The Turn of the Screw by Barry - Book Report/Review Example

Because only the individual has direct experience of the images, sounds, and associations in his or her mind, any attempt to explain them in words is a failure at least in part. No matter how profound the description, it cannot completely recreate the exact same idea if for no other reason than the duplicate would be separated from the original by time and space. That is, even if a person could recreate the same image in the mind of another, it would not be exactly the same because it is not in the exact same time and place.

For example, one may utter this simple sentence: A cat runs. Both the originator of the statement and any others whom interpret it will come to necessarily differing interpretations. The cat running in the originator's mind is not the cat running in the reader's mind. Although they may be exactly the same in every exoteric fashion, the images exist in two differing minds or at two differing times and therefore cannot be the exact same cat running. Furthermore, it is a characteristic of writing that words and their meanings influence the meanings of other words in their respective contexts.

For example, take this simple statement again: A cat runs. Compare it to the following statement: The cat ran. It is a distinctly different meaning even though a much greater portion of the sentence remains in tact than has been changed. Applying dialecticism, we demonstrate this fact even further. Take a word -- cats, and add another word to it - run. When we synthesize "cats" with "run," we now have: Cats run. The sentence detracts from the individual meaning of each word while synthesizing a new meaning.

The order of words is also relevant. Combine the words "cats" and "run" in different order, and we now have: Run cats. Combine this level of uncertainty with the observation that definitions of word s are only meanings of those words described in virtue of the meanings of other words. Thus, a writer never completely controls the meaning of his or her writing given these properties of language. This says nothing of the complexity personal experience brings to the problem of linguistic communication.

So, when someone asks if you understand what they mean, the only thoroughly truthful response is that you partial understanding them, if any.This literary logic may be described as a hierarchy of contexts. Letters exist in the context of terms, terms in the context of sentences, sentences within paragraph, and paragraphs within texts. The interpretations of texts are couched within one's subjective understanding. Subjective understanding is communicated within an interpersonal forum. The interpersonal forum exists within public forums which all exist within the global forum, and the global forum exists within the cosmos.

The cosmos itself is largely undefined to human understanding, but even if it was completely defined, language would still hold no purely objective significance because that is the poverty of human language systems as demonstrated above.In Beginning Theory, Barry contended this process of deconstruction demonstrates the characteristic of language to generate infinite webs of meaning making all writing necessarily contradictory in reality. To what extent does a critical reading of The Turn of the Screw exhibit or challenge this assertion Similar to