Death of the Author

In his essay "Death of the Author", Roland Barthes argues that the author is not the important part of understanding a writing.  It is instead the reader who is crucial to the interpretation, as it is only theirs that matters.  He asks to carefully remove the author from his work, as not to limit our interpretive abilities.  He states that a text's meaning "does not in its origins, but in its destination".  This means that it is not the author's styles and continuity between projects that we should critique writing on, but that we should think about what it means to us as readers.

The western film is known for the classic ride-into-the-sunset ending, which “My Darling Clementine” twists so subtly, but so interestingly. From the title of the movie to the character’s interactions throughout, we can fairly assume that Wyatt and Clementine end up together. In most of his movies, Ford would have set them towards the sunset on the same horse. Instead, they share their love for each other – ever so delicately – and then Wyatt simply kisses her and leaves. At first glance, this seems cold for Wyatt to do, especially after we have seen his humanistic greatness throughout the film. With context, however, this ending becomes more profound and reasoned. Before this film was made, Ford served in the military during World War II. Wyatt’s departure can be mirrored to Ford’s goodbye to Hollywood before the war; while they are both riding away to do their duties, they will undoubtedly return to the thing that they love and, especially in Ford’s case, we know how powerfully they reappear.

I have recently been reading the novel Trainspotting and I am just blown away by how unique of book it is.  Firstly, the way it is written to mimic Scottish dialects is a challenging aspect, but I have never read anything like it.  The book changes perspective many times, which really changes the way that we see these characters as a whole.  For example, many of the different narrators love Rents, arguably the main character so far but really, who knows at this point in the book.  Anyways, these narrators' love is not shared by all.  One of his sober friends who narrates a chapter, for example, hates his fucking guts.  I am so far engrossed by the book and I strongly recommend it but be warned: it is not your average book, in a formal or thematic sense.