Picture your high school English teacher, striding into the Wayne Public Library for a book—say, Something Wicked This Way Comes by the renowned author Ray Bradbury. They begin their read and instantly are enthralled, reading for hours and hours on end from noon till twilight. The sun sets, and they finish the novel. Then you come into the library to your teacher gushing over their new favorite book of all time, Something Wicked This Way Comes when you recognize the cover of the book they’re holding: it’s the same cover you ripped from the original bindings and used to disguise your own book, your own writing, your own story completely unrelated to Bradbury’s. Unbeknownst to your teacher, you have just tricked them into reading your book and, under the guise of Bradbury’s acclaim and reputation, proclaiming it with pride as their favorite work without hesitation.

Of course, this scenario is wholly improbable and almost certainly fantastic, but its mere possibility raises larger questions on literature and art in general. Having known of the author’s high repute beforehand, the reader (an English teacher, in this case) feels no trouble in looking deeper into the text, treating every symbol and detail and stylistic technique as an intentional move of a master artist, coming upon a violation of the rules of grammar not with disdain and frustration but with intrigue and wonder. But what if they knew the true identity of the author—an ordinary high schooler, a passionate yet inexperienced amateur writer? Should a reader see any grammatical error, a subtle allusion, or a hidden meaning as just a coincidental mistake only because they deem the writer incapable?

It is this very question that French thinker Roland Barthes appears to tackle in his post-structuralist essay, “The Death of the Author.” Previously in history literary critics assumed authors (adult, skilled, and professional) to intentionally imbue substantive meaning into each and every word, page, and chapter of their books. In this view, it is the task of the reader to decode that language to get to the core “truth” which the author attempts to convey. According to Barthes, however, it is impossible to know exactly the intent of the author after their work has been published, and it is rather the reader who brings meaning to the otherwise meaningless black-and-white pages of a book. No longer is there a single concrete meaning set by the author for the readers to find—readers, shaped by their own experiences, can find differing and even contradictory interpretations to a text. They, in bringing their own insight to a text, may even contradict the author themself. The author’s views are brought to equality with all readers’—to any reader, the author’s original intent ceases to matter, and thus nor does it matter if any intent exists behind the work’s creation at all. If we follow through to what some might see as the disturbing end of Roland Barthes’ line of thought, one he himself dared not enter, we discover that regardless of the “true identity” of the author, no matter their brilliance, ineptitude, literacy, or sanity, every work, every text—by a legendary award-winning novelist, a developing teenaged amateur, or a barely-literate toddler—deserves the same attention.

Two decades ago our hypothetical English teacher might have responded “I agree!” followed by the same subconscious prejudice they display in the beginning of this article. Back then, this answer would have almost no bearing on a reader’s engagement with a text, since the chances a great work would not come from the hands of an experienced and skilled human writer were about a million to one. Now, with the precipitous rise of artificial intelligence, this question can no longer be ignored. If we agree with Barthes that the reader is the primary creator of meaning and thereby that the purpose of art is to allow observers to form their own unique interpretations separate the artist’s intentions, then why does it matter where that art comes from—from the ruins of an ancient society, from a bumbling toddler at the typewriter, from OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini? As Wayne Hills English teacher Ms. Kiernan summarizes, “Since the individual can find beauty and meaning in anything—from the ruins, from a toddler, etc.—the source doesn’t matter. What does matter is the individual’s point of view. But this topic is more nuanced—is this simply justifying the use of artificial creators and eliminating the cost of hiring humans?”

To this question I cast no easy answer. Readers may be tempted to an armchair conclusion that bestows equal authority to both the reader’s experience and the author’s original intention, that accepts the human author and rejects the mechanical hand, but this path too only crumbles under a careful eye. For it lies on the bedrocks of none more than two contradictory philosophies, sturdy and stable alone but incompatible, indefensible together.

There remains a feeling, a feeling of unbending determination amidst greatest fear, one of the human spirit’s brightest fury, its refusal to perish in a moment of its flickering: our culture, our civilization, are under attack. Barrages head for the canvas and the typewriter, tides of progress threaten our cherished artists the same way they swept away the artisans and craftsmen of the nineteenth century. In a world where unrestrained intellectual and economic progress has only wrought bloodier wars, a decaying environment, and the capacity to plunge our whole race into extinction with the press of a single button, maybe, in this next moment of gravest inflection, from the failures of the mind we shall turn at last to the imperfect, self-contradictory, but human heart. What had once been “incompatible” and “indefensible” stands strong in the fortress of feeling, no indecision of mind and minds to weaken fresh ardor and resolve: the “armchair conclusion” becomes the only right path to survival.

The Luddites lost their grand struggle against the growing forces of industry, alone, abandoned. The protests of Szilard and Rotblat against nuclear armament echoed in desolate waves, unheard and unheeded. Staunch and ready must we stand today, harkening at once to the cries of the artist and the creator, for in their guardianship remains that which all others have neglected, the most precious, fragile artifact known to man: the human soul.