1) Barthes posits two concepts of the writer, the Author and the Scriptor.

Closely
examine these two concepts and discuss their similarities and their differences. How
do we think about an Author and/or Scriptor? What kind of relationship do they have to
their work? What kind of relationship do they have to us, the readers?

In The Death of the Author, Barthes explores how literature is affected by the personas
of the Author and the Scriptor, and how the division between personal perspective and
analytical perspective becomes vague due to these personas. The experiences from
author to author varies among each person, and the story is diluted because of this as
the author is attached to their own identity as the narrator and the storyteller. The
persona of the scriptor affects the text fundamentally, as language and structure used
in storytelling completely affects the message and idea that the author is telling
through their story. While literature and art is widely accepted as a way for a creator to
express their personal emotions and struggles, limiting a text to the author limits the
text to that author’s personal beliefs and this takes away from the art aspect of literary
works. Independence from one’s work allows for unbiased creativity to come into the
writing, and this can make a literary piece culturally timeless. As Barthes discusses,
writing is “drawn from the innumerable centers of culture” and this reveals how the
perspectives from the writer is affected from various types of culture experienced
throughout the author’s life. According to Barthes, the meaning in a text is interpreted
by the individual reader once they begin reading a text rather than having one author’s
message that is received by every single person. Barthes argues that when a text is
created, it is a blend of various kinds of ideas, cultures and philosophies put together
by the author. Therefore, all of the ideas that are communicated from the author have
already been used before and it is all up for interpretation from the reader, making the
author irrelevant. As a reader, we ultimately decide what a text means through our own
beliefs and through this we create new ideas from the recycled material in the text.