Given below are two statements:
Statement I: Roland Barthes believes that the author is “the epitome and culmination of capitalist ideology”.
Statement II: Walter Benjamin, in his the storyteller, observes that every real story has something useful in it.
In light of the above statement, choose the correct answer from the options given below

The correct option is: Both statement I and statement II are true.

Let us break down each statement to understand why they are both correct:

Analysis of Statement I:
In his seminal 1967 essay "The Death of the Author", the French literary theorist and critic Roland Barthes critiques the traditional view of the author as the ultimate source of a text's meaning. Barthes argues that the figure of the author is a modern creation, produced by society as it emerged from the Middle Ages with English empiricism, French rationalism, and the personal faith of the Reformation. He explicitly asserts that the author is the prestige of the individual, or more precisely, “the epitome and culmination of capitalist ideology”, which privileges the individual and private property. By declaring the "death" of the author, Barthes shifts the focus to the reader as the destination where the multiplicity of a text's meanings is unified. Therefore, Statement I is true.

Analysis of Statement II:
In his classic 1936 essay "The Storyteller" ("Der Erzähler"), the German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin reflects on the decline of the art of storytelling in modern society, attributing it to the rise of information and the alienation of modern experience. Benjamin draws a contrast between information (which is easily consumed and quickly forgotten) and a true story. He observes that every real story contains, openly or covertly, something useful—whether it is a moral, a practical advice, or a proverb. The storyteller, in his view, is a person who has counsel for his readers or listeners. Thus, Statement II is also true.

Since both statements are historically and textually accurate within literary theory and cultural studies, the correct choice is that both Statement I and Statement II are true.