: Re: Sometimes a banana is just a banana Often reading analyses of books and films, I find that the analytics derive conclusions from the specific food or beverage that a character consumes. The

@Caterina108

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TLDR: For a timeless classic, every bit of minutia matters. For everything else, don't worry about it.

If you are attempting to write an award-winning story that will be studied by students for generations to come, then every minute detail you specify will indeed be rich with subtext and symbolism. Were that not so for any particular detail, you would discard it.

Such works get analized to these extreme depths because those depths are present and intentional. The authors of those pieces presumably reduced and packed their stories to such agonizing lengths that if they separated a certain pair of words with two spaces instead of one, that signified something.

So if that's your objective, and you don't mean anything by specifying that your subject eats a banana, you'd better just call it a fruit.

Conversely, if your aim is more realistic (and most likely a much longer format such as a novel), then you can be much more cavalier about the the details you add simply to flesh out a setting. It is unlikely that many (or even any) readers will latch onto one of many specific details to which you are not giving extra attention.

Of course, if your works get famous, you'll probably attract some hardcore fans akin to conspiracy theorists. They'll find meaning you didn't (consciously) intend or even consider. That might even turn out to be a useful resource, so there's no real incentive to ward it off. Furthermore, if you want broad appeal, it's just as well to consider and accommodate some flexible interpretation as befits each reader's unique personality and perspective.

If readers want to decode the banana, it may be just as well to humor them.

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