Chapter 5: Intertextuality

Intertextuality is the "ongoing interaction between poems or stories." Intertextuality most often deepens one's reading, and adds more meaning to a specific text. Intertextuality can include a reference to another text, an allusion, a similiarity that gives more meaning, or a parallel to another work.

In Sarah Dessen's book The Truth About Forever, the narrator Macy briefly discusses a book she is studying in her English class, a play by William Shakespeare. Since a huge theme of the book is death, and the effects that it has on people, it is no surprise that the play is one of Shakespeare's tragedies, Macbeth, in which death and murder is a central idea.
In this play, there is much conspiracy, from plots of regicide to plans of flouting heirs their right to the throne. While on a much milder level, there is also conspiracy, though maybe not immediately recognized, in Dessen's book: a mother's forceful plan to guide her daughter in the way she sees fit, co-workers plots to make Macy's life miserable, even friends' plans to improve her way of living and find her an "extraordinary boy."

Macbeth's wife Lady Macbeth is very influential to her husband. She has enough persuasion prowess to convince him to kill his king. Acting on Macbeth's ambition to become king himself, the Lady's skills give her the power to convince him to how to live, to often control his actions. Like Macbeth, Macy is in a relationship in which her partner has the power to influence, and even often control, her lifestyle. Jason, while maybe not knowing what he is doing, constantly uses Macy's struggle for perfection to get her to do what he wants: join Student Council, do yoga, take over his job at the library for the summer, anything that will help her, in his eyes, reach, or at least glimpse, "perfection."

The struggle in Macbeth culminates in battle, and while no physical confrontation is initiated in Dessen's work, Macy and her mother Deborah do eventually "battle out" their different ideas for Macy's future and the way she should live. So while they don't actually fight to the death, Macy confronts her mother to gain control of her own life and to bring forth issues the two have had with each other since the death of Macy's father.

Though probably not often seen, there are parallels between these two texts that scream intertextuality. After seeing them myself, I was awed at the discreet, and possibly unintentional, parallels between them. This book just goes to show that a novel is never completely original, that there will always be parallels, plot steals, allusions, or theme similarities to another work in nearly every text, whether intended or just by happenstance.