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"

reader's modes of critical understanding which is "undermined by a family of metaphors to which we continue to cling with obsessive tenacity" (Stevick 192). As implied by the title of my paper, system to me does not mean THE system of a literary work, or a unified system, but the recuperation of the codes mentioned earlier. I definitely try to avoid the word "structure", since it "carries with it connotations of economy, symmetry, accountable proportion, organic form" (199). My paper aims to analyze and trace the organization of some elements related to particular functions in Steven Millhauser's short story "In the Penny Arcade" which was published in a collection of stories under the same title; and to list Barthes' codes in order to assemble systems of interpretations. In the title I used the term "decoded systems" because the starting point to me is not the code system as it is but the text, and I do not wish to impose the principles of these codes upon the text but to trace the elements of the story as they appear in the text as the text decodes itself. 1. The proairetic code The title of the short story seems to determine the setting, the penny arcade, which can be a mysterious place where one can waste his time and money, or a place of wonders for children, or a place which artificially creates and sustains the atmosphere of hope. The greatest attraction of the arcade is that one can buy hopes in there. The title being the first element influencing the reader's attitude to the plot can raise tension by immediately moving into metaphor. The first sentence contains the division of light and dark, which dominates the whole story. The boy's motion shifts from light into dark by stepping into the arcade and this shift brings about another change which is in the time perspective of the plot. Even in the first two sentences the linear arrangement of events is broken, because the second sentence refers to an event which had happened before the boy entered the arcade. Later on the same method recurs all through the story. Sentences are said in the past tense, and the past perfect tense 10