Your example is just the type of literary reading that turns off students. When they encounter it without a more gradual learning curve, what they actually learn is both:

1. The king has no clothes. 2. Semantics isn't important in the humanities; it's just playing with syntax and vocabulary.

I wished they taught it more like another sense of humor. Like funny things, authorial intent can make it better or worse, but the thing itself has most of the inertia. Also like funny things, requiring explanation deflates it. When you're just watching a movie or a television show, or reading a book, and it hits you, it makes the narrative so much more rewarding.

As for why authors don't just come out and say their points: nobody likes being told what to believe. It makes audiences irritated, suspicious, bored, etc. (which is how people react to ham-fisted symbolism). But when the pieces are left out for you to discover "for yourself," you'll be a lot more receptive.