In literature, as in real life, it’s rare to come
across two or more people who have identical interpretations of the same text. Even
if the text has an ending or particular area that largely is definite or ambiguous,
there are several levels of readers of whom this extra level is lost on. Take,
for example, this picture from Alice in
Wonderland of the caterpillar upon his mushroom. In the classic story, one
may interpret this illustration as having either a man’s face (with a pointy
nose and chin) or an actual caterpillar’s face (with both front legs of the caterpillar
being above his arms). As a child, I always defaulted to the humanoid face,
although often thinking it odd; every few years I would again discover that
this picture had the capabilities to represent him as a more proper caterpillar,
and, at the age of each discovery, it became the gem of my reading. While we
tend to illustrate stories in our minds when we read them (I, as a rule, tend
to illustrate much less than others I know), this picture forces us to attend
to how much humanity (vs. realism, although I hesitate to use such a word in
relation to Alice in Wonderland) we
like to assign the caterpillar.
When you’re trying to read a text
for analysis, however, it’s much more likely that you’ll initially uncover this
prized double-meaning. One done as subtly as the above illustration really
encourages thought outside of the reading. The trick to dealing with ambiguity,
I believe, has not so much to do with picking a certain direction the story should go but analyzing your initial
reaction to a piece of largely ambiguous text, and approaching the many possibilities
to search for meaning. Why am I able to react to the caterpillar as more or
less human? Does defining him as either change my reading experience? Do I feel
differently towards him as a character because of my interpretation? With the
proper push, ambiguity can be very rewarding to the more analytical reader.
