Intentional Heuristic
To accurately discern what does and does not happen in fictional stories, one must develop a kind of “story competence,” which Livingston describes in “What’s the Story?” Story competence relies on making judgements based on reasoning about characters’ motives and authors’ intentions. Only the latter is of concern here, which Livingston refers to as the “intentional heuristic:” a moderate form of intentionalism.
The intentional heuristic is an aid used to determine which beliefs an author intended his or her audience to accept in order for the story to be understood. This differs from the rationality heuristic, which Livingston also illustrates, in that it does not only describe the causal actions of characters, but delves into the direct state of mind of the author. However, not all of the author’s beliefs should be taken into consideration when reading a story. Only those beliefs the author ‘effectively intended’ the reader to utilize are of importance (Livingston 347) .
According to Livingston, “effective intentions are not necessarily conscious, nor are they a matter of an author’s future-directed musing about what he or she may eventually write” (347). Instead, Livingston specifies, effective intentions are those that posses meaning for specific actions, and only those which offer explanation to plans or goals of the author (347). It is not an exhaustive list of the author’s personal beliefs or biographical information that matters, but rather only those few that are imbedded into the story itself. The reader must therefore identify those beliefs the author wants him or her to adopt, and make-believe while reading and making sense of the story (Livingston 348).
Sorting through all the possible beliefs of an author may be problematic, and may also be a reason why many are exclusive readers to a certain author or specific genre. In both cases, the reader is able to extract some external information from knowledge of an author’s previous work or from other works that incorporate similar ideas. This is an effective way of deciding which beliefs the author wants to be adopted, by making relations between a present story and ones previously written. It may also be helpful to know the time and place the story was written. Sometimes present-day knowledge can contradict the content of stories written in the past. It is thus pertinent that one keeps the story’s context at the fore front of thought when trying to extract the underlying content.
There are many times in which a reader will interpret a piece of literature in a way that was completely unintended by the author. In her article, “In the Canon, for All the Wrong Reasons”, Amy Tan discusses people telling her the meaning behind her own stories, her experiences with criticism, and how this has affected her approach to writing moving forward. While this may seem ironic, considering the topic, I have my own interpretations of this article. Firstly, Amy Tan addresses how people will often tell her what her own work means and the symbolism in her writing.
Often, when a story is told, it follows the events of the protagonist. It is told in a way that justifies the reasons and emotions behind the protagonist actions and reactions. While listening to the story being cited, one tends to forget about the other side of the story, about the antagonist motivations, about all the reasons that justify the antagonist actions.
A very common saying is “Don’t judge a book by its cover” which essentially means that everything is not always as it seems, there is usually much more to the story than what meets the eye. Death of a Salesman and “The Cat’s Table” both involve major elements proving that not everything is black and white, including setting, point of view, and symbolism. All of these crucial parts of literature help in proving that there is always more to a story, and that people do deserve the benefit of the doubt.
This is a main factor in how, and how well, we discern the good from the bad and has everything to do with Robert’s differentiation between the anticlimactic and the irrevocable. A part of the anticlimactic is an inability for all of the pieces to come to a single point. If one’s background is different from another’s, then the pieces will come together or fail to converge, depending. Some readers pick up right away that Rosalind is a sociopath, while others are unshakably convinced the moment that she enters the stage. If one does not have the right background, the very thing that allows us to interpret this piece of literature, one will suffer from a lessened ability to discern good from bad; true from untrue; and yes, anticlimactic from irrevocable.
In ‘unreliable narration’ the narrator’s account is at odds with the implied reader's surmises about the story’s real intentions. The story und...
This theory is not only credible in literature, to discuss the intentions of an author, but is also effectively used in film, to discuss the intentions of a director. One benefit of this theory is that it can help with many literary problems. For example, Freudian critics not only “stress distinction between the conscious and the unconscious”, but also uncover “the unconscious motives of characters” as well as see “an embodiment of classic psychoanalytic conditions” within literary works (Barry 101). By drawing connections between concepts in the text, we are able to further enrich our understanding of the work and, if we plan to discuss it with others, are able to yield a meaningful, coherent interpretation of the
Douglas Light said that our imagination is better than any answer to a question. Light distinguished between two genres: fantasy from fiction. He described how fantasy stimulates one’s imagination, which is more appealing, but fiction can just be a relatable story. In the same way, Books and movies are very different entities. In the short parable Doubt, the readers are lured in to the possibility of a scandalous relationship between a pastor and an alter boy. The readers’ curiosity is ignited because they are not given all the details. Therefore, their mind wanders further than the plot to create a story and characters that acted on one’s imagination; thus, the story became entertaining- flooded by the questions of what? Who? How? By which the reader can only answer. At this point, the readers create their own movie in a way. They will determine important aspects: how the character speaks, looks like, and reacts. Whereas, in the movie, the reader has no choice but to follow the plot laid out in front of them. No longer can they picture the characters in their own way or come up with their different portrayals. The fate of the story, while still unpredictable, was highly influenced by the way the characters looked, spoke, and presented themselves on screen. The movie leaves little to viewers' imaginations.In order to be entertained by literature or art, the viewer needs to feel that they can use their imagination and not be confined to a plot that reveals all.
In conclusion, it is hard to grasp the true meaning of the story unless the story is read a second time because of the author's style of writing.
All stories consist of a few common structural elements found universally in myths, fairy tales, dreams, and movies. They are known collectively as The Hero’s Journey. Understanding these elements and their use in modern writing is the object of our quest. Used wisely, these ancient tools of the storytellers craft still have tremendous power to heal our people and make the world a better place (xxvii).
...it up to each reader to draw their own conclusions and search their own feelings. At the false climax, the reader was surprised to learn that the quite, well-liked, polite, little convent girl was colored. Now the reader had to evaluate how the forces within their society might have driven such an innocent to commit suicide.
reader creates “supplementary meaning” to the text by unconsciously setting up tension, also called binary opposition. Culler describes this process in his statement “The process of thematic interpretation requires us to move from facts towards values, so we can develop each thematic complex, retaining the opposition between them” (294). Though supplementary meaning created within the text can take many forms, within V...
Now, one might argue that because the narrator thinks this story “is worth a book in itself. Sympathetically set forth it would tap many strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men”, then he is biased: ergo, he’s an unreliable narrator (1940). However, being biased in and of itself is not the sole criterion for a narrator be...
In making stories: Law, Literature, Life, Jerome Brunner drives one to contemplate about the characteristics of stories, but also to consider the various ways one uses them to sail across the predicament of a human beings experiences. Narratives are set to be congenital and one understands allegedly how they work. We hardly take the time to think on how our narratives or whoever’s, constrain us, and why chronicles have the power to overhaul our beliefs as well as get in the way of our intellect, or how they brunt our humanoid institutions. In addition, it’s contended that stories are the “building blocks” of human experiences and are also a very important piece to what we call “Self” along with the emblem to our interactions with society, it also distinguishes one apart from the exceedingly assertive humanoid institutions, in spite of, Law. Making Stories drifts in the argument that narrative is crucial for our soundness, reason and education in explaining and understanding human experiences.
In the simplest form, there is a basic structural pattern to narratives, as expressed through Tzvetan Todorov’s explanation of narrative movement between two equilibriums. A narrative begins in a stable position until something causes disequilibrium, however, by the end of the story, the equilibrium is re-established, though it is different than the beginning (O’Shaughnessy 1999: 268). Joseph Cam...
in the story the author has given an example of such situations and has left the readers to make their own