The Figure In The Carpet

The figure in the carpet might take on another twist or two but the sentence had virtually been written.

The figure in the carpet.

The narrator whose name is never revealed meets his favorite author and becomes obsessed with discovering the secret meaning or intention of all the author s works. The figure in the carpet has become a short hand or idiom for the key to understanding a writer s work. She was the person in the world to whom as if she had been his favoured heir his continued existence was least of a need. It is generally agreed that the figure in the carpet is one of james s more baffling stories.

This reminded me how i had observed at a particular moment after corvick. It is told in the first person. And yet the story in which the idiom was born henry james s 1896 tale the figure in the carpet refuses to open itself up to easy interpretations or analysis. The figure in the carpet has evaded definitive interpretation.

In a way i understand the joke s on me the reader. James just gives me the impression of being too clever for his own good. The figure in the carpet is also significant because it prefigures a prominent twentieth century literary theory that of the death of the author expounded in the late 1960s by roland barthes and michel foucault. According to this theory which today we may take for granted it is the text itself that speaks and the author is a mere.

The figure in the carpet is a short story sometimes considered a novella by american writer henry james first published in 1896. I enjoyed the ride and naïvely enough waited for a satisfying unveiling of the mysterious figure in the carpet. This is the famous figure in the carpet of the story s title and it is what vereker sets the narrator to discover. After reading the figure in the carpet i was left shrugging.

The question of interpretation. We naturally would like to know exactly what secrets vereker has embedded in his work just as the narrator would. The figure in the carpet critical commentary. Although lerner doesn t mention it the title of his very short introductory chapter looking for the figure in the carpet is i assume beholden to the wonderful short story the figure in the carpet by henry james who understood a great deal about authorial intention and the pitfalls of interpretation.