To address the topic of "can you ever read too far into something," Dr. Sexson read us part of an essay written in regards to the seemingly infinite number of signs and symbols within Nabokov's piece "Signs and Symbols." After about 2 pages of rigorous analysis, the writer had finished his direct address of the first sentence, "For the fourth time in as many years, they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to take to a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind." The analysis reminded me of one of those math problems:
*If Sally has 5 shirts, 2 pairs of pants, 1 skirt, and 6 pairs of shoes, how many different outfits can she make?*
It reminded me of this sort of math problem because the critic would analyze one word, then combine it with the following word and analyze them as a set and so on. This process lead to the discovery of a plethora of connections, allusions, and proposed hypotheses on the critic's behalf. ie - the word present.. birthday present.. is it presently his birthday? Are they presently presenting him with a present? What does the word "present" mean in this sentence?!
You can see how this story, or more accurately the analysis thereof, could drive a man mad.
However, the story only grew richer through this process. Why? We are meant to connect. We love to connect. Humans are relationship-oriented creatures; we marry for life, we travel in packs, we seek out companions, we communicate with one another constantly. It makes sense that we would all want to find connections does it not? So here I go with a quick analogy:
* I was sitting on my friend's couch eating cinnamon-sprinkled apple slices during a commercial break the new Star Trek movie. All the sudden a Corona commercial comes on. The setting: the beach. The plot: a man trying to bring some cervezas back to his friends. However, as he steps onto the sand, he quickly recoils; the sand is extremely hot. To solve his dilemma he acrobatically jumps from towel to towel of the others on the beach until he reaches his friends. They crack open their nice cold beers. End scene.*
What about this commercial stood out to me? What was its appeal? Some may say the happy image of enjoying a beer on the beach with friends. But no, rather it was the hot sand. I absolutely loved the hot sand because we all encounter it and battle it when at the beach; we can all empathize with that scenario, but it is not the first image (for me, I don't even think of it at all) that comes to mind when we think of the beach. My point here - a point that the marketing world has clearly picked up on - is that people like to connect and empathize and understand others and their situations.
[Watch the Corona Commercial by Clicking Here]
Therefore, the author's intention - what he/she was trying to place in their story as an allusion or reference - does not even matter. We should try to see as many connections as we can in every piece we read. Psychologists have been pushing this on those studying to teach for years now: we learn by making connections, so teach your kids to connect the material you want them to learn to as many things as they can. It not only works to remember material, but to get a better understanding of it. Imagine looking at a landscape for one day. If you sat in the same place all day you could be dropped into the middle of it and not recognize your surroundings at all. But if you explored the scene as thoroughly as you could during that day, you could be dropped anywhere throughout and have a sense of familiarity, if not mastery, of the terrain.
The point of all this? You can't read too far into things. It simply isn't possible. Reading works a lot like sight; what we perceive as the color blue is really an object that has absorbed every color besides blue. To see a piece of writing in the simplest terms - to understand it in such a way that we could explain it in the simplest terms - we must put every connection and sign and symbol we have into it. "And in the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time" - T.S. Eliot
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