"How to Deconstruct a Text"

 Deconstructive reading of the pomes i.e "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound, "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos William and "Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare. To know more about Deconstruction visit this Blog

What is Deconstruction?

Deconstruction is a philosophical movement spearheaded by French thinker Jacques Derrida and other critics during the 1960s. As a literary theory, it focuses on exposing cultural biases in all texts, whether a passage television ad. When engaged in deconstruction, it analyze words and sentences to identify inherent biases and call into question commonplace interpretations of the text. While this may sound presumptuous or cynical on the front end, deconstruction isn't about destroying meaning. Rather, it's about undermining ingrained assumptions to view things in a new light.

Deconstruction as a literary criticism.

Deconstruction, as applied in the criticism of literature designates a theory and practice of reading which questions and claims to "subvert" or "undermine" the assumption that the system of language provides grounds that are adequate to establish the boundaries, the coherence or unity, and the determinate meanings of a literary text.

A deconstructive reading sets out to show that conflicting forces within the text itself serve to dissipate the seeming definiteness of its structure and meanings into an indefinite array of incompatible and undecidable possibilities.

Possible Meanings.

After an individual analyzed the text for biases, see if your discoveries support a new interpretation. While many associate deconstruction with destruction of meaning, the opposite is true.

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Holland, ("Deconstruction | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy."), text it by evaluating the biases of a given the social and historical conventions that helped produce you've opened up the words and sentences to an infinite amount of possible readings.

Deconstructing "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carols Williams

So much depends

 upon 

a red wheel 

barrow 

glazed with rain 

water 

beside the white

 chickens.

The poem a common object, the wheelbarrow, a place of importance. It suggest that beauty can be found in everyday things. By observing on simple observation and scenes, it encourages and appreciate the details around them. The juxtapostion between the vibrant red wheelbarrow and the white chickens adds depth to the image.   

the shiny and clean srrounding may come from the imagination of poet which one has seen somewhere in the book. The absense here is that of mud, dust and dung which isolated image from the reality and makes it idealize. While main interpretation could be the celebration of the everyday life and the appreciate the srroundings.

In conclusion, readings of the poems highlight the complexicity of the meanings, role of binanry opposition, freeplay of meaning and so on and so forth. Whenever one meaning is at the centre other all interpretation put on the periferry. This provides the new ways of reading the poem.

 Deconstructing Ezra Pound’s "In a Station of the Metro" 

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Apparition word, often associated with ghost, creates a sense of mystery around the faces. The faces in crowd create anonymous faces, a fleeting glimpse of strangers in a busy place like a metro station. Petals on a wet, black bough is compared with the faces of petals. The "wet" adds a touch of life and movement, while "black" emaphasizes the fleeting nature of the encounter.

The poem captures a fleeting moment of beauty in the midst of an ordinary experience in riding the metero. The speaker is struck by the sight of these anonymous faces, and compares them to something beautiful and momentary. Despite being strangers, there's sense of shared humanity and the fleeting nature of human connection. 

"Deconstructive Reading of Sonnet 18." 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

In this poem the "thee" i.e beloved which has binaries like beloved- human being and summer's day- nature. The poem is celebrating self; lines, writing, poem or sonnet, it atributes such as temperate, rough winds, complex on dimmed, hot the eye off. These may lead to adultery/ cheating also, there's  the poem trying to say, these beloved may have the attributes of the nature and this beloved may have the tendecy to cheat or not, while it is entirely deconstructing the idea of beloved. 

The poem was supposed to be one of the most loved poems ever recited by the lover for the beloved, but this is trying to say that beloved maybe liking, nature, frame, infidle, cheating also. Poem is celebrating itself that when things are writen, when poem is writen then it become important. We usually make critic of a language of poem and we keep on making binaries after binaries. It dramaticizes in a very interesting way ' power struggle' and it goes with implied threats and where things become very interesting to read this poem. 

Conclusion

Deconstruction, as a philosophical and literary movement led by Jacques Derrida, offers a way to uncover and question the inherent biases and assumptions within texts. It is not about destroying meaning, but rather opening up texts to a multitude of interpretations by analyzing the words and sentences in context. This approach reveals the complex interplay of meanings and the limitations of language to fully encapsulate a text's significance.

In literary criticism, deconstruction reveals how texts contain conflicting forces that undermine their apparent coherence and unity. This method emphasizes the indefinite and often contradictory nature of meaning within a text. 

For more information to understand it in depth, here below I'm sharing the link of the videos.

I hope this would be helpful,

Thank you.