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"

exteriors and interiors. With regards to this division, the function of the places

—like the recesses, the alcoves and the corners the boy wanders about

—that appear in Millhauser's text are much closer to new fiction as "the physical space that encloses the consciousness of the action is undefined, nonspecific, in some vaguely hallucinatory way, or extreme, artificially constricted perhaps, or unaccountably open, or visionary, in which the contours of physical space are heavily shaped by the experiencing mind" (197—198). 3. The semic code The concept one has about the characters is influenced by the way they appear in the text. The reader meets the twelve-year-old narrator in the first sentence, however, step by step several other layers of narration are revealed. The following chart shows the multi-layered narrative in the light of characters' perspectives. The numbers denote the following: the reader (1) immerses into the text in which he learns about the characters. As he is culturally oriented towards the text and he is a different reader at each time of the reading activity, his interpretation of the story differs from time to time, so (7) which is the everchanging interaction between reader and text is an alternating lump. The narrator (2) views the experiences of the twelve-year-old boy at hindsight. 15