My Brain Hurts (Ch 3)

This chapter was long to say the least, there was so much information in it that by the time I got to the end I had forgotten how the chapter started. Most of these structures seemed pretty useless when looking at literature, although there were a few that could help with studying.
First I'll got through the ones that made sense to me in the literature world. The ones that worked with the idea of narrative themselves seemed helpful. Figuring out the mode of narrative or the repetitive structures of the work would be helpful while studying large groups of works. The use of unmarked and marked could also be helpful when studying texts, especially when used with theories such as gender studies.
I found no usefulness in The Semiotic Square. The examples made sense in the book, the idea that just because something is not black doesn't mean it's white, but where do we go from there? The idea of how to use this with literature doesn't make sense to me. Frederic Jameson's idea is for the analyst to "begin by provisionally listing all the entities to be coordinated and that even apparently marginal entities should be on the initial list." (Chandler 120). So after you list all of these entities, and place them into the square, then what? How does this help you understand the text more? Knowing something isn't something else only helps you along so far, so after the initial gathering of information what do you do with it? This just seems extremely time consuming with little reward to me.
The other structure that doesn't seem as helpful is the Horizontal and Vertical Axes. It makes sense to me that certain words can be interchangeable, and that sometimes authors purposefully chose one word over the other. That part is obvious, but I know for a fact that authors don't hand pick and examine every word before they use them. So why must the theorist question every single word that the author uses? These would be more helpful with the study of language and words themselves rather than texts or literature.
Throughout this book I keep seeing the reoccurring theme of the lack of something is just as important than the objects that are there. The third chapter is no different, the absent is just as important as the present, the hardest part is sometimes not getting caught up in what is present and being able to spot the things that are absent.