The Figure In The Carpet Meaning

The figure in the carpet has become a short hand or idiom for the key to understanding a writer s work.

The figure in the carpet meaning.

In the story a magazine critic of novels meets his favorite author and becomes obsessed with his discovery that the author told him that he placed secret meaning in all his works a meaning that the critic never saw. It is told in the first person. P 365 the work of a literary critic in vereker s eyes is to find the figure in the carpet. Which is to say that what a literary critic and readers of literature should do is to look for a deeper meaning or context in works of literature.

The author says that his secret is like a complex figure in a persian carpet. But when he meets the author in person at a social event vereker tells him that whilst the review is intelligent he has missed the hidden underlying issue which informs all of his writing. And yet the story in which the idiom was born henry james s 1896 tale the figure in the carpet refuses to open itself up to easy interpretations or analysis. The figure in the carpet is a short story sometimes considered a novella by american writer henry james first published in 1896.

The narrator whose name is never revealed meets his favorite author and becomes obsessed with discovering the secret meaning or intention of all the author s works.