How to Read Literature Like a Professor Chapter Analysis Essay

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 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 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 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

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.

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

Foster argues that many seemingly weird plots are actually hero’s quests, and merely do not appear so because of the masking of the quest’s structural plots and the reader’s assumption that the stated reason is the actually the ultimate goal of the quest. However, Foster also warns against assuming that all trips are quests saying “some days I just drive to work – no adventures, no growth. I’m sure that the same is true in writing” (Foster, 6). He says that there are “always” and “never” do not have much meaning in literary study, and that for everything that seems to always be true someone will come along and disprove it. He applies this to the seemingly ubiquitous hero’s quest and concludes that not all trips necessarily are quests and about growth but that in the end it is always worth it to check when a character hits the road.

How to Read Literature like a Professor Annotations Chapter 1 Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not) Summary: Challenges must be faced during/on the path to the destination. Commentary: you must learn self reliance before relying on others (pg 5) Commentary: There will always be someone who tries to contradict what someone says to get their point across.

Nearly all writing contains political elements, because an author usually includes the world around them when writing. Authors will embrace society in their writing by showing the political injustices, such as civil rights, power structures, different classes in the society, and many more. When authors bring in what’s going on around them into their writing, they are most likely bringing in political elements as well.

HTR Chapters 5 and 6 The work of William Shakespeare is widely known and respected, I think it is safe to assume that many authors may draw an inspiration from his writing. Chapter 5 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor deals with authors using Shakespearean text to create their own work, allowing them to say more while at the same time using fewer words. Like Mr.Foster states, “He’s everywhere, in every literary form you can think of. And he’s never the same:every age and every writer reinvents its own Shakespeare.”

In the second chapter of Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster discusses the intimacy of eating throughout literature and how readers should draw important information from a scene at the table. This chapter quickly establishes that “whenever people eat or drink together, it’s communion” (8). While the word communion is often associated with religious practices, Foster determines that in literary context, communion frequently refers to the close exchanging of intimate thoughts, feelings or actions. As the chapter progresses Foster begins to provide several reasons for why readers should pay attention to meal scenes, such as, “writing a meal scene is so difficult, and so inherently uninteresting that there really

Chapter thirteen tells how most writing is based on political values. This is because many of the people who write literature tend to be interested in the political aspects of life such as world problems, power structures, social class relations, and so on. Some literary works

In literature, the two different kinds of violence are the specific injury that characters bring upon themselves (shootings, stabbings, bombings, etc.) and the when the author brings it upon all of the characters in general to advance the plot. An example of the first type of violence is presented in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Caesar is killed by Cassius, Brutus and their accomplices. The death of Caesar lead to more death and more problems throughout Rome. The purpose was to show how great power can lead to death and destruction and violence only creates a bigger mess. An example of the second type of violence is seen in the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Myrtle is killed in a fatal accident by Daisy but due to his great love for her,

There are two major types of violence found in literature. The first type of violence found in literature is the specific injury that authors cause characters to visit on one another or on themselves. This type of violence includes stabbing, drowning, poisoning, and many more. The second type of violence in literature is the narrative violence that causes characters harm in general. The seconds type of violence is used by the author to advance the plot or theme. For example, in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses the first type of violence when Gatsby accidentally kills Myrtle. Fitzgerald planned this to happen so it could not be an accident, it was supposed to happen for the upcoming events. The second type was used when Wilson, Myrtle’s husband,

A symbol is something used to stand for something else. In literature, a symbol is most often used to represent an idea more complex in scope and meaning — often a moral, religious, or philosophical concept or value. “Nathaniel Hawthorne has a perfect atmosphere for the symbols in The Scarlet Letter because the Puritans saw the world through allegory.” (Cliffs Notes).