When an author loses his or her voice in the writing, the writing takes on a new life of its own in which the language in the writing speaks louder than the author themselves. In “Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes, Barthes uses critical thinking, metaphors, and repetition to further support his point. Barthes explains through reasoning and literary examples that when an author loses touch with the artwork he or she is producing, that the work becomes distorted. 

Barthes starts out his short story with a literary example of another author successfully removing himself from his story and creating a much more interesting piece of literature which brings about many questions. He wants the reader to be captured in the story so that they reader better understands the full meaning of the text. The story is called Sarrasine and it is written by Balzac. Balzac, even though he is a man, writes a story about a mysterious woman who seems to have many things to hide. He would not have been able to achieve this if he hadn’t first eliminated himself from the story. By doing so, Balzac brought the entire story to life and made readers very intrigued with his writing. Barthes explains this throughout his writing of “The Death of the Author.” Barthes states that a piece of written literature is the neutral zone where the writing takes its own life. It is the area where identity is lost and the only life is that of which is coming from the body of the story. Such an act causes the reader to think more about the plot and the underlying purpose. Barthes uses critical thinking to help the reader understand that when an author is lost, the work becomes whole.

Barthes also uses metaphors to help explain his meaning behind “The Death of the Author”. Barthes explains how the author’s “death” must occur in order for the writing to be born. Barthes, of course, is not saying that the author needs to actually go and kill themselves; he is saying that the author must lose touch with themselves and the outside world in order for the story to take on its own life and meaning. By losing touch with yourself you get rid of your bias towards the story, allowing it to create thoughts for itself and put those onto the reader. Barthes says when “the author enters into his own death, writing begins” (The Carolina Reader 13). This quote from Barthes sums up the story in one short line. The author of a story must not be greedy in the sense that they want to control what occurs throughout his or her writing. Once the story has been born, the author must do his or her best to thicken its plot and help it flourish, but not tune the story so much to the authors own bias that the story loses its originality. Barthes also says “To give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing” (The Carolina Reader 15). When you do not have the death of an author occur in a piece of writing, then the story can never reach its full potential and he or she is putting a barrier on how great that writing could be.

Another tool that Barthes uses to help explain his point behind his writing is repetition. Repetition is used throughout the text to stress the point that the death of an author brings about the life of a story. Barthes uses the story by Balzac repeatedly to show an example of when an author has successfully been removed from the story. Barthes titled the story “The Death of the Author” and he stresses what the meaning of the “death” of an author is throughout his whole writing. He repeats phrases such as when “the author enters into his own death, writing begins” multiple times in the story to stress that the author has a significant impact on a writing and if that writing will truly be something on its own (The Carolina Reader 13). One can simply start a story and create something new, but once the author has tried too hard to make the story the way that he or she wants it, the story loses its life. An author is there to nourish the story and help it grow. When an author tries too hard to make the story their own, it becomes simply that. The writing becomes simply an extension of the author and prohibits the work from becoming something of its own. The author has a significant amount of power when it comes to making their story one of originality. By including ones personal bias into a story, one is simply just expressing the bias that society and other factors of the world have put on them. 

Barthes does an excellent job in his piece “The Death of an Author” of explaining to the reader how an author has such a large impact on their writings. Through the use of critical thinking, metaphors, and repetition he explains that an author must first die in order for a story to take life. When writing a story the author is simply there to help build it up and help it become what it truly is. To adjust the story to the authors liking is to take the life away from it. 
