Critical Lenses: An Overview

A critical lens is a tool with which one can, rather than merely analyzing the text at face value, uncover the significance of the literary techniques used in reference to a specific idea. A critical lens can also, however, both aid and hinder a person’s understanding of a work of art. The artist or originator of a work of art, consciously or not, created the piece through a lens, one developed by nature, nurture, or choice. An observer’s misinterpretation of the creator’s lens can provide hugely different insight from what was intended, which can be beneficial, as long as it isn’t portrayed as the creator’s intent. Things go awry when an observer interprets a work of art through their own chosen critical lens, a different one than the creator intended, and claims that it was the creator’s intent to make the conclusions the observer draws.

This is the case in Chinua Achebe’s essay on Heart of Darkness; before writing this essay, Achebe read Joseph Conrad’s book with the purpose of finding racism. This critical lens, and the preemptive conclusions Achebe drew, caused him to overanalyze many debatably racist points and attribute characters’ views and opinions to Conrad’s personal beliefs. According to many experts Conrad was not, in fact, a racist, but the more important point is that it doesn’t matter. Heart of Darkness is completely the same, and means all the same things, absolutely regardless of whether Conrad personally was racist. This ties back to the author’s critical lens; perhaps Conrad was racist, perhaps he purposely wrote the book from a racist lens, perhaps he never even considered racism in relation to Heart of Darkness. Whichever it was, it doesn’t matter greatly, what matters to a reader is the reader’s critical lens, and what matters to literature is that reader’s refrain from posing their conclusions as the author’s intent. A critical lens helps open doors to numerous new discoveries when analyzing a work of art, but if misconstrued by the analyzer, will lead to grave conclusions.