Piggybacking off of slumped shoulders...

I've seen this happen with poetry: pieces I've written and pieces by famous writers. Everyone views art in relation to his own experiences.
I just nod and say, "Yes! That was on purpose!"

I even went back and added a little to the scene so that other readers would get the same thing out of it. Brilliant!

This was actually the advice of my old writing prof. Never try to put themes or symbols into the book until after someone else reads it and points them out to you. Then you can go back and play them up.

In my mind, this is why the "less is more" approach to writing fiction works so well. Each reader comes to the story with a different set of experiences and beliefs. What each reader takes away shouldn't be so straightjacketed to bind the freedom of interpretation. And, yes, this is why a good poem can appeal to many different readers for different reasons.

I've noticed that the reader's interpretation of your work is almost always more interesting and enlightening...I like to keep my trap shut about my own intentions and hear what the other person got out of the work.

Yep, I remember being amazed when I first started reading literary criticism at just how wide and varied the meanings in just one scene of a book could be interpreted by different people. I think I lost it when hmm, I think it was Germaine Greer said that some scene in The Mill on the Floss represented a woman's nipple and a baby suckling off that nipple, when, although I don't remember the exact scene, it was just a girl near a river. That's when I realised how good it is to leave things open to interpretation.

Just as a side-point, I try not to describe the physical appearance of my characters unless it has some use in the story. I want the reader to idealise my character in their way rather than mine :O)

I accidentally mean to do that all the time.

People always point out vast amounts of symbolism in my pieces that I had absolutely no idea were in there. Goes to show you what your subconscious can do. I certainly couldn't do it on purpose.

Dreaming said:

Has anyone ever had a scene (or theme) of their novel interpreted, or should I say misinterpreted, by a reader - YET - the reader makes total sense? What's more, you're willing to front like you MEANT exactly what that reader states and repeat their interpretation verbatim for your next inquisitive audience?

I find it amazing that we can write a story without seeing other possible meanings, etc.. I guess it's because we're way to close to the characters. *shrug*

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Well, people don't tend to give me interpretations of my themes/symbolism, as much as I'd love them to. But I've had a couple of plot points misinterpreted, or at least interpreted when I'd never thought of them before, and I ended up incorporating those into my work.

The first is something I mentioned in another post earlier. In my first serial I spent a lot of time describing a necklace. Honestly the only reason I did this was to use some words in the chapter because my serial started out based on prompt words. But a reader, seeing how much time I spent on that necklace, commented that it must be important and he knew it would be playing a part later on. Oops. I hadn't intended that at all, but now that it was pointed out it bugged me so much I wrote the necklace into the plot and it ended up playing a very big role indeed. In fact, I can't imagine the story having worked out without it.

On another occasion, a different reader (whom I've since had a falling out with, so recalling his contribution to my work galls me now) guessed that a certain character was the daughter of another. In truth I had no idea who her parents were and had never really thought about it, but the comment made perfect sense, and ended up driving much of the plot, even more so than the necklace did. It became a huge motivating factor behind why one of the main characters acts the way he does. So I grudgingly thank this jerk for his contribution, though who's to say I couldn't have come up with it later on my own? Knowing the way my mind works, I probably knew it on some level all along.

I did once, recently, have somebody state that one of the themes they see in my serial is of growing up, leaving childhood behind and taking responsibility...this hadn't consciously been one of my themes, but it does tie in with one of the theme ideas I have in mind (perhaps it's merely a different way of stating the same thing), and I notice that now that she mentioned this, I'm incorporating it more into the plot. My MC even screamed that she's not a little baby anymore and can take responsibility now. Such is life.

ETA:

Dreaming said:

or, just thought of this...could it be that our intuition guides us in the right direction - as we unknowingly flow?

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I prefer to call it my unconscious, but yes, I believe this happens more often than I'd think.

Ah! It was nothing dirty or inappropriate, trust me. More of an immense letdown than anything.

I had a short story unpublished where a boy takes refuge in a church during a blizzard. I chose a church because it's a building that would least likely be locked up when unoccupied. This a rural area with a small population.

I've had readers say that God was saving him so that he could live through the night in order to save his family. Well, I don't know where they got that idea because his family died and he went insane thinking it was all his fault.