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I still think that Sontag's main purpose of telling us not to interpret was to take an extreme stance on something in order for us to see the "light" in not interpreting a piece of art, text, etc. It seemingly reduces the possiblity of a different story to come out it exponentially. As soon as someone mentioned that they saw a bird in one painting it was hard to shake that image from the painting and immeadiately it seemed that the image was a bird and nothing else. The interpretation was made and all other possibilties of what it could be were seemingly inhibitied, at least in my case.

Also, at the conclusion of class on Thursday alluded to the notion that literature's purpose, like science, was to broaden the number of stories available. I understand that we need a myriad of stories in order to have the ability to excersise free-will and choose the one that best fits our beliefs, etc. but I still am not embracing the idea that there is no "purpose" or end goal in sight for any of these subjects.  Its extremely disconcerting to think that Professor Grobstein doesn't think that there are any "right" answers. I just don't think that belief system would be conducive to a very comfortable living if one was constantly calling into question even the most basic of things.