A cheap device in fiction is to make an interpretation ambiguous or unclear. That way, the audience will be wont to read a layer cake of meanings into that text, giving them the impression that the text is more substantial than it really is. But why suppose good art requires a translation guide?

Nabokov was certainly right to respond to his critics in a hostile fashion when they asked him what the real meaning of Lolita was. As if there were anything more profound than the very manifest image presented to us by aesthetic works!