How To Read Literature Like A Professor Foster Chapter 1 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 Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, it is stated that a quest consists of five things: a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges on the way, and a real reason to go there. In this particular situation, there is not just one quester, but instead and entire family: the Joads. They are headed to California in search of a steady job that will support them. On their way, they face money problems, car troubles, deaths, and issues with the government. The real reason to go there is always self knowledge in the eyes of Thomas Foster. The family learns that they must stick together and help each other and others out in order to survive. Without the help of their neighbors they would have perished of hunger and never would have made it into California. Unfortunately, they never actually reach the point where they have steady and happy lives. This is their Holy Grail. They were journeying toward something that they were never going to find in

1. In chapter eleven of his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foster examines violence in literature, and particularly the way violence functions on multiple levels. Foster identifies two different kinds of violence in literature, and discusses how those two different kinds create different literal and literary meanings. By examining Foster's categories of violence in more detail, one can see how violence in literature serves as an important link between the internal events of a story and the story itself.

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.

-Every time a character sets out to do something it's a quest. The idea of a quest has evolved greatly, as literature has evolved.

In the twelfth chapter of Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster provides various information on how to identify symbols throughout literature. The chapter stressed the individuality of identifying symbols, Foster mentions multiple times that “every reader’s experience of every work is unique, largely because each person will emphasize various elements to different degrees” (110). After learning this and also having read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, one thing that stood out was that the main character, Oskar, only has and only wears white clothes. Not only does Oskar often reference his various white clothes, including the white scarf that Grandma knitted

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster is a book that explains there is more to literature than just a few words on a paper or a few pages in a book. Thomas Foster’s book portrays a relatable message to a wide based audience. This book is relatable for two reasons, the way it is written and the examples it uses. The book is written in a conversational manner, as if the reader was in a group discussion about books and writing. As for the examples, they are informative, descriptive, relative, and entertaining.

In the book “How To Read Literature Like A Professor” by Thomas C. Foster, many elements are brought to the reader’s attention. Three of these elements, happen to connect with the novel, “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” written by Mark Haddon.

In the novel “How to Read Literature like a Professor” the author, Thomas Foster, analyzed and broke down many literary techniques and reoccurring themes in literature. One of the most widely used literary techniques as shown in the novel was Symbolism. Symbolism is heavily used in literature from precipitation and weather to politics, almost everything we read in literature is a form of symbolism.

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

Tom C. Foster states that the five aspects of a quest include; (a) a quester (b) a place to go (c) a stated

The recognition of patterns makes it much easier to read complicated literature because recognizing patterns will help you relate two or more pieces of literature together, therefore making it easier to understand and analyze the literature you are focused on. Patterns in literature can help the reader understand plots, settings, themes, and other literary elements. I greatly appreciated the novel, Brave New World because of how different the society in the novel was from the one I live in. Using the Signposts from Notice and Note, I was able to see contrast and contradictions that enhanced my understanding of the book. I noticed how I was expecting Bernard, in Brave New World to be just like everybody else in the novel but instead he was a “normal person” that felt normal human emotions, such as the longing for love, that the other characters just did not feel. He also felt isolated and alone. Bernard thinks in a way we were not expecting. Patterns such as this helped me, the reader, to better understand literary elements.

In the skillful novel, "How To Read Literature Like A Professor" by Thomas C. Foster, there is neither a protagonist nor antagonist. As a whole, the novel gives insights on how to pick up signs of symbolism, irony, and many other hidden details that are buried within the words of literature. Foster refers to many classis novels by classic authors to demonstrate the use of logic in writing. The novel is extremely educational, leaving many insightful questions and interpretations to the reader's opinion.

-Flight is freedom. When a character has the ability to fly they are free from the burdens of everyday life.

Many times the quester does not know that they are going on a “journey”. Most of the time, the quester is usually doing a simple task like going to the hardware store to get supplies to build a birdhouse. This may not seem like a full blown out journey. However, in literature there are many aspects about situations that the reader has to look deeper into the passage to find its true meaning. In the case of the Hobbit, Bilbo knew initially that he was going on an actual journey. This is a different case than stated in Foster’s book. Bilbo may not have known that he was the quester, but he definitely knew that he was going on a journey. He was told this when the dwarves and the wizard, Gandalf, approached his home to talk and have a