Critic Roland Barthes Literature Is The Question Minus The Answer

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LITERTURE IS THE QUESTION MINUS THE ANSWER Critic Roland Barthes once said “Literature is the question minus the answer.” What Barthes' aphorism means is this: When you read a well-written literary work, the story itself will involve you in the questions it raises. It won't give you the answers, but it will encourage you to find the answers for yourself by thinking, by talking to others, by doing research. It means when you read something you determine what the answer in it is, the words are there, you read them and decide what they are trying to say. It will be different for everyone who reads it. “It is the question that enlightens not the answer.” as Eugene Ionesco once said. Literature offers us enlightenment, things to think about, not…show more content…
Literature is meant to bring us to think and reason our morals, ethics, the way we live, but often times it doesn’t serve us with the right answer. Literature is the stark, most understandable presentation of the essence of life situations. And it is upon those creations that one can best see to come up with an answer. Literature normally provides us with instances and illustrations of different situations and from that we have to derive to our own answer, the one we think is correct. In other words, there is a different correct answer for each and every one of us. The solution I find to the question raised in any literary work will undoubtedly be different from anyone else’s interpretation in this classroom. Literature exists to make us think in depth. Literature is what you take it as. There is not one specific answer you have to find while reading a work of literature. Only I know the answer that is suitable form myself based on my interpretations and my understandings. It is open to interpretation so there is really no one answer. It is the job of literature to help you and

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