Throughout Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author” he offers evidence that the future of writing lies with an author’s ability to remove themselves completely from their work. He writes that a text without an identified author is open to any interpretation, but if the author is identified then the meaning that can be taken from that text is limited. To claim that removing the author from the work allows the reader more freedom in their understanding of the text has merit, however Barthes seems to concludes that this is not possible. There is evidence that suggests it is impossible for an author to write without including a part of themselves in the text.  He also points out the hopelessness of attempting to put a definitive meaning to a text, as the meaning of the text differs for each individual.

There is a lot of focus on what it means to give a text an author. When Barthes’ talks about the “Author”, he is referring to the idea of putting meaning into a piece of writing. He states that, “when the Author has been found, the text is ‘explained’” (15). The author is not just the person writing but the identity behind what is written. Barthes compares the author to the modern scriptor. He defines the scriptor as a writer that, “no longer bears within him passions, humors, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws writing that can know no halt.” (15). The scriptor focuses on the language used to communicate rather than the feelings behind the words. The main difference between Barthes two types of authors lies in why they are writing. The author writes to provoke emotion and forces the reader to look into the deeper meaning of the text. Barthes speaks about an author’s work, “he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it” (14). The work is seen as an extension of the person that wrote it, rather than an independent idea with no defined meaning. 

 Barthes states that in the past writing was mostly viewed as a product of the author’s experience and that more modern texts are written with, “the hand, cut off from any voice” (15). Meaning that the authors persona is not present within the words of their text. However, he then states that a text is, “a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash” (14). This suggests that while each writer has their own style, the work they do will always be linked to the works that have influenced them. In order to construct a piece of writing without the authors voice, the writer would have to possess no knowledge of the topic prior to creating their work. Barthes affirms this by saying that, “the writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original” (15).  He means that all writing is influenced by the author and their personal history. In this way an author can never create something truly new, their work will always contain traces of the influences other authors have had on them. At the same time, because every writer is impacted by their own interpretation of different works, no two pieces of writing are exactly the same.  

The idea that the author of a text must be removed, in order to allow for more open interpretation of their work, implies that the author was at one point capable of effecting the reader’s opinion. In the first paragraph he defines writing as, “a neutral, composite oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost” (12). If written words do not contain any identity, then the person doing the writing never had an impact on the meaning taken from the text. He states that as soon as a something is narrated, “the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins” (13). An author can write a narrative from their perspective, including personal opinion and bias, but once written down the perception of their ideas comes from the reader.  Even the most gifted writers are only capable of pointing readers in a certain direction. There is no way of guaranteeing that the reader will understand an underlying message written into a text. The authors meaning may be missed completely by one individual, while another may find meaning that the author never intended.

In his conclusion Barthes focuses on the impact that the reader has on the interpretation of a text. He states that the common ground found within all writing is the reader. There are countless texts that have been written throughout history and they all contain ideas from different times, places and cultures. Barthes says that in all of these writings, “there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader” (16). This suggests that the origin of a text is irrelevant to the readers understanding of it. A writer’s past may influence the writing of the text, but the reader’s understanding comes from their personal experiences. “A text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination” (16). The author cannot fix a meaning to a text. It is the reader’s responsibility to put together the ‘unity’ of the words found within the text.

While the interpretation of a text comes from the reader, it is impossible to completely eliminate the identity of the author. A text is made up of the knowledge, experiences and views of the person that creates it. Even a scholarly essay is made up of the facts that the author finds the most important or relevant. In this way the author’s personal voice will always play a part in how their work is received by an audience. Barthes refers to the idea of removing the author from the text as a myth, one that must be forgotten. Whether they are called authors, writers or scriptor, is not relevant to their role in a text. The person is forever disconnected from their work at the moment another individual begins to read.
