The All-Powerful Reader

"A text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination" (Barthes, 877). This destination is the reader. It is the reader who determines value in a work not the author. In fact the author only proves to limit a text or be "the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning" (Foucault, 913). And if the author is the limiter then the reader is the proliferator.

Sure the reader "has to play the role in which the author has cast him", but within that role there is more freedom still (Ong, 12). It is up to the reader completely how he interprets the meaning of each word or how he picks up the "implicit signals" within a text. The narrator attempts to become companions with the reader yet he does not know the reader. The reader has the advantage of knowing most all about the narrator and can deem better judgement.

Because "what is interesting depends on the readers", writers must always alter their text towards the reader's. This creates a dynamic in which the reader controls the way the writer writes. Now not only does the reader determine value and interpretation, but he also has an indirect say in what he is reading.

Barthes says, "a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations to dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader" (877). Thus the reader is all-powerful in the dynamic of literature. He controls the way the writer writes at every turn. In the act of reading and interpreting, he takes the authority away from the "author" and places it on himself. That is why the "birth of the reader" is the simultaneous "death of the Author".