Leads into literary theory.
There are a bunch of theories that are used to analyze literature, such as biographical, historical, etc. Most of them are pretty self explanatory. This post is relevant to a few, though; specifically deconstruction and reader's response.
Reader's response is pretty straightforward; it applies the concept that the reader is more important than the writer, which has some truth to it; a reader can apply all sorts of things that a writer might not necessarily intend. For example... and this is a shit one, so don't read too into it... the role of a family member in one's life as opposed to the role of that same type of family member in a written work (like, a mother). Maybe my mother abused me as a child, and as such I view all mothers, or even women, negatively, so that, when I read a particular story, I happen upon things that, although are literally present, I may be misinterpreting or asserting on my own. Reader's response would value these sorts of interpretations and say that the reader contributes just as much to a story as the writer, if not more (and I think most people that associate themselves with this theory would argue that the reader is far more important than either the written piece of the writer).
Deconstruction is a little trickier... but I think I can get at it a little bit by saying words by themselves are meaningless; that a word might have a connotation to it, but that is something we imply, not something that is necessarily present. It has to do with signifiers and signifieds, which is a complicated way to say a word in association to what the word MAY refer to (deconstruction looks for these words and looks at what else they might be referring to, in an attempt to pull more out from the story; if I used tickle-rape in something that wasn't tickle fetish related, there would be a lot going on there from a deconstructionist point of view, as it would be implying all of those rape-esque motifs). But yeah, the signified thing is a fancy way for saying something along the lines of tree = tree; signifier tree refers to signified tree; tree = flower; I say or write tree but actually mean what we might refer to as a flower, calling attention to the meaninglessness of words in relation to ideas/'reality'.
I dunno, thought all of that was relevant.
At least it fascinates me.
Etc~