How To Read Literature Like A Processor Analysis

How to Read Literature Like a Professor is a book Thomas C. Foster uses to expose his thoughts and feelings of many literary terms and devices. Such ideas can be found in James Joyce’s short story, “The Dead”.

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster teaches readers about the most commonly used symbols and their meanings and the similarities between stories.

In Thomas Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, both authors demonstrate the use of violence between characters in multiple ways. In Chapter 12 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster describes two different ways that violence is used in literature, both of which can be found in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. In addition, both books also explore how each type of violence has a different effect on the plot and the characters. These two books are related because of their exploration of a deeper meaning of violence between two or more characters in literature and the different effects each type has.

It is a known fact that every human being communicates through language, but perhaps a little known fact that we communicate even through the food we eat. We communicate through food all the meanings that we assign and attribute to our culture, and consequently to our identity as well. Food is not only nourishment for our bodies, but a symbol of where we come from. In order to understand the basic function of food as a necessity not only for our survival, we must look to politics, power, identity, and culture.

2. A gathering around a meal often represents an act of communion. People come together to share thought, ideas, and conflicts. In “The Poisonwood Bible”, a particular scene occurs when there is a dinner at the church. The feeling around the dinner table was a sense of belonging and agreement, which matches up well with “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” view of a meal. As the meal proceeds, Kingsolver notes “He is Congolese all right, But he has different kind of eyes that slant a little bit like a Siamese” (Kingsolver 125). This

In “Young Hunger”, M.F.K Fisher uses food to express her lack of attention and love. For Fisher food represents comfort and helps her deal with her problems. Food is one of our three basic needs along with security and love. When Fisher writes about food she is actually writing about the hunger for love, being misunderstood by her godparents, and dealing with her problems with food. Fisher writes, “It was simply that [ her godparents] were old and sedentary and quite out of the habit of eating amply with younger people” (284).

How do memory, symbol, and pattern affect the reading of literature? How does the recognition of patterns make it easier to read complicated literature? Discuss a time when your appreciation of a literary work was enhanced by understanding symbol or pattern.

Foster discusses the idea that when two characters eat together, that moment acts as a bonding experience and causes the characters to come together. I had never noticed the significance of a meal between characters before. After reading this chapter, I can think of so many moments in stories when the characters share a meal together to form friendships or come to a peace. In one of my favorite novels, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, Picoult writes that “Emma Alexis- who was one of the cool, beautiful girls…she rolled her wheelchair right beside Justin. She’d asked him if she could have half of his donut” (367). Splitting the donut between one of the popular girls and one of the quieter, nerdier boys was a representation of the deformation of the high school social classes. After reading this chapter, I could recall the significance of meals together in so many novels and movies but I never noticed this pattern before.

“The Hobbit” and “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” are both very interesting books. These books have many similar and different concepts. Eating with others, eating others, quests, and geography are all concepts that are in both books.

When you eat with someone, this usually implies that you like them, and you want peace. Every communion does not have to be holy communion like in churches, but it is a bond and the communion forms a relationship between the groups. When the communion is between groups of disliking, there is major tension and the act of eating might not even commence.

Universal truth that we all eat to live, we all die. In other words, Foster is implying that a simple task like having to eat with an individual is an act of sharing and peace. Foster says, “Here's the thing to remember about communions of all kinds: in the real world, breaking bread together is an act of sharing and peace, since if you're breaking bread you're not breaking heads….” (9). The major rule is that whenever characters eat or drink together, it’s a communion.

In two passages of Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, she describes a party at 124. Everyone become so full from the food that flows endlessly that they become angry at Baby Suggs extravagance. Baby Suggs thinks it was this overfullness that caused them all to not notice the coming of Schoolteacher and his sons. The narrator of one passage is Stamp Paid and he recounts to Paul D. what happened at the party – what they ate and how it made everyone feel.

Food, has a specific meaning to all of us; for some it is a form of nourishment, for others it is a cultural act,

Food is looked at as nourishment, an instrument of solidarity, and a mechanism of community (Theres Nothing Like Church Food). Something that we take for granted everyday is a major support system for not only our bodies, but for our families and making the community in which we live in

According to Delaney (2004) suggests that food is not biological, it is cultural. The food that is consumed shapes culture and culture shapes food and intern shapes our identity (Delaney, 2004). Counihan (1999) agrees and suggests that food is a “product and mirror of the organisation of society…it is connected to behaviours and meanings” (p. 6). The way in which food is produced, distributed and consumed illustrates power relations, gender and sex within societies (Counihan, 1999). She explains that each society has a distinct food way which structures the community, personalities and families within the society (Counihan, 1999).