Reading through Crosman’s essay, I found myself in complete agreement with his thesis.  Readers do make meaning, but there are multiple meanings within a text.  Individual “translation” can only be viewed as wrong if the interpretation does not logically fit within a wider context.  As Crosman points out in discussing In a Station, the average reader does not look for meaning beyond the literal level.  It is only within critical circles, universities, and classrooms that readers seek a deeper meaning.  The case with most students, though, is that they are average readers.  They typically do not look for meaning beyond the literal level.  It is up to as teachers, then, to revive that natural sense of curiosity.

If I may take a step back for a moment, reading is indeed translation; we take what the author writes and make it our own.  There have been numerous times that while reading a novel I have created specific images of characters in my mind – only to be disappointed by someone else’s interpretation when the work is translated into film.  The Think-Aloud groups demonstrated this act: they gave meaning to the poem by connecting various words to images.  Like Crosman indicates, the group members filled in information where it was lacking and provided a context for the images in the poem.  For example, Naomi connected the green bottle to a medicinal flask.  It follows logically, then, that multiple meanings can, and do, exist when individual readers translate the text in different ways.

The danger here is that students might take this “there is no one right answer” theory and run with it.  I can clearly envision a ninth grader sitting down to plow through a text, shouting “I’m done!” and writing “This means X, and I’m right because you said there is no one correct answer”, then tearing off into the next assignment scribbled into their homework pad.  The trick is to teach our students to think critically, in opposition to Hirsch’s antiquated view.  Hirsch views teachers and professor as supreme knowledge-givers, ready to fill up empty minds with as much institutionally approved information as possible before it begins leaking out of their students’ ears.  The question thus presents itself – why bother teaching students to think critically when traditional higher education seems to eschew such skill?  Fortunately not all lit professors are like this (and I think they are becoming the exception rather than the norm), nor are high school English teachers.  I used to tell my students the story of a paper I wrote in undergrad for my Contemporary American Novel course.  I took a position completely contrary to that of my professor, one upon which she had actually written her doctoral dissertation.  But because I placed my translation of Glasgow’s Barren Ground within a logical context, I received an A on the paper.  The message to my students was clear – no answer is wrong as long as it is provable within a valid framework.  Then, to help avoid assertions that A Tale of Two Cities was really about the American Civil War (shades of Professor Sample’s anecdote regarding The Flea), we practiced making statements of meaning and supporting them with text. 

I found, though, that the concept of ambiguous meaning was difficult for some of my students to grasp.  As Karen revealed, they want an answer and generally dislike uncertainty.  Their beliefs are dictated by traditional schooling mores – in their minds, the teacher is (like Hirsch’s view) the supreme knowledge-giver.  The student’s goal is to find what the teacher wants and present it accordingly.  The “schoolish behavior” lens causes them to do what Crosman says; they create the truths of their academic universe in concert with their “ethical, social, or political needs or wants” (163). In other words, years of fetching brings about academic misconceptions clung to as though they were the absolute truth. 

And so we are left to ponder – how do we open up our students’ minds?  The answer is simple: by opening our own, first.  We must accept multiple readings of a text and understand that all of us – writers and readers alike – make meaning.  We must also accept the responsibility of cultivating deeper thinkers and helping our students learn to ask good questions.  Because from good questions come good answers, and at the end of the day, isn’t that we really want?

Ginny