of writing but is also where their main difference comes into play. The difference is that in “The Death of the Author”, it stresses that there is still some power held within the author to control what he wants his text to read as. Barthes states that “we shall never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin” (Barthes 12). This is clearly making a claim that writing takes away where the author’s ideas originate. It allows the reader the opportunity to read it over multiple times and form their own opinions. He can play with the tone and language of his text to make a point that is universal to every reader. It is not entirely like “Is That a Symbol?” because in Foster’s text he explains how the author can infuse a symbol into his work but the author has no control over how the reader will interpret it upon coming across it. 

This comparison is essential to being able to tell what is intentional by an author and what is not. Something such as a symbol could be either intentional or unintentional but based off of Barthes’ piece of writing it makes it more clear to the reader to determine what is in fact intentional. He stresses that the piece of writing contains certain language that can clearly be picked out by the reader and going off that someone can see if the said piece was meant to be interpreted a certain way by the author. In his writing Barthes says that “it is language which speaks, not the author; to write is, through a prerequisite impersonality, to reach that point where only the language acts, performs, and not ‘me’” (Barthes 13).  Here he is self-proclaiming that the “Death of the Author”. He is an author himself and he is stating that it does not matter what he wants the entirety of his work to accomplish with a message and that it is all up to someone with a completely different life. Everybody has their own life story, which leads them to be influenced by the world around them rather than what is printed or written on the pages in front of them.  Barthes also goes over why some pieces are longer than others. He explains that this is not something controlled by the author but it is simply when there is no more writing to be written. This is something else that the author has no control over and contributes to “the death of the author”. That and the fact that nothing an author writes is guaranteed to be read as he or she expects it to be read. From the comparison of both texts it would be more beneficial to the reader to read “Is That a Symbol?” by Thomas C. Foster before reading “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes because the reader can first see how something an author writes can be interpreted in several different ways before seeing how the author may have wanted it to be read in the second piece. Either can be read before the other but in my opinion I think it is better to see the many different colors of a text before seeing the actual intentions of the author. The two works may come from two very different authors with completely different lives and born at different times but they still argue a lot of the same points. People think works that we study everyday in school and in life were all meant for the purpose of learning. What people fail to realize is that these authors did not intend for schools nationwide and even globally to sit down, analyze, and write about their own interpretations of their text. Writing was the sole passion of many of these authors and many try to teach life lessons and get through to people but in reality some have died and all that is left of them is their writing. Thus, allowing others to take their work and freely piece together their own opinion. The two works by Barthes and Foster, although different, explain this proposition of the power of the reader. 

The main point that the two works make is that regardless of an author’s intentions, well-written literary works are often ambiguous enough that reader’s are forced to make interpretations about the meaning and purpose within a book. Literature is intended to make individuals think and digest material that may not all be explicitly stated. Often, however, individuals are subject to interpreting certain works of literature incorrectly. While this is often harmless, sometimes its not. Take the example of  Lee Harvey Oswald, the infamous murderer of John Kennedy. Oswald claimed that his insanity was derived from reading “Catcher in the Rye”, the famous novel, and argued that his interpretation of the book lead him to kill Kennedy. Now clearly when J.D. Salinger sat down to write “Catcher in the Rye” he was not intending to write a work that led people to start murdering people, but the second his pen hit the paper, he loses all control over how readers interpret his work. Like Foster’s argument, the author has very little control over how people will interpret various symbols or scenes. Often the reader’s own life experiences and social environment has shaped him or her to read the novel and interpret the novel in a certain way. While the author can do his or her best to push the reader in the right direction by using clear and explicit metaphors or symbols, ultimately it is the reader who makes the story come to life.

Ultimately, an author cannot expect that everything he or she writes will be interpreted correctly, or as the author may have intended. That being said, I personally think this is one of the things that makes rich literature beautiful-the fact that it has multiple interpretations and understandings. Unlike the math or science world, in which everything is definitive and absolute, the world of literature is full of possibilities and different approaches. So while a reader may not interpret a work the way an author intended, is that truly that bad? I agree with the claim that there has been a metaphoric “death of the author”, but I am not sure that is such a bad thing. I think that what makes literature magnificent is the fact that different people can read and apply a story to their own individual life, regardless of whether this interpretation is “correct” or “intended”.