We talked about the interpretation of text and there was a spark of interest in the nature of a text: whether it is objective or subjective. A thought a good modern example of this is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury was overwhelmingly disappointed in the poor understanding of Fahrenheit 451. People thought it was about government censorship, because they claimed that temperature was the same temperature at which paper burned, and in turn the temperature at which book burnings can be committed (the temperature is actually 450 Celsius).

The book actually turns out to be about the numbing effects of technology. Bradbury, although a science fiction writer, was himself a Luddite. The government is not the problem, the people are. The irony of this is that the people of this society cannot recognize his message, perhaps because society has numbed them from working through the intricacies of a text.