Authorial Intention

How relevant is the author’s interpretation of his/her own work?

Whilst cycling home from Greenwich one evening recently I had an idea where a man rapes his shadow and is sentenced to live in the dark. I actually forgot about it, as I was preoccupied trying to stay upright, and luckily the idea resurfaced a few days later – at a time when I had access to a pen and paper.

As with pretty much every other idea I have, I wrote a few thoughts down, left it, and came back at a later date. I’m still not completely happy with the final result, as I’ve managed to create a more concise version of the same story in just six words:

Shadow rapist sentenced: lifetime of darkness

I do prefer the six-word version, though I will continue to talk about the original for now.

There are certain subjects that I don’t feel comfortable writing about – I won’t go into them now – but essentially it is because either I am not the right person to talk about such a topic, or I don’t have good reason too.

Rape is a serious problem in our society. I didn’t know – and still don’t in all honesty – whether writing about it is okay, as a man. With that said, it isn’t an issue exclusively affecting women, so why would there be an issue in my writing about it? I think it’s a grey area and I wouldn’t write a rape scene as I feel that would be insensitive, is unnecessary, and would not necessarily produce a positive response; this post has an opportunity to elicit a discussion a.

I sent the picture to a friend who is an English Literature graduate to ask for his opinion. His response:

“Talk me through this. What are the lines for?”

The response surprised me a little in that I didn’t expect to have to explain anything (not because it’s shallow or easily discernable, but because I thought it would be something that would cause an instant reaction).

In answering his question, I revealed an authorial interpretation that I hadn’t consciously considered, which was:

“Ignoring the words for the minute... The minimal "report" of the incident undermines the severity of what happened (it's supposed to look like a few column inches in a newspaper, like when The Sun issues an apology and hides it away). The line colour is what I consider the colour of blood, and they're torn across the words to give it a harsher look, the opposite of a safe space, if you will.”

That explanation came out of nowhere. (I know what you’re going to say, Freudians.) Clearly my intentions were subconscious in my artisticly (ha!) “cutting” the piece up with the claret-coloured lines. But what intrigued me most was how valid my interpretation was. Just because I wrote it, doesn’t necessarily mean I have the right to decide how it is interpreted. I don’t own any of the letters, or words, or the image. Yes, I placed them all in that order, to create a complete piece but what happens next is beyond my control.

There are three schools of thought: the anti-intentionalist will say the meaning stored in a piece is entirely determined by linguistic and literary conventions; the intentionalist will say the interpreters (you, the reader) should concern themselves with the author’s intentions; then there is something called ‘hypothetical intentionalism’ which says the work’s meaning should be decided on a hypothesis of the author’s intention based on information about the author and the work at the time of publication. Can of worms, isn’t it!?

I don’t usually explain my work – nor do I think any writer or artist should – but for the purpose of this blog post, I will make an exception and you, as interpreter extraordinaire, can decide on the work’s true meaning (if such a thing exists) based on which of the three camps above you feel most drawn to.

A man rapes his shadow. The shadow wasn’t wearing underwear. The judge sentences a lifetime of darkness.

Sentence one: I don’t concern myself with ‘hows’ in writing. “How would a man rape his shadow?” – I don’t care. It’s an abstract concept. All that is important is the action has been established.

Sentence two: This detail came later. Even though the piece is really short, I wanted to “spend” a good portion of the words on something inconsequential, as a way of highlighting the absurdity. There was a rape case in the news recently with a victim’s underwear at the forefront of the case. The underwear actually played a role in the outcome (look it up – seriously). By doing this, I am hopefully shocking the reader as 1) shadow’s don’t wear underwear, but also 2) why is the shadow’s underwear important? If this sentence can lead the reader to those two points, I’ll be a happy man.

Sentence three: Of the three I think this is the most self-explanatory. If a man is sentenced to live in the dark, what becomes of his shadow? A shadow cannot exist without light, therefore the shadow – the victim in this case – suffers the ultimate punishment while the man lives on, albeit in the dark. Not fair, is it? Who was in the wrong, again?