If, he says, on coming downstairs in the morning we find our silverware missing, the window open, the mark of a dirty hand on the window frame, and the impress of a hobnailed boot on the gravel outside, we logically conclude that the silverware has been stolen by a human thief. It is possible, of course, that the silverware was taken by a monkey and that a man with dirty hands and hobnailed boots looked in the window afterwards; but this explanation is far less probable, for, though it too accounts for all the facts, its rests on too many additional assumptions. It is, as we would say, too "farfetched" ( Perrine 1). This quote is saying that there may be a possibility of one interpretation but the best and probably the correct one is the one that makes the fewest assumptions. When Perrine makes up two different interpretations of the same story it is easy to see which one is the better interpretation. This quote is Perrine disagreeing with the idea of having multiple interpretations of poems because it exaggerates the uniqueness and unlikeliness of one of the interpretations. .
When the I focused on the word poetry I could still piece together Perrine's argument that there are a limited amount of interpretations to something but only in regards to poetry. This happened because I was so focuses is so focused on poetry I thought that this entire essay was only in regards to poetry. That in conjunction with me noticing Perrine's examples are only poems made me believe that this paper was focused on poetry. All of these pieces made me think that this essay was only about the interpretation of poetry simply because Perrine's evidence and argument made sense when thinking about poetry. Once I reread this essay focusing on interpretation and proof I realized that these tools and guidelines for interpretation can be applied to all fictional works and some non-fictional. The part that made me realize this is seen in this quote.