"Puff the Magic Dragon": Context is Everything

Perhaps one of the most familiar, if not completely overused, examples of disputed interpretation is "Puff the Magic Dragon". Composed as a poem in 1959 by Leonard Lipton while attending Cornell University, the song was supposedly written about the loss of childhood innocence after the author spent an afternoon reading Ogden Nash, "The Tale of Custard the Dragon" in particular. The poem became a song, and was popularized by Peter, Paul, and Mary in the early 1960's. Almost immediately, "Puff the Magic Dragon" was adopted as a 'pot-smoking hippie' anthem. The writers of the song have vehemently denied any intentional drug references. Apparently, many people took the authors' word for it, and "Puff the Magic Dragon" became a popular children's song. Sometime in the 1990's, it seems that those who had grown up singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" also began to question the song's meaning. So, who is right? Is "Puff the Magic Dragon" a covert glorification of drugs, a lament over the loss of childhood innocence, or something else entirely? How do we decide what this text means? Jonathan Culler argues that: "The meaning of a work is not what the author had in mind at some point, nor is it simply a property of the text or the experience of a reader. Meaning is an inescapable notion because it is not something simple or simply determined. It is simultaneously an experience of a subject and a property of a text. It is both what we understand and what in the text we try to understand." (67). Based on Culler, neither the author(s), nor the reader(s) can have the final say about what a work means. Culler goes on to argue that "meaning is determined by context, since context includes rules of language, the situation of the author and the reader, and anything else that might conceivably be relevant" (67). Culler also reminds us that "context is boundless" (67). There is really no right or wrong way to interpret meaning so long as there is sufficient evidence to support any assertions that we might make. Because of this, "Puff the Magic Dragon" is a 'pot-smoking hippie' anthem and a song about lost innocence.