people that know symbolic meanings to literary texts,

[death_by_motorboat]

like red symbolising, sex, love, passion, girls rite of passage, or objects shapes having significance, secret audiences being addressed, like through prejudices or status, wealth and so on,

these kinds of things are so particular and random, how do you know that the literary meanings arent wrong?  i mean really, an abusive father being stabbed to death could mean that the 

knife is a phallic symbol and the murder means emasculation, but i dont always see it... 

when i took a folklore and fairy tales class, every class i had to listen to a few interpretations,

and even those are immediately adopted as correct by other classmates, so you can get 45 minutes into a class and its been consumed by pure opinion, until the prof steps in...

the class started out really good, but by about week 6 or 8 it was long gone, the only thing left was treading water and opinions.

[nameraka]

Symbols are basically subjective. They only derive meaning from societal consensus. Unless you’re working within the confines of a particular literary theory. In that case, it’s still subjective, but confined to the language and principles espoused by that theory.

[UncomfortableGoatee]

this might be better moved/discussed in the books thread, and im no expert, but i think the "unlimited interpretations" line of thinking is moot. That's kinda what post modernism is about ( i think it's a bag of shit personally). 

So basically just because you can interpret something 1,000 different ways, you shouldn't. And just because there's a unlimited interpretations of one thing, does not imply meaninglessness. In almost every art form, there is both intended and unintended meaning but it still falls within a fairly small window of context.

I think the societal consensus is very important to any given work, written or otherwise.