March Hare: …Then you should say what you mean.

Jaclyn Lund has left a new comment on your post ":Hidden Meanings" anyone?":

“I think that as the reader we have to make inferences based on the text. Maybe what we deduce is far from the writer's original intentions, but we have no way of knowing exactly what they meant at the time that the piece was written. The ‘hidden meanings’ that are found by the reader certainly differ based on the time in which a text is read, but the different conclusions that are drawn can only add another layer of meaning to the possible intentions of that author.”

Slowly, those of you posting to the blog have begun to differentiate between feeling and meaning.  Feelings remain inarticulate and nebulous until they get made concrete by word and action.  “Meaning” arises when our hunches about a text become concrete in word and action.

You might dismiss Bobby Stonecipher’s contention that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride the heart of “A Goodman is Hard to Find,” but you cannot blithely dismiss his articulation and its evidence.  Nor can you ignore Marc Bernstein’s suggestion that the genealogy beginning Beowulf portends disaster rather than the promise of renewal as generation passes to generation.

Jaclyn Lund settles the issue of “hidden meanings.”  The Misfit in O’Connor and Wiglaf in Beowulf have the last words.  Their words demonstrate the powerful fact that words have results in the actual world.  The words and actions of the Grandmother lead to her death; the words and actions of Beowulf lead to the devastation of his land and country.  Now, I would like to see us begin to explore the ways in which words have results and implications in the actual world.