Sontag also discusses the claim that pornography should be classified as such since it has only one “intent”, namely to excite the reader sexually. Real fiction in other words has many intentions and invokes many more reactions in the reader. She seems somewhat sympathetic with this claim, but reminds the reader that many works of literature can excite in this very fashion even though this was not purely the intention of the author. In addition, there are many works of political fiction for example whose sole intent is to incite the reader to anger or disgust, for example the story “Animal Farm” or “The Jungle”. One would probably not want to classify these as pornography.

Sontag looks for the day when literary critics develop a more “sophisticated” view of literature. Only then she asserts will the debate on the literary value of pornography be meaningful and literature not simply classified as pornography “by definition”. In this regard, and even though not stated this way by Sontag, critics need to be injected with a healthy dose of humility. When gets the impression that some literature is classified as pornographic in order to allow certain individuals or critics the opportunity to distance themselves from “common” or “inhuman” literature so as to impute to themselves some level of sophistication or literary mastery.