SteelHead wrote:that is some truly amazing wild speculation, demonstrating true creative genius. It is the type of literary creation of meaning in a story where there was none that my English professor who saw Christ figures in every thing and who couldn't just accept that "the old man and the sea" was just a story about a dude and a fish without multiple layers of deep hidden meanings would applaud.
There is certainly always that danger in trying to pierce the "true meaning" of a text. And yet some texts do have authorial meanings imbedded in them. In other words, there is a message put into the story itself which may tend to illustrate themes the author seeks to address in a narrative, rather than a didactic, fashion.
And it is always possible to pull something like this out of a story where the author intended no such thing.
I remember my high school Humanities teacher who went on and on about the symbolism in Huckleberry Finn, in spite of Twain's admonition not to do so at the front of the book. And yet there are a lot of profound themes in Huckleberry Finn, at least some of which I think Twain was fully aware when he wrote it.
On a related note, I think those stories that move us most often do so because they reach us on a deep level, the narratives speaking to our hearts in the language of archetype, a language which we may not even be able to articulate, but only to feel.
All the Best!
--Consiglieri