[Iarwain]

First, I'd like to formally appologize to Eruantalon. I'm sorry for my immature responses and lack of back up argument. I have been a poor debater in this way.

Now, I will give my reasoning, and I hope that I haven't already posted it. I find symbolism, numerology, and all the like to be extremely annoying and destructive to art in almost every case. There are, however, a few examples in which the artist/author intended their work as an allegory (Gulliver's Travels, 1984, etc.) But for the rest of the Literary world, deep, microscopic level analysis creates a disibility for the reader to enjoy the work as a whole. Numerology alone is, I believe, as ridiculous as "dream-encyclopedias" and astrology and all the rest. These things take the flavor out of reality and make things less interesting. They make the reader force definitions onto art. It turns books into massive codes that are apparently just waiting to be decoded. But then, when we apply these definitions, we discover that the author didn't quite seem to have mastered "the code" when he wrote. It doesn't quite fit, so we make sense out of nonsense, and sacrafice a good book for a mysterious choppy mess.

Iarwain

[ January 25, 2003: Message edited by: Iarwain ]