iar, for each text is inherently unfamiliar to the reader since the potential meaning of the work has yet to be discovered. Thus, the reader must discover the meaning of the text by interacting with it. The text provides certain structures built into itself that help guide the reader along the way, but in no way do these structures provide the meaning of the text on their own. Through this interaction, the reader will create a meaning for him or herself out of the potential meanings uncovered in the texts.These two major points that Iser makes early in his book do not appear to hold true in his own text. The book reads like a step-by-step instruction manual on how to approach a text. There does not seem to be much room left over for interpretation. The structures inherent to the text that are supposed to guide the reader to discover potential meanings of the book do much more than guide, they dictate. The reader is not allowed to interact in a unique manner with the text, because Iser has already stripped it down and provided the reader with only the meaning and a shell of a text that once housed that meaning.Later in the book, Iser explains that the reader will only realize the meaning of the text if the reader can detach him or herself from the experience enough to be able to watch the interaction between him or herself and the text. The text is supposed to act like a mirror being held up to the reader that reflects the reader’s disposition. This detachment is accomplished, in part, by the building of mental images that occurs in the reader’s head while he or she is interacting with the text. Iser gives this explanation of the importance of the mental image:But if we are absorbed into an image, we are no longer present in a reality-instead we are experiencing what can only be described as an irrealization, in the sense that we are preoccupied with something that takes us out of our own given reality. This is why...
