Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - László Dányi: Decoding Decoded Systems: An Interpretation of Steven Millhauser's "In the Penny Arcade"

treasure of innocence, which may be symbolized in various tangible and intangible ways. Ultimately though, the quest hopes to find the self through uniting the conscious with the unconscious. (Burrows 135) Applying this definition to Millhauser's story would be misleading because the so-called "sought-after result" is of minor importance and the author rather stresses the journey itself, which, again, is by far not the journey of the hero growing into maturity from immaturity. Moreover, the precious aim is negligible because the boy neither serves any precious cause nor seeks anything rewarding, "It was not prizes I had come out of the sun for. It was something else I had come for, something mysterious and elusive that I could scarcely name" (Millhauser 136). The main emphasis falls onto the uneasy process of the search itself, the boy "went off in search of richer adventures" (137). If there was a well-defined aim the boy was seeking, the reader would concentrate on the aim and not the process. However, obtaining the thing, or achieving the aim would kill the reader's curiosity, uneasiness and the point of the story which is the "wisdom of uncertainty" (Kundéra 17). Answers kill questions; certainty is the death of uncertainty, as the sunlight in the arcade is the death of the mystery clinging to darkness. 2. The hermeneutic code If one conceives plot by defining it as the recollection of events that happen in a story, then one might say that in this story a boy goes into the penny arcade, stays there for a while and comes out through the entrance. The sequence of trivial events like this does not seem to reveal much about the complexity of the text, however, the final act sheds light onto an important aspect of the story. The boy leaves the place through the entrance and not the exit, so the final element of formal structure which is supposed to be the resolution could be the beginning, or the exposition here of another story. 12