Campell totally rejects Barthes idea of the "death of the author" and I love it. I do see rhetoric written or oral to be an art form like Campell says based on "habits of mind learned through practice" (7).

I think what is important in this article is that we see what happens when the author is irrelevant, the reader loses something, it isn't the full story. I am referring to the section about Sojourner Truth. Campell lays out how Francis Dana Gage's fictionalized account of what Truth said does not quite accurately portray the woman, Sojourner Truth. While it may seem accurate because she was a former black, southern slave, the accent given to her only lumps her in with a caricature of what people thought black people were. Her agency was in part taken away from her. In one section Truth "says", "look at my arm!... I have plowed, planted, and gathered in barns, and no man could heed me..." if she in fact said this, it was to make the point that she is capable, but in a way with her accent (which is apparently didn't have) does that not take away from that message? While her words say, "I can do it, I can be a valuable member of society", they accent given to her in this account to me scream "No, we don't think you can".

Campell says that it helps to think of people in serial relationships or how people relate to external institutions. Throwing out her blackness, which we can't see reading the text, the symbols certainly send the message that she speaks English poorly which in our culture is a major indicator of intelligence. Her accent to me, almost takes away from what she had to say, and it is a shame because it is so profound. For those who understand the accent or do not hold it against her learned something, but I'm afraid many people who read this might miss out.

I think this shows that Agency is a compromise between Author and Reader. The Author is important because without knowledge of the Author it is hard to understand context and allows room for misconstrued information like above.