![]() ![]() But it’s up to us to interpret what we read and to make the case for how we’re doing it. Meanings come from context, from convention, from older stories and from previous usage. It’s a powerful statement: We are in charge. ![]() What Pullman is suggesting, then, is that it’s up to readers to make the meaning they want out of the stories they hear and the books they read. Or we may just think about the spider we saw on our own front porch that morning, weaving her own web.Īs the writer Philip Pullman said, “The meaning of a story emerges in the meeting between the words on the page and the thoughts in the reader’s mind.” The reader is in charge When we read about her, then, we may think of all those other spiders. Maybe we’ll think about how the spider, like a human storyteller, generates something seemingly out of nothing, which makes her web miraculous.Įach of these spiders symbolizes different things. She may also be the spider who weaves “ the silken tent” of Robert Frost’s poem. Or she may be the “noiseless patient spider” of Walt Whitman’s poem, who flings out thread-like filaments as the poet flings out words. Wikimedia Commons, CC BYīut, to a reader she may also represent Arachne, the talented weaver who challenged the goddess Athena and was changed into a spider for her pride. ![]()
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