When someone reads a book (or plays a game, watches a movie, etc) they inevitably have some first impression: the book is an allegory for X, the moral of the story is Y, character Z is a hero, etc. When they read the book a second time, or just think about it more deeply, they might realize that the text contains elements that contradict their first impression. Maybe the allegory doesn’t quite fit. Maybe there’s a subplot that seems to conflict with the overarching moral. Maybe the heroic character turns out to be a bit more morally grey than they first realized. What should the reader do?
I think the answer is obvious: you revise your first impression. If the book doesn’t work as a simple allegory for X, then maybe the book isn’t an allegory for X after all! Maybe the moral isn’t Y. Etc.
But what a lot of people do, and this drives me absolutely fucking nuts, is they say something like “Wow, this allegory about X doesn’t work. The author obviously doesn’t understand X.” or “Wow, this heroic character is an asshole. The author must be a terrible person if they think this is what constitutes heroic behaviour.”
The most cartoonish example I’ve seen is Ben Shapiro’s review of the Barbie movie, where he keeps wondering why are there adult jokes and themes in a movie that he’s preemptively decided is supposed to be for children, but I see the same pattern everywhere.
This is especially true of adults who revisit books they read as children. They compare the actual substance of the text to their terrible, immature, literally juvenile first impression, and are shocked to discover that the book doesn’t seem to be doing what they thought it was doing. But instead of thinking “huh, I guess I missed a lot of the nuance when I was a child” they think “Wow, in hindsight this book is terrible. I can’t believe the author thought this asshole was a hero!” No. You thought the asshole was a hero. That was your mistake, not the author’s.
That stuff drives me insane, it’s like the continuous harping on and on about Tolkiens work being a reflections of industrialization, Frodo’s journey being PTSD after war and so on.
It’s a fantasy world, sure you can see the inspirational dots cause he lived in that era and experienced war, but I really dislike people needing to find a RL connection to fictional worlds and their problems, and make the author out to try and send a message through them or that their work reflects their stance on RL. There obviously are such books and authors, but it feels like a trend sometimes that if you dig far enough or you think yourself clever enough, you can “crack the code” behind all fiction.
I’ve wanted to write a fantasy world and novels myself for a fair few years, and sure there’s inspiration everywhere and themes that reflect RL issues, but foremost I just wanna write a neat fictional world, not sit there trying to send some deep hidden message I feel the reader needs to learn and that analysing my work will crack the person I am.
So I feel rather than try find meaning and teachings in a book not about that and try connect the dots to the author, just enjoy it for the journey and story. That way you’ll likely find less criticism for them, less personal issues and just enjoy them more for what they are.