Author Intent When Interpreting Books

[Shock and Awe]

For anyone who ever sat through a Literature Class in School the process of listening to someone try and dissect a work of literature is probably familiar to you. This usually takes the shape of a the teacher talking about things like the cap in the Catcher in the Rye symbolizing this or that. Sometimes this is quite interesting and it seems like a real insight into what the author was trying to do, and sometimes...it isn't [http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsrfuaP9qq1qcdhj4o1_400.jpg]. This along with Crash Course's series on Literature got me to thinking, how important is an Author's intent?

For me an excellent example of this is Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" on of my favorite books. In this book the Author has themes and plot points in the book that promote certain political and philosophical ideas. I agree with some of these and others I don't, but thats not really the point. Part of the reason I enjoyed the book was thinking about what the author meant and how he executed the idea. However the main reason I did enjoy was the sincere central plot that basically amounts to a coming of age story.

Then I saw the movie. Not gonna lie, I hated the movie. It was poorly done from an acting and technical standpoint and it basically made the entire thing a satire of the book. This is especially apparent when you look at what the director said. Now is it....correct to basically rewrite/interpret someone's story in a different way then intended by the author? Or should we try and stay on path with what the author intended?

 

[Nieroshai]

I think it depends on a few factors, chief of which being whether the writing is meant to convey a story directly or indirectly. A strong narrative should be allowed to stand on its own without interpretation since it interprets itself.

 

[Albino Boo]

Then I saw the movie. Not gonna lie, I hated the movie. It was poorly done from an acting and technical standpoint and it basically made the entire thing a satire of the book. This is especially apparent when you look at what the director said. Now is it....correct to basically rewrite/interpret someone's story in a different way then intended by the author? Or should we try and stay on path with what the author intended?

You have to remember that the director, Paul Verhoven, grew up during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Many of ideas of expressed in Starship Troopers where part of the ideology of Nazis. Having seen the real life effects of the anti democratic militarism, satirising the book is a rather mild response.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The movie was freaking brilliant, but then I never read the book.

Honestly though I don't care so much about author's intent. Once you release a story put into the public, it's up to them what it means or how it's viewed.

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

An inherent problem when it comes to interpreting written material is that once that material is released for other people's consumption, the author loses control over that material. It becomes, in many ways, whatever the reader wants it to be.

While it is very useful to look at what the author intended when they wrote something, that intent often becomes subsumed by the intent, goals, prejudices, perspectives, and biases of the reader. The reader then can interpret the material through those lenses of perception and create within their own mind whatever they wish out of the material, regardless of the author's original intent.

I bring this up because, as a historian, I've seen people's work that was intended to support a specific idea or position be turned into something completely different by the public at large. No matter how hard they tried to regain control over the idea they had presented, that idea was no longer in their hands exclusively and thus no longer truly under their control.

I admire your instructor's work in trying to bring to the forefront the intent of the original author. It is important and should always be done when discussing literature. However, the reality is that the interpretation of a body of work will always lie beyond the author's mind and in the mind of the reader.

 

[Nouw]

I think it's fine. It is, after all, Paul Verhoeven and Ed Neumeier's Starship Troopers. It's their adaptation and they can do what they want with it.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I'm fine with another person making changes to the original author's work if they're good and aren't pointless, but most of the time changes to the original author's work are done in a quality much less than the original work. Just look at almost any video game movies, movie-makers change so much about the original games to appeal to the "movie-watching audience!" that the movies just become crap. The Silent Hill movie could have been an awesome, creepy horror flick but instead they made Harry into a woman for no reason other than "MAN CAN'T LUV CHILD! DER IS LOST CHILD IN GAEM! MAKE MAIN CHARACTER WOMYN INSTED BECAUSE MAN NO WANT TO LOOK FOR LOST CHILD!", added in Pyramid Head for shitty fan-service and completely changed the whole cult and Alessa angle. It's a shame, because if they had done that one and the last one right we might have gotten a Silent Hill 2 movie, and SH2 is a perfect game to make into a movie.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

About half and half.

It's fine if you wanna tell your version of a story, as it's interesting to see what someone else's interpretation is. Actually, that's usually preferred when making an adaptation. Doing so, however, is a huge risk, as it's basically a gamble. Sometimes it can work incredibly well, and other times (some might say most of the time) it can fall completely flat on its ass. It's a much safer bet to just adapt a source material straight with the author's original intent, but even that has its pros and cons.