Blue curtains

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There is a common joke about literature teachers going like this.

Author writes: "The curtains were blue."

Lit teacher says: "This reflects on the generally depressed state of the protagonist."

Author meant: "The curtains were blue."

Ha ha ha. Drum rolls. 

 

Of course, there is a kernel of truth in it. Sometimes, even lit teachers go overboard and overinterpret stuff. But I think the joke misses the point for two reasons. On the one hand, authorial intent really doesn't matter. And on the other, this asks the wrong question. 

 

What do I mean by "the wrong question"? Indulge me for a moment. The first question shouldn't be "what does the color of the curtains mean?". It should be "Why do I need to know the color in the first place?" Now, with most novels you read, it's perfectly likely that the author didn't mean anything by that and just added the color of the curtains randomly. This happens all the time. It's filler. Why did I write "indulge me" earlier? It sounded nice to me in that moment. I'm not a Great Writer (tm).

But in school, you don't read random novels picked up from the train station's news vendor, but works by Great Writers. And these guys usually think more about what they write. This has to do with how literature works. When I write "P. Rotagonist walked into the living room", you will inadvertently create a mental image of this living room from the general concept of "living room" you hold in your head. Likely it will be modelled on your own, your parents or some other you know that holds this very generic "living room space" in your head. This is the power of literature. I don't need to do more to evoke an image. 

 

But maybe I want to. So I can do "P. Rotagonist walked into Stefan's living room." So, are you now imagining a living room with an imposing book shelf and a glass vitrine in which Game of Thrones novels and figurines are arrayed? Sure you are. I mean, it's my living room after all, and what do you know about me? I'm an ASOIAF fan, and I read. So these things go in. Bamm, living room mental image recreated. 

 

But suppose I as the author want to give more details. "P. Rotagonist walked into the living room. It's walls were coated in dark wooden panels, with a gilded chandellier hanging deep from the ceiling, the windows covered by heavy blue curtains." Suddenly, the color of the curtains does matter. It's not because blue suddenly has some deep, secret meaning, but because it goes into the general mood. This living room is oppressive and dark, and that tells us something about its owner. 

 

Another example would be this: "P. Rotagonist walked into the living room. The floor tiles were dark blue, the walls covered in a shade of indigo, the furniture colored in a light blueish hue and the curtains were blue, too." The color now matters because the whole room is blue, hinting at an obsession of its owner. 

 

I could go on. But you see that I'm asking a different question. Why the curtains are blue cannot be divorced from the fact that the author wants me to know they are blue, and that is wedded to a larger context and doesn't mean anything by itself. 

 

So the next time your protagonist walks into a room with blue curtains, ask yourself why you need to know. If there's no reason, than it's just a random detail. If it fits with a larger theme, then there's your answer. 

 

However, what the author actually meant doesn't matter.

 

You might be confused now. The theory behind this is called "The Death of the Author", and it posits that since we never can know for sure what the author meant with the blue curtains when they wrote them - including the author themselves, memory is faulty, after all -, all that really matters is how we as reader perceive it. This is another great power of literature: it serves as a mirror for everyone reading it. 

 

Let me give you an example. If you get the reading that the blue curtains are hinting at depression, there can be two reasons for that. Either it's all over the text - P. Rotagonist is a depressive character, maybe - and therefore the blue curtains fit in an overarching theme. That's likely your lit teacher's angle here, and it's very solid. The other reason is that they really are simply blue curtains, but since you as the reader have strong preconceptions about the color blue and depression, you instinctively draw this connection and derive new meaning from it. 

 

And that's perfectly fine, to a degree. It's possible that you now think that P. Rotagonist has depressional inclings, at least in this part of the story. There's nothing to prove this. There's nothing to disprove this. It's a small detail that resonates with you and you alone and make the text more meaningful to you. It becomes problematic where it flat-out contradicts the text, for example if in all other instances, P. Rotagonist is just the gayest chipper imaginable and that's his whole persona. In this case, your depressional bout simply doesn't fit and likely leads yo astray. That's why our lit teacher wrote in your essay that this interpretation is wrong. 

 

I want to move away from the blue curtains for one final example about this. Think of "The Sworn Sword". I've stated in essays and podcasts multiple times now that Ser Eustace's monologue about Daemon Blackfyre and why he would've made the better king resonates so strongly with me. I get a very strong vibe of "Dolchstoßlegende", the "stab-in-the-back-myth" that did so much to bring down the first German democracy in the 20s. What Ser Eustace is saying resonates with me because I make this connection. You might not make that connection, and I have no way of knowing whether or not Martin intended this connection. But it doesn't matter. Literature gives me a new angle to connect to this issue and think about it, and that's all it needs to do.