SPIEL: Siegener Periodicum zur empirischen Literaturwissenschaft 8/2, 1989, 233-254.

Naive Respondents and Creative Response

Robert de Beaugrande

1. The struggle between author, critic, and respondent

1.1 Literary studies has maintained a long tradition of making ‘the author's point of view’ the ‘main concern’ (Iser 1975: 57). The interpreting critic would present his or her reading with the claim that it was commensurate with the author's ‘intention’. This complacent tradition of an imaginary meeting of minds has been disrupted by the rise of literary theory in recent decades. In one of the earliest books on ‘theory of literature’, Wellek and Warren (1956: 42) announced: ‘the meaning of the work is not exhausted by, or even equivalent to’, ‘the author's intention’. Echoes of this declaration are commonplace today. For H.R. Jauss (1982: 35), ‘the author cannot tie the reception to the intention with which he produced the work’. For David Bleich (1978: 93), ‘the interpretation of an aesthetic object is not motivated by a wish to know the author's intention’. For Jonathan Culler (1975: 133), ‘in literature, we have the least cause to arrest the play of differences by calling on a determinate communicative intention’.

1.2 Such pronouncements reflect the determination of literary theory to transfer the focus from author to respondent. Priorities have changed radically, since the respondent's activities cannot be any simple or direct reflection of the author's intention. Iser (1975: 30: 1978: 28f) contemplates a ‘transformation’ whereby we might ‘become’ ‘the author's image of his reader’, but doubts whether a ‘reader’ can ‘have an identical code to that of the author’, a case that would make ‘communication’ ‘superfluous’ anyway. ‘Writers’ may ‘imagine a reader’, Holland (1975: 219) says, but only to’ assuage’ their ‘inner needs’; they do ‘not predict the ways of real readers’.

1.3 So far, however, literary theorists are by no means in agreement about who this newly discovered ‘reader’ shall be (Beaugrande 1988a). Doubtless following the habits of the traditional critical profession, the theorist feels empowered to invent ‘the reader’ as an abstraction or ideal. Fiedler (1971: 209) once remarked that ‘the mature writer must write’ for ‘the ideal understander’, a ‘non-existent perfect reader’ ‘represented imperfectly but hopefully by a self-perpetuating body of critics’. Culler (1975: 123f)advances a similar argument in a more straight-faced way: ‘the question is not what actual readers happen to do but what an ideal reader must know implicitly’. Iser (1978: 27ff, 34) rejects both the ‘ideal reader’ as a figment from ‘the brain’ of ‘the critic himself’ or a ‘structural impossibility’ of being ‘able to realize in full the potential meaning of the fictional text’, and ‘the 'real' reader’ ‘reconstructed from documents’, in favour of ‘the implied reader’ inferred from ‘a network of response-inviting structures which may impel the reader to grasp the text’. Admittedly, Iser's ‘reader’ is still somewhat ideal, willing to ‘adapt’ and ‘modify himself’ to ‘an unfamiliar experience’ or to ‘a creative examination’ of both text and self (Iser 1978: 153, 85; 1975: 290). And, most importantly, this reader is #essentially inferred from the text.

1.4 We might wonder why none of these theorists thinks of taking a closer look at real response, which is going on all around us. Instead of devising abstractions and idealizations, why can't the literary professionals on the American scene examine the activities of real, ordinary respondents? Many motives probably mediate against such an examination. Most literary scholars take it for granted, as Culler (1975: 50) does, that ‘the critic does not begin by taking surveys to discover the reactions of readers’ but merely ‘notes his own interpretations and reactions to literary works’. To do otherwise would require considerable rethinking and retraining among the professionals, for example, in the area of eliciting, analysing, and synthesizing data. Moreover, scholars are naturally prone to regard their own responses as the best or most appropriate, a belief needed to justify their professional status and credentials; student responses are often treated with disparagement. The prospect that naive respondents might, in their own way, have equally worthwhile responses to art is probably disquieting.

1.5 So most theorists continue to concern themselves with ‘response’ without taking a genuine interest in everyday audiences. The naive respondent is disqualified out of hand before any substantial body of evidence can be assembled. Culler (1975: 124) for example admonishes: ‘the meaning of a poem within the institution of literature is not’ ‘the immediate and spontaneous reactions of individual readers’. He conjures us to ‘avoid’ ‘the dangers of an experimental or socio-psychological approach which would take too seriously the actual and doubtless idiosyncratic performance of individual readers’ (1975: 258). He is fully ready to assume that real respondents proceed ‘idiosyncratically’, and yet that ‘the notion of literary training or of critical argument makes sense only if reading is not an idiosyncratic and haphazard process’ (ibid.). Conclusion: real respondents are not likely to provide any proper demonstrations of the competence acquired from ‘literary training’.

1.6 What remains is only too predictable: ‘by consulting the interpretations which literary history records for any major work, one discovers a spectrum of interpretive possibilities of greater interest than a survey of undergraduates could provide’ (Culler 1981: 53). ‘These considered reactions are more than adequate as a point of departure for a semiotics of reading’ (ibid.).

1.7 The issue here is not a mere professional quarrel. The denial of ^interest and concern to naive -- by which I simply mean non-professional -- respondents is a dangerous tendency at a time when society is already strongly disposed to marginalize art and literature. Indeed, this marginalization is, I suspect, due in part to the way the professionals have been dispensing art and literature through such institutions as schools and colleges. Their dismissal or half-scornful patronage of naive responses has convinced the average citizens that art and literature are simply ‘too hard’. We need not be surprised if they drift away from responding to art altogether, having been deprived of their motivation and confidence.

1.8 Perhaps we should question the assumption that professional training in artistic response is necessarily a great advantage. My own discussions with contemporary authors, such as Paul Celan, Richard Eberhart, Martin Walser, and Ernst Heehaws, invariably indicate that these authors are by no means content with professional responses. The latter tend to perceive the work through a filter of restrictive canonical and technical criteria that often conceal the work's specialness and individuality. This trend presumably reflects the routines acquired during academic training (cf. Mauser et al.1972). Hence, naive respondents may be more likely to respect the openness which is the most essential aspect of artistic media and their products (cf. 5Eco 1968; Schmidt 1971; Iser 1975, 1978; Jauss 1982). )

2. Naive respondents in American colleges

2.1 Finding naive respondents on the American scene is not at all difficult. We need look no further than the undergraduate students of contemporary colleges and universities. Our undergraduates at the University of Florida are no exception. They report having had little contact with literary works in their prior schooling and even less outside the schools. And what contact they did have was seldom staged as the exercise of self-reliant, creative strategies of responding. Instead, the responses favoured by teachers or textbooks were treated as the ‘correct’ versions that (students could only accept and rehearse.

2.2 For some years, I have been working to encourage such naive respondents to seek more direct, active encounters with art works, instead of promulgating ‘right’ responses or emphasizing the technical and historical aspects that preoccupy professional respondents. For this project, poems are useful materials, since they make it easy for each student to survey the entirety of the text, and since their shortness is characteristically balanced against a greater density or concentration of possible meanings. Since the major outlet of new poetry today is through popular music, we often select song texts; here at least, nobody can deny that the students +rightfully belong to the intended audience.

2.3 To raise the students' self-reliance and to shift the focus away from myself as the ‘professional’, I ask every student to select a song and to present his or her response to the whole group. The description of the response and the presentation of supply reason why such a response might be plausible is to be as inclusive as possible, covering all sort of reactions, associations, mental images, and assumptions. Other students are encouraged to comment freely on each presentation, and to propose their own alternatives. My function is largely limited to posing questions to draw attention to interesting aspects. Responses are valued not according to some standard of ‘correctness’ inferred from professional standards, but according to their usefulness and interest in accounting for the experience of the song at hand, and especially for its puzzling or problematic aspects Certainly, many contemporary music groups are deliberately using highly challenging texts.

2.4 As I have reported before (Beaugrande 1984, 1987a, 1987b), the outcome is by no means the purely ‘idiosyncratic performance’ Culler predicts from ‘undergraduates’ (1.6). Instead, the students are soon able to deliver strikingly interesting and insightful readings. In one case, a taped collection of immediate oral responses to a poem so impressed the poet himself that he placed a copy of it in his personal archives. That poet was ;Richard Eberhart, one of the most distinguished in America.

2.5 Such a n outcome reaffirms my own view that students can and should acquire not some catalogue of accredited responses for the poems in a historically predetermined canon, but a set of strategies for self-reliant and creative engagement with any text considered ‘poetic’, including songs. If literary communication is discourse for contemplating alternative worlds or for treating the established world as one among various alternatives, poetic communication explores alternative ways to organize discourse itself (cf. Beaugrande 1983, 1988a).

2.6 The texts of many popular songs so complex and subtle, despite what academics may be prone to imagine, that they can justly be included under this conception of ‘poetic communication’. These songs have the special advantages of being contemporary in terms of time and cultural context, and of not having been monumentalised by academic criticism. The students often ‘know’ the songs to the degree of not merely having heard t hem, but of being able to reproduce the texts from memory. Yet explicit attempts to articulate and explain one's response to the texts are comparatively uncommon. Hence, the task is to encourage students to use familiar materials in unfamiliar but insightful ways.

2.7 Interviews show that these students have several typical traits. They’re not majoring in English or humanities, but predominantly in business, engineering, and mass communications (including journalism and advertising).Their age ranges between 18 and 22. They come from middle-class, mostly urban and mostly white, family backgrounds; however, a fair proportion do not fit this type, coming instead from disadvantaged backgrounds or being of Hispanic, Caribbean, and black descent, as was the case with the group involved in this report. The fact that the typical intended profession and middle-class upbringing are strongly oriented toward ‘facts’ and ‘normalcy’ is particularly significant in view of the freedom and individuality of their responses. Perhaps as American society is steadily subjected to more rigid norms, music and rock and roll become the increasingly vital domain for ¤non-conformism.

2.8 To document how students are indeed competent in creative response, I periodically elicit written responses to songs which I consider quite challenging and which we have not covered before in the group. These discursive responses offer intriguing evidence for the mode of open, creative thinking literature and poetry are essentially intended to motivate. In the following sections, I summarize these responses for three instances. I shall amalgamate quotes from the students' reports into a connected form, indicating in pointed brackets, where appropriate, how many respondents used those exact words. The result of course appears richer and more comprehensive than any one individual report taken by itself. In return, though, we get a better view of the diversity that emerges when a whole group of students is contributing to a presentation -- true to the currently fashionable idea that ?the meaning of a work is equal to all the responses it elicits.

3. Senseless conflict

3.1 The album Dark Side of the Moon, released by Pink Floyd in 1973, became one of the best-selling records of all time. 1 Yet at the moment of its appearance, it must have seemed far more strange than ‘popular’. Although the various songs seem ‘conceptually unified’ (Fricke 1987: 52), i.e., thematically related, the texts of the songs, all authored by bass player and singer Roger Waters, might well appear complex and obscure. Therefore, I could reliably suppose that my students would already ‘know’ and like the album without having tried before now to give a detailed account of what the songs ‘are about’. I was all the more impressed at their resourcefulness.

3.2 One well-known song text is printed on the album as follows:

US AND THEM

1 Us, and them

2 And after all we're only ordinary men

3 e, and you :

4 God only knows it's not what we would choose to do

5 Forward he cried from the rear

6 and the front rank died

7 And the General sat, and the lines on the map

8 moved from side to side

9 Black and blue

10 And who knows which is which and who is who

11 Up and Down :

12 And in the end it's only round and round and round

13 Haven't you heard it's a battle of words

14 the poster bearer cried

15 Listen son, said the man with the gun

16 There's room for you inside

17 Down and Out

18 It can't be helped but there's a lot of it about

19 With, without

20 And who'll deny that's what the fighting's all about

21 Get out of the way, it's a busy day

22 And I've got things on my mind

23 For want of the price of tea and a slice

24 The old man died.

3.3 The students agreed that the ‘us and them’ are ‘two sides’ <7>, the’ them’ presumably being ‘enemies’ <8>. More specifically, the sides were identified as ‘west’ and ‘east’, ‘Allies’ and ‘Axis’, the ‘U.S’. and ‘Russia’, or even ‘the North and the South’ from the American ‘Civil War’. 2 The use of pronouns might suggest that both sides are ‘faceless, nameless’. In a related vein, being ‘ordinary men’ (line 2) could be a reminder that they are all ‘mortal’ <4>. They are ‘similar’, or ‘exactly the same’ -- ‘average people’, ‘not supermen’, perhaps just ‘pawns for the powerful’.

3.4 ‘Me, and you’ (line 3) was thought to mark a shift to a ‘more personal’ <3>, ‘individual’, or ‘intimate’ perspective. The two were most often said to be ‘one on each side’ <5>, the ‘you’ being for example a ‘man faced in combat’. However, some students made the ‘you’ the speaker’s ‘friend’ or ‘comrade’ ; or the two might be the ‘leaders’ or the ‘heads of two nations’.

3.5 ‘It's not what we would choose to do’ (line 4), but they were ‘drafted’ <4> into service; ‘governments and bureaucrats decide for them’ now. The speaker ‘hopes God realizes’ this. The ‘he’ of line 5 is the ‘commander’ <6>; four respondents explicitly linked him to the ‘General’ of line 7. He stays in a ‘safe place’ <5> during the ‘battle’ <2>, ‘hiding behind the enlisted soldiers’ who are treated like ‘tools or weapons’, to be ‘used and thrown away’. Meanwhile, ‘the General’ is ‘sitting back’ <3>, keeping ‘comfortable’ <2>. Some saw him being ‘obese’, sitting at a ‘desk’ in a ‘tent’ or ‘office’, and playing the role of ‘arbitrary authority’. ‘The lines on the map’ indicate the position of the ‘front’ <2>, or the ‘plan strategy’ <2>, or ‘the ground gained’. In comparison to the ‘reality’ -- the’ lives’ and ‘lines of men’ -- these ‘lines’ were judged ‘useless’, ‘senseless’, ‘meaningless’, and ‘futile’. Their ‘movement from side to side’ accordingly shows how ‘no headway’ <4> is being made: ‘no one wins’ <3>. The paltry ‘victories go back and forth’, awarding a ‘few yards’ or just a ‘few feet of dirt’ -- as in ‘trench warfare’ -- while ‘more men are killed’.

3.6 ‘Black and blue’ (line 9) were construed as ‘colours’ seen on ‘uniforms’, on ‘a map’, or on ‘flags’. Eight respondents noted that the two colours are ‘close together’; you ‘can't tell which is which’ in the midst of the ‘confusion’ <3>. Or, the colours are due to ‘night time’, ‘dirt’, or the men being ‘bruised’ <5>, ‘hurt’ <2>, ‘injured’, ‘wounded’, and ‘mangled’.

3.7 The doubt expressed in line 9 more emphatically indicates that ‘it’s hard to tell who is the enemy’ <3>. The ‘battle’ is ‘hectic’, ‘a mess’, ‘swallowing up the individual’ and leaving behind a only ‘a mass of bodies’. ?Perhaps too, ‘the generals and officers don't care’ who is who.

3.8 ‘Up and Down’ did not elicit any firm consensus. Some respondents thought of ‘hills’ or the contour of the ‘battlefield’; others of ‘marching up and down’, ‘going nowhere’. Still others felt reminded of ‘flying’, 3 or of the motions of ‘fire, squat, and reload’. Or, the soldiers ‘stood up and attacked and then were shot and fell down’. One student even mentioned the religious polarity of ‘heaven and hell’.

3.9 ‘And in the end it's only round and round and round’ (line 12). ‘The battle goes in a circle’, a ‘vicious cycle’, or a ‘killing cycle’. The soldiers are ‘chasing each other round and round’ but ‘never catching’ anyone; the conflict is ‘useless’, having ‘no ends or goals’. Overhead, the war ‘planes spiral and crash’ <4>. Also, many ‘rounds of ammunition’ are discharged.

3.10 In view of the ‘battle of words’ (line 13), students also thought of ‘rounds of negotiation’ at the end of the war, where ‘political words go round and round’. ‘The leaders argue’ <9>, dispensing ‘propaganda’ <4>, airing ‘political views’, or exchanging ‘insults among countries’. Their talk may be intended to ‘rally the country’, encourage ‘enlistment’, play ‘political games’, or use ‘rosy words’ to ‘gloss over the real horrors of war’. They can conveniently ‘sit at home’ or meet in a ‘plush World Peace Building’.

3.11 The identity of ‘the poster bearer’ (line 14) depended on whether this person would be for or against the war. Eight students thought of a ‘recruiter’, presumably carrying a ‘patriotic poster’, e.g., to glorify the ‘draft’. Or, an ‘official’, ‘politician’, or ‘war marketeer’ might be involved. On the other hand, four students thought of a ‘protester’, who should be more likely to call attention to the ‘war of words’ (line 13).

3.12 ‘The man with the gun’ (line 15) was explained as a ‘man in power’, a ‘recruiter’, or a ‘soldier’ <2>. He may be telling the ‘protester’ to ‘join the war’ or to ‘shut up and go inside’; or may even be ‘locking him up’. The ‘room for you inside’ might refer to a ‘prison camp’ <3>, a ‘gas chamber’, a ‘grave’ <2>, a ‘battle’, the ‘war’, the ‘front’, the ‘war zone’, a ‘truck’, a ‘recruitment office’, or even ‘heaven’. One student took ‘son’ (line 15)literally: ‘the father sends his son to a shelter’, because ‘not even children are safe in wartime’; the son goes ‘down’ into the shelter and is ‘out of the war’ (cf. line 16).

3.13 Students generally concurred that the next stanza is set in the time after the war. ‘Down and Out’ (line 16) suggests ‘depression’ <2>, ‘poverty’,’ recession’, ‘suffering’, ‘loss’, and ‘helplessness’. ‘The nation is oppressed’, possibly for having ‘lost the war’. The streets are filled with ‘derelicts’ <2> (perhaps former ‘soldiers’), ‘bums’, ‘beggars’, and ‘downtrodden people’ -- all being ‘down on their luck’. The ‘it’ of line 18 was construed as this state of affairs. Saying ‘it can't be helped’ might indicate that ‘there's nothing the average person can do’; or might reflect the self-excusing ‘attitude of the fortunate people’.

3.14 ‘With, without’ (line 19) was referred to an imbalance of ‘power’,’ money’, ‘supplies’, ‘food’, ‘shelter’ and ‘material objects’ -- or more abstractly, of ‘death’ or of ‘painful memories’. ‘The fighting's all about"(line 20) this conflict created mainly by ‘greed’ <3> -- a struggle for ‘power’, ‘financial gains’, and ‘possessions’. Also, war is a common way to "boost the economy’.

3.15 The final four lines gave the respondents some difficulty. The request to ‘get out of the way’ (line 21) may have been made by ‘the military speaking to everybody’, a ‘soldier speaking to a child’, the ‘withs’ speaking to the ‘withouts’, or the ‘fast paced society’ that ‘disregards the soldiers’ who came back. The ‘busy day’ could have to do with ‘a war going on’, since ‘war is a business’; or with everyone being ‘busy trying to find food’. The ‘things on my mind’ could be ‘memories of war’, or conversely, the desire to ‘forget the war’.

3.16 The ending was most often resolved by seeing the ‘old man’ (line 24) as an ‘old soldier’ <6>, perhaps a ‘war hero’, and less often as a ‘beggar’,’ derelict’, and one of the ‘withouts’. The man gets ‘left behind’, ‘pushed aside’, ‘oppressed’, or ‘blown off’ by an ‘official’ who ought to provide relief. ‘The price of tea and a slice’ was seen as a ‘trivial amount’ or, conversely, as a large sum hard to raise because of ‘inflation’. Respondents concluded on the note that ‘we fight wars over land while people are starving’ <5>. Some, however, thought of ‘fighting for food and supplies on the home front’. Isolated readings included ‘a rich man killed by a poor man for money’; ‘rich people weeping for their tea and cake’; and even a ‘general’ who ‘dies because there is no war’ to keep him going now.

3.17 These responses show the students operating quite freely and diligently with the song text. To be sure, the text provide some clues that are easy to relate to themes, such as ‘front rank’, ‘General’, ‘battle’, and ‘fighting’ as indicators of war. But other elements, such as the pairing of pronouns, adverbs, and prepositions, are more elusive and challenging. All in all, the song was accounted for in a fully satisfactory way, perhaps more because of the ‘naivity’ of the audience than in spite of it.

4. The dark side of the brain

4.1 Another famous song from the same album has this text:

BRAIN DAMAGE

1 The lunatic is on the grass

2 The lunatic is on the grass

3 Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs

4 Got to keep the loonies on the path

5 The lunatic is in the hall

6 The lunatics are in my hall

7 The paper holds their folded faces to the floor

8 And every day the paper boy brings more

9 And if the dam breaks open many years too soon

10 And if there is no room upon the hill;

11 And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too

12 I'll see you on the dark side of the moon!

13 The lunatic is in my head!

14 The lunatic is in my head

15 You raise the blade, you make the change

16 You rearrange me till I'm sane

17 You lock the door

18 And throw away the key

19 There's someone in my head but it's not me

20 And if the cloudbursts thunder in your ear

21 You shout and no one seems to hear

22 And if the band you're in start s playing different tunes

22 I'll see you on the dark side of the moon

4.2 The respondents invoked a more diverse range of themes for this song than for ‘Us and Them’. They said the theme was ‘conformism’ <3>,"brainwashing’ <2>, ‘the influence of society’, ‘lunatics’, ‘nuclear war"<2>, ‘drugs’, and ‘veterans’. Though eleven respondents agreed that the speaker is in a ‘mental institution’, they gave a variety of reasons for being there. The person might be suffering ill effects of ‘newspapers’, since ‘mass communication alters thoughts’. The cause might be too much ‘manipulation’; the speaker ‘goes insane in a narrow, inflexible society’. An ‘overuse of ‘drugs’ was also cited.

4.3 ‘The lunatic’ in the first line was predictably identified as ‘an insane person’. Being ‘on the grass’ might mean that the person is simply being ‘taken ‘outdoors’ ‘on the lawn’; or is being ‘counselled by a psychiatrist in the park’; or is ‘looking outside the asylum’ and perhaps remembering ‘freedom’. The ‘games and daisy chains and laughs’ might indicate that ‘mental patients are like children’ and ‘revert to childhood’; or that psychiatric treatment ‘delves into childhood’ <2>. The speaker may be reminiscing about ‘the old days’, when the child's ‘life’ was ‘better’, ‘‘ happier’, ‘simpler’, and ‘freer’.

4.4 ‘Keeping the loonies on the path’ (line 4) could be ‘the purpose of the psychiatrist’ who keeps people ‘in an institution’; or the intent of society to ‘maintain control’ <4>, to make people ‘stay straight’ <2> and ‘conform’, and to ‘stomp out deviation’. In the later case, ‘life's straight path’ or ‘the path of conformity’ would be meant, the means for ‘forcing everybody to accept norms’.

4.5 In the next stanza, ‘the lunatic’ and then ‘the lunatics are in the hall’ (lines 5-6); the shift from singular to plural suggests that they ‘are increasing in numbers’ <3>. In a literal sense, they may just be ‘outside the patient’s room’, possibly making him paranoid’. Maybe other patients are ‘walking in the halls’; or maybe ‘each day more are signed in’ and ‘crowd the halls’ while they wait <2>. ‘The paper’ might be ‘legal documents for the asylum’.

4.6 The ‘folded faces’ were explained as being ‘demented’ or '”wrinkled after many years in the asylum’, or, alternately, as the ‘masks of upper-income psychiatrists’. However, the ‘paper boy bringing more’ ‘every day’ (line 8) led respondents to envision ‘newspapers’ <7> with ‘pictures’ <5>, the latter being folded along with the paper. This reading might imply that the ‘lunatics’ would be ‘politicians’ <3>, especially those ‘who start a war’ (an echo here from ‘Us and Item"?). The first line could accordingly be talking about a ‘picture in a newspaper lying out on the lawn’ ("on the grass’). The ‘newspaper could be ‘kept on the sidewalk’; or ‘Politicians’ could be ‘kept on the path’ (line 4) if they are ‘kept honest’ <3>. Later, the ‘newspaper is brought in’, or the ‘politicians move in’ <5> ("in the hall’). As ‘more’ (line 8) arrive, the ‘politicians"' ‘numbers grow’ until they ‘outnumber the sane’; or their ‘strength is growing’ -- ‘the leaders will never stop’. Or, the increase consists in having ‘more propaganda’, until one ‘drowns’ in the ‘never-ending flow’ of the ‘sea of ideas’.

4.7 This intervention of this theme encouraged a general dualism in the treatment of the rest of the song between clinical versus political insanity. On the one hand, ‘the dam’ (line 10) might refer to ‘the subject's mind’ <2>, or to confinement ‘in an asylum’, or to ‘a mental block holding back unpleasant thoughts’ or ‘the flood of ideas’; ‘breaking open’ might be ‘going insane’ and ‘going over the brink’ ‘many years too soon’ - - instead of when people are ‘elderly’ or ‘quite old and senile’. On the other hand, the dam break could be a ‘war’ <5>, a ‘catastrophe’, which like a dam releases ‘high energy’ <2>. In a similar dualism, the ‘hill’ with ‘no room’ on it (line 10) could be ‘sanity and safety getting lost’, with nowhere to ‘run from ideas’ and ‘thoughts’; or the ‘Freudian unconscious’. Or, the hill could be ‘a safe place during war’ and its ‘nuclear horrors’, or during ‘a flood’ (one student even thought of ‘Capitol Hill’, where the U.S. Congress meets). The same dualism would make the ‘head exploding with dark forebodings’ (line 11) be either ‘evil thoughts’ or ‘mental pressure building up’ until ‘the oncoming of insanity’, or else ‘problems between countries’.

4.8 In the final stanza, ‘the lunatic is in my head’ (lines 13-14). Now, ‘society has succeeded in changing the way of thinking’. ‘Brainwashing’ was mentioned as a cause by four respondents, and ‘reading newspapers’ by two. Or, the ‘lunatic’ might be a ‘loony physician’ -- fitting the imagery in the next lines as signals of the inhumane treatment of mental patients. A ‘brain operation’ <3>, specifically a ‘lobotomy’ < 7 >, seems indicated by lines 15 - 16; or a ‘change’ of ‘personality’ and ‘thinking’, and the ‘you’ would be a ‘psychologist’ < 2 > or 11 surgeon’. Or, the patient is ‘programmed’ by ‘propaganda’ and made to ‘conform to society’. ‘Locking the door and throwing away the key’ (lines 17-18) might suggest ‘solitary confinement’, maybe in a ‘padded cell’ <2>. Or, the action might suggest the ‘irreversible’ effects of a ‘lobotomy’, or ‘locking information inside the head’. Or, ‘the doctors give up on the patient’, and ‘society wants to forget him’. He will ‘never leave the institution’ <2> or undergo ‘any more change’ < 2 >.

4.9 Having ‘someone in my head’ (line 19) could be a sign of ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘hearing voices’ <2>, or of feeling a compulsion to ‘do insane things’. The ‘lobotomy’ might have ‘taken away the personality'. Or the intruder might be society itself’. ‘The cloudbursts thundering in your ear’ reminded respondents of the ‘head exploding’ (line 11) and the ‘dam breaking’ (line 9) under the impact of heavy ‘rain’. Or, when ‘sanity has exploded’ a ‘storm of thoughts’ impends; or, conversely, ‘a nervous breakdown’ could ‘wash away thoughts’. Or, a ‘war’ and a ‘nuclear bomb’ <3> could be the implication.

4.10 The ‘shout’ (line 21) could be ‘crying for help’ or ‘in pain’, or ‘warning’ people and ‘calling for peace’. Many reasons were offered why ‘no one seems to hear’. The ‘psychiatrist’ may refuse to listen. The speaker may have been repressed by ‘conformity’ or ‘dismissed as crazy’. Or, society itself is ‘a world of loonies’. Or, more prosaically, ‘nobody cares’ or everyone ‘hears only what they want’. And of course if war has broken out, it's ‘every man for himself'; besides, after a ‘nuclear bomb, nothing can be done’.

4.11 The band playing different tunes’ (line 22) was generally seen as a division between the individual and those who ‘conform’ and ‘follow the mainstream of society’. More narrowly, students thought of bands ‘marching to different tunes’ or ‘drummers’, or even of ‘Roger Waters' own band’. Making a pun, one student related this line to line 18 by suggesting that the band has ‘thrown away the musical key’.

4.12 'The dark side of the moon', appearing in lines 12 and 23 and in the album's title, elicited extensive commentary. As might be expected, respondents referred to ‘the asylum’, ‘insanity', and ‘the world of the mentally disturbed’. People might ‘go insane from being locked up and forgotten’, or being beset by ‘images of loneliness, confusion, and fear’. ‘The institution after lobotomy’ could also be meant. The superstitious and etymological link between the ‘moon’ and ‘lunacy’ was cited by 6 respondents. More positively, ‘a place where one can escape’ ‘from society’ and ‘be at peace’ and where ‘nobody can infringe’ was invoked.

4.13 Citing astronomy, students noted that ‘we never see the dark side of the moon’. Hence, the image might indicate ‘a world of darkness ; ‘the other side of reality’ <2>; one's ‘own world or dimension’; ‘a dark side of ourselves no one sees’; ‘a place for outcasts’; ‘a dark drab life’; ‘a life without light’, i.e. ‘hope and inspiration’ (cf. 3.5L); ‘hell’; or ‘death’ <2>, which is ‘never seen’. Alternately, the stark appearance of that side of the moon suggests ‘the earth after a nuclear war’ <5>, when ‘dust blocks out the sun’ and ‘darkness reigns for many years’ (cf. 3.6).

4.14 Alongside these two main themes of insanity and war, two students surmised that the song was about drug abuse and its effects. Being ‘on the grass’ (lines 1-2) would be ‘smoking pot’, i.e. ‘marijuana’. The ‘games’ and ‘laughs’ (line 3) appear because ‘drugs make you act silly’. ‘Lunatics in the hall’ (lines 5-6) were compared to ‘addicts in the alley’, and being ‘on the floor’ (line 7) was a result of ‘using drugs’ and feeling ‘exhausted’. The ‘paper boy' (line 8) would be the ‘drug dealer’ bringing fresh supplies. 'The dam breaks open’ (line 9) when ‘the drugs take effect’, and ‘the head explodes’ (line 11) when ‘drugs lead to insanity’. ‘Many years too soon’ (line 9) suggests that ‘addicts die young’. When ‘the lunatic is in the head’, ‘the drug user is hooked’. 'The blade’ (line 15) is a ‘cocaine razor’; the ‘door is locked’ (line 17) when the user ‘commits crimes to get drugs’ and goes to ‘jail’. The ‘someone in the head’ (line 19) would be ‘drugs’ or a drive to ‘do anything for drugs’. The final lines are visions experienced when ‘high’, and the ‘shout’ (line 21) is not heard because it is only imaginary. The ‘moon’, being ‘inconsistent’, was associated with the ‘weak drug user’.

4.15 One respondent saw the protagonist as ‘a solitary veteran who has reached the brink of insanity’ (probably another echo of ‘Us and Them’). She saw ‘soldiers squirming through the grass-fields in battle’ (cf. line 1). ‘They remember their ‘childhood, when they used to play in the grass instead of fight’ (cf. line 3). The ‘commanders obliged’ them to ‘remain on the warpath’ (cf. line 4). Later, ‘the once valiant soldiers, heroes of war’ ‘now reside in the hospitals’, having been ‘unable to cope with the horrors they experienced’. The ‘dam’ (line 9) is ‘the imaginary barrier’ that ‘blocks out the painful memories’. Similarly, ‘the dark side of the mood' is ‘the subconscious part of the psyche, where all one's inner fears reside’. This reading thus focuses on ‘the lost and disturbed souls whose lives have been destroyed by the war experiences’.

4.16 Plainly, this song text allowed for a wide diversity of responses, each of which nonetheless succeeded in integrating many phrases and images. The theme of insanity predominated, but also led many respondents to speculate on its causes and results: alienation, loneliness, neglect, harsh societies, dangerous politics, and enforced conformity and manipulation by mass communication and propaganda. Little hope was placed in any definitive cure or reconciliation, leaving us instead on the ‘dark side’. That this album and its title song should have such an enormous appeal for contemporary youth is surely a significant counter-signal in a time where materialistic optimism is often promulgated as the official religion.

5. Conclusion

5.1 Results like those reported here demonstrate the openness of the medium and its potential for a wide range of self-reliant, creative responses among naive respondents. Though some responses. did appear idiosyncratic (cf. 1.5), most were systematic and convergent. The respondents generally agreed about the overall themes of the texts and delivered readings that, as we saw, were sharply critical of the prevailing social order and expressed the generic anxieties of today's young people. The greatest split in each case was whether or not the respondents envisioned some resolution for social ills, such as meaningless of life, confrontation, warfare, insanity, and social immobility.

5.2 The medium of rock and roll has of course covered many themes and moods. This very openness is undoubtedly one reason it has survived so long with undiminished popularity. Indeed, it may be the most widely hard alternative cultural voice in an 1980s America sinking into apathy, conformism, and selfishness. Recent attempts by right-wing crusaders to censor rock music and rock videos signal the suspicion of a pervasive opposition to established values, most violently articualted by ‘heavy metal’, but present in many other styles, including, I think, that of the songs examined here. In these leveled times of complacency, narrowmindedness, and social rigidity, such a channel of expression is more vitally needed than ever.

5.3 I do not think my training of the students was the key factor for the results reported above. To examine this assumption, 1 recently ran similar tests on two groups of students at the very start of the semester. For the one group, I gave a demonstration in which ‘Ammonia Avenue’ by the Alan Parsons Project (cf. Beaugrande 1988b) and ‘Us and Item’ were played and then the responses summarized above were read aloud. The other group got no such demonstration. Both groups made written analyses of another song, ‘You Don't Believe Me’, also by Alan Parsons. The protocols show that both groups had similar in ideas of what the song was about, and both had roughly equal ranges of thematic variation. However, the group who had had the demonstration typically made longer reports and tried to deal with more specific details. So I would conclude that my training basically encourages more a quantitative than a qualitative change, mainly in the amount of attention respondents are disposed to exert on the text. They have not learned to do something unrelated to their ordinary capacities of response so much as elaborated them with enhanced freedom.

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GERMAN ABSTRACT

Unter Vertretern der Literaturtheorie zeichnet sich in den letzten Jahren die ausgesprochene Tendenz ab, den 'Leser' als den wichtigsten Teilnehmer an der literarischen Kommunikation zu behandeln. Aber vermutlich als Nachwirkung der traditionellen Einstellung in der literarischen 'Interpretation' wird diese neue Leserrolle zumeist mit dem 'idealen 'Leser besetzt -- ein Konstrukt des Theoretikers oder gar seine (leichtverkleidete) Verkörperung. So wird der wirkliche, verhältnismäßig 'naive' Leser, wie er im Alltag vorkommt, weitgehend vernachlässigt. Als Rechtfertigung wird behauptet (z.B. von Culler), der naive Leser, der sich außerhalb des institutionalisierten Rahmens der Literaturwissenschaft befindet, verfüge nicht über jene 'Kompetenz', die es zu beschreiben gilt. Diese vorschnelle Behauptung müßte erst empirisch geprüft werden, zumal es sehr unklug wäre, die literarische Kommunikation theoretisch so festzulegen, als ob sie sich auf einen kleinen Kreis von wissenschaftlich ausgewiesenen Fachlesern beschränkte. In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden daher Belege dafür vorgestellt, daß naive Leser recht selbständig und kreativ vorgehen können -- also durchaus 'kompetent' sind -- besonders wenn die kommunikative Situation entsprechend eingerichtet ist.