Parasites of Meaning: When Interpretation Becomes Infection

Author

• Kimberly Medrano, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Date of Award

5-1-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

First Advisor

Ed Cameron

Second Advisor

Shawn Christopher Thomson

Third Advisor

Linda Belau

Abstract

This thesis examines the impulse to seek moral certainty in morally ambiguous first-person confessional narratives and argues that such certainty is unnecessary. When confronted with narrators whose moral positions remain unclear, readers often project their own moral frameworks onto the text to place the narrator within specific moral binaries. This impulse reveals the reader’s discomfort with ambiguity. This study analyzes the confessional narration, No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. The thesis will explore how its confessional narrator resists moral clarification. Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of moral binaries and J. Hillis Miller’s concept of the “Critic as Host,” this thesis argues that interpretation often reflects the reader’s own moral reasoning rather than a concrete meaning within the text. Because morally ambiguous narratives resist moral closure, attempts to impose one cause an ongoing cycle of interpretation that reveals Miller’s notion of interpretive melancholia.

Comments

Copyright 2026 Kimberly Medrano. All Rights Reserved. https://proquest.com/docview/3371082134

Recommended Citation

Medrano, K. (2026). Parasites of Meaning: When Interpretation Becomes Infection [Master's thesis, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley]. ScholarWorks @ UTRGV. https://scholarworks.utrgv.edu/etd/1944