Fletcher, may moons ago (1972) and talking more specifically about theatre, was already reminding us of what we should have long understood: 'We [know] by now not to look for a specific meaning in a piece of music or a painting, but perhaps because the theatre tends to be a conservative art it is still widely believed to be a branch of the post-office, intended primarily to convey messages'.
The reality, of course, is that most people do not really know that, or have not quite accepted it - they keep thinking about literature as 'a branch of the post-office', where texts will deliver clear, specific and targeted messages we will learn from: literature as life manual.
But that is really not what the overall majority of fiction does - and it is certainly not what you'd like your learners to think. If there are messages in any text, it is up to the reader to create them. As Kafka said, 'An artist knows nothing': do not expect an artist to tell you what to do, to recommend this or that, to advise you - that is not what artists do.Â
Artists ask questions, or give us the means to ask questions of our own: about ourselves, about the world, about our world, about ourselves as individuals and as collectives. Finding answers is the reader's job.
If I told you what to wear, how to move, what to eat and drink and do, what to think: would you like that? Would you accept my orders? Probably not: you do not know me, I am not a great artist nor am I famous. And yet: why would those reasons be enough to make you obey me? What, in my condition of artist, would make my words truer, or better, or more important to listen to? Why, because I have written a book, would my thoughts be better, or truer, than yours?
Fiction is not a branch of the post-office, it is not intended - in itself - to give answers to concrete problems: authors may have arguments, but that doesn't mean those arguments are true, or solidly devised, or that you should agree with them. The reality of fiction is that it belongs to the reader, and it is the reader's job to make something of it. Books are not oracles, they are a means to an end - and the end is in your hands.