Complete Conformity is Nonexistent

The debate between George Will and Stephen Greenblatt is quite intriguing. Each side presents somewhat sane ideas, but each with their own twist, and on the whole each side has a valid argument.

George Will  claims, "The supplanting of esthetic by political responses to literature makes literature primarily interesting as a mere index of who had power and who the powerful victimized." The point Will makes here seems justifiable, it is evident that in literature it is quite easy to see who had power, no matter if the author agreed with said power or not. In the Tempest, an "imperialistic rape of the Third World" as Will labels it, there is some evidence that Shakespeare intended to display the inhumane acts of his country, and whether one perceives it to be positive or negative, it undoubtedly shows what party, or particular mindset, governed the time period. Yet, as Will makes his sarcastic blows at classics such as Moby Dick, he mocks the fact that people read way too much into an author's meaning. Though the author's meaning may not have been as blunt as Will jokingly makes it seem, his point is clear, implying that instead of giving works such as The Tempest many meanings, it simply makes more sense to assess the time period given and literally follow the supposed story put forth by the author in the given piece. However, this assumption seems far fetched, for how can one ever really know what the the author truly intended?

Stephen Greenblatt's views are almost perfectly opposite from those of George Will. Greenblatt conveys "But art, the art that matters, is not cement. It is mobile, complex, elusive, disturbing. A love of literature may help to forge community; but it is a community founded on imaginative freedom, the play of language, and scholarly honesty, and not on flag waving, boosterism, and conformity." I cannot help but agree with this point that Greenblatt makes, even though it contradicts Will's, it simply makes sense to explore the depths of literature and come up with any possible undeveloped theories about a given piece of text, for it is only human nature to try and expand our horizons in every way humanly possible.

After reading through both of these articles, I believe I know where I stand, and that is on the side of Greenblatt. I completely concur with the idea that there should be freedom of literary explorations. Yes, Will does make a valid point, it is easy to assume given the time period, how the author intended their work to be portrayed. Yet, how can we ever really know what the right answer is? We'll never know, we can only guess. So how is there only one correct guess as Will makes it seem?  The truth is, there is not. No one person can make something truth. In reality everything is fictitious, one can create truths as easily as they can create lies. If there is even a distinguishable difference between the two. So given that, I think it may be reasonable to say that there are a few explanations for a given piece of text, for when you read something for the first time, uninfluenced, you form an original idea of what message the author was trying to convey. Upon conversation with peers later, you may begin to form a new idea with the thoughts of others, but even these cannot be completely similar, and it all comes down to opinion. It is a person's thought. There is no such thing as complete conformity.