Analysis Of Every Trip Is A Quest By Thomas Foster

In Chapter 1 the author explains the symbolic reasoning of why a character takes a trip. They don't just take a trip they take a quest. Structurally a quest has a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and a reason to go there. Quests usually involve characters such as a knight, a dangerous road, a Holy Grail, a dragon, an evil knight, and a princess. The quest also involves the character to gain self-knowledge out of taking the adventure to the stated place where he or she is going.

The analysis of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost has been up for debate since the poem release in 1916. It is known to be one of the most frequently misinterpreted poems of all time, and even Robert Frost himself has said the poem is “tricky” to comprehend (The). When analyzing this poem many readers tend to focus only on the last lines of the poem and get caught in a trap of selective-interpretation. Quite a few people after reading Robert Frost’s poem firmly conclude that this poem is about non-conformity and individualism, however, that is not the case. Robert Frost’s poem is meant to be analyzed line by line for a complete interpretation. Readers can conclude that the poem represents making choices in life, but that is not the

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foster presents a guide to help readers further understand the novels they read. In chapter one, he claims that every trip is a quest, and every quest has five main components. Each journey consists of a “quester”, or a journeying character that lacks self-knowledge. This character has a desired destination and a stated purpose of going there. Throughout this journey, the character experiences challenges and obstacles, eventually learning something new about him or her self. Thus, we learn that a simple trip has a deeper meaning and purpose.

4. The next key words were identified in the chapter and serve as an informal outline of the chapter. At the beginning of the chapter, Foster gives a brief example of a quest: a knight (Kip), a dragon road (German shepherds), Holy Grail (wonder bread), one dragon (’68 ‘Cuda), evil knight (Tony) and a princess (the laughing girl). In other words, each story has a quester, a place to go to, along with stated reason to go there and unknown challenges and trials en route; however, at the end there is a real reason for the whole trip - self-discovery (Foster 3). The stated reason is

Lastly, he lectures about the real reason of the quests rather than the stated reason; regardless of the initial reason, there is always an underlined reason, which Foster states as self-knowledge. This real reason explains why so many protagonists are young and inexperienced, for they have “a long way to go in the self-knowledge department” (Foster 3). Foster introduces an example of an unlikely quest: Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49. The quester in Crying of Lot 49 is a young woman that is stuck in an unhappy marriage and is easily dominated by the men in her life. The destination is Southern California, however she also journeys toward an uncertain future. Her stated reason to go to Southern California, far from her home in San Francisco, is that she has been made the executor of the will for her deceased lover. She goes through numerous trials which include meeting many eccentric and chilling people, taking nightlong voyages through San Francisco, talking psychotic therapists out of shooting rampages, and involving herself in a postal conspiracy. Lastly, Foster tells us the real reason the character, Oedipa Maas, is on a quest. Oedipa is named after a character in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, who doesn’t truly realize himself. The great challenge for Oedipa is that her security blankets, the males in her life, are gradually proven to be fake or unreliable. She is given the choice to either break down or forge on, regardless of the

From this chapter, In learned that the truth behind all quests is to find self-knowledge. Most of the time, the people on the quest are young and inexperienced, but by the end of their adventure, they’ve found their niche, and completed their mission. There is always a quester, a place to go, a reason to go, challenges and trials en route, and the real reason to go.

The five aspects of the quest are the quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials on the way, and the real reason to go there. When I read The Secret Life Of the Bees the quester was Lily, she was looking to go to Tiburon to find out more information about her mother and the past. On her journey she runs away from her father, falls in love, and becomes a part of a family. The real reason behind her journey is to get away from her father and feel connected with a family.

Foster breaks down the aspects of a journey to describe the quester, the destination, the stated reason, the challenges, and the real reason. The character who embarks on the journey, also known as the quester, has a defined reason to do so, whether it is to obtain an object, save one from the lurking dangers, or acquire life-saving knowledge. Along their way to reach their destination, they may encounter various challenges such as a physical barrier, a challenger/defender, or a personal obstacle they must face. Through whatever form it takes, these barriers force the quester to challenge their abilities and beliefs, which ultimately leads to them discovering personal knowledge previously unknown about themselves. Though the quester may have accomplished their stated goal of their journey, they return from their voyage often as a changed person as the real reason for their quest was to gain self-knowledge. After they finish their conquest, the quester realizes that the journey was more important than the destination whether they built upon their relationships with another, conquered a personal fear, or gained new found knowledge about themselves, altering their personality and their identity. Foster believes that every trip is a quest, and the quest is a revelation about one’s

Quest is a method where a literary work is broken down into five simple components. The five aspect of Quest consists of a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go, challenges and trials, and a real place to go. This method can be applied to a novel by John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath because many examples are peppered throughout the story.

The aspects of quest are present in most literary work found today. An excellent example

Our quester 2. A place to go 3. A stated reason to go there 4. Challenges and trials 5. The real reason to go … In the movie Home Alone (1990) Kevin goes on a quest to accommodate this lifestyle of ‘living alone’ without his family or anyone.

As described in How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, the five aspects of the QUEST include a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and a real reason to go there. In The Catcher in the Rye, the quester is the protagonist Holden Caulfield and the place to go is simply his home in Manhattan, New York. The stated reason for Holden to go home is because he got expelled from his school, Pencey Prep in Agerstown, Pennsylvania, because Holden failed four of his classes. The challenges and trials en route of Holden’s quest include his adventures and interactions with people during the few days Holden was in New York before he was supposed to go home after getting expelled from Pencey

Primo Levi was a Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor from the concentration Auschwitz. Primo Levi talks about in his book called “Survival in Auschwitz” about what it means to survive. There are many quotes that stand out in his book and have strong importance to them.

The Road is a story where is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where the date and location is unnamed. The author of the novel Cormac McCarthy doesn 't describe why or how the disaster has demolish the earth. But after reading the novel, I can sense that the author wanted to present a case of mystery and fear to the unknown to the reader. By the author 's exclusion I think that the story gains a better understanding of what the author wanted to express to the reader. An expression of a man and his son surviving in a post-apocalyptic setting.

In M. Scott Peck’s work, The Road Less Traveled, he says “Love is too large, too deep ever to be truly understood or measured or limited within the framework of words” (81). He also seeks to define love as “The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's personal growth” (81). For Peck, he recognizes that the nature of love is so mysterious that a true satisfactory definition of love has yet to be created and suspects his own definition to be inadequate. He also recognizes that love is categorically vast in that it is divided into eros, philia, agape, and others.