I got in this fight with a friend who had a painting created by another friend. It was skull, lighter, knife.

He asked me what it meant, and I don't remember what I said... But he jumped up with this victorious expression and went "No! It means nothing, it's just skull, lighter, knife. Other friend painted it,, and". I got into some death of the artist philosophy and he started to get pissed the more I insisted it doesn't matter what the artist though, it's what you get out of it. The artist had a snug smile behind the other guy

I got terrible grades in the essay portion of every AP lit test because my takes were different than the consensus. I just remember one of them where I tried to defend my take... But what I took out meant nothing to the author, but he insisted the critics were definitely way off

Here's the thing - no one does anything for one reason, or even zero reasons. Artists usually don't have a hidden message beyond the story structure - all creation is a reflection of the creator. There's no arbitrary or random - humans aren't capable of that.

It's like looking at someone's bedroom... There's no version of a bedroom that says nothing about the occupant