Lucy Cao Dr. Roth AP Lit 23 Aug 2015 How to Read Literature Like a Professor Log Chapter 1: Every Trip is a Quest (Except When It’s Not) 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. Chapter 2: Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion 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. Chapter 3: Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires To be a vampire, you have to take something from someone else to benefit yourself, whether that be anything from blood to money. Vampires weren’t always what we see today in “Twilight. Vampirism does not always have to do with vampires but selfishness, exploitation, and refusal to respect. Chapter 4: Now Where Have I Seen Her Before? This chapter states that there is no such thing as a truly original work of literature; books are always based off of works before them. This further develops into the idea that there is only one story,
Chapter 14 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor discusses how to identify and the significance of Christ figures in literature. According to the book, Christ Figures are prevalent in literature for various reasons including putting emphasis on the sacrifice of the character or deepening the plot with the parallel to Christ. This works because Christ is an important feature in our culture. I believe that literature from dominantly Christian areas will contain many figures resembling Christ simply because the religion is ingrained in the culture. Foster lists many of the qualities that help to indicate the presence of a Christ figure. Some of these include wounds on hand and feet, and struggle in the wilderness, a sacrificing character,
The third chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster writes of the recognizable pattern where a “nasty old man, attractive but evil, violates young women, leaves his mark on them, steals their innocence … and leaves them helpless followers in his sin” (Foster 16). In the fourth episode of the fourteenth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the detectives discover a girl from an accident with a barcode tattoo who was thought to be part of a sex slavery ring. The detectives tried questioning the girl, but she refused to release any details about the slavery. After questioning, she was picked up by an older girl who also had a barcode tattoo. The detectives promised to help the older girl if she would just stay
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald is an extremely renowned coming of age novel. It portrays life in the roaring 20’s, following the life of a young Amory Blaine. Amory faces obstacles from devastation by wealthy women to fighting in World War I and losing some of his closest friends. Reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster emphasized the main ideas throughout Amory’s life. The two main ideas that stood out in Fitzgerald’s book, was the quest taken by Amory Blaine and what Foster calls “baptisms” throughout the story.
thus further proving the point, that no matter how crazy or boring the adventure may seem, there is always a quest involved. Chapter 2: In
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.
Now these creatures are naturally Dark, though many of them choose not to be malicious. Some choose simply to go into isolation and live their lives away from society. However, one thing that is certain about the Vampire is their need for blood. A vampire cannot survive without blood. Most often, lore says that vampires get their blood by drinking it from humans. They simply come up, give the victim a nice, solid bite on the neck, and drain the blood from their system. This, in turn, would also turn the victim into a vampire.
Overall, having these aspects is what’s important about actually having a quest. A little example of what quest is, if you didn’t get it, is like trying to get a job. You're the quester, the road to getting a job is difficult, depending on what kind of job you're aiming to get, you don’t have a dragon or an evil knight/villain, but there is the boss, the holy grail are your degrees, the damsel in distress/princess is money, the stated reason is to get money for you, but the real reason is to save up for your retirement, and/or your family. One more example is we as kids had only a stated reason to decide on what we want to become when we grow up, but go through life, get some experience,
A quest, small or large, is described in most works of literature. Quests often require a great expedition on the part of the protagonist, and the overcoming of many obstacles, hardships and sufferings. A Majority of the time the character is not aware of the journey that they are embarking on. According to Thomas C Foster, in his article How to Read Literature Like a Professor, a quest most contain five key components; a quester, a place to go along with a data yes reason to go there, obstacles along the way and a real reason to go there. Stories such as; Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Cormac McCarthy's The
“So vampirism isn’t about vampires?” Vampire and ghost stories aren’t all that you may think they are, but maybe they have a deeper meaning, a sexual meaning. Throughout this Chapter, “Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires”, my mind has been open to countless new ideas. This text has made me question other stories or novels I’ve read in the past, and want to analysis more text I read.
Vampires are known as mythical beings with white pale glittery skin that drain the essence of life known as blood. As unbelievable as it sounds they actually did exist centuries ago. They weren’t anything like the vampires we see in movies, shows, books, and video games today. A vampire or something analogous to it can be found in most culture and folklores going back to the beginning of time, but it is a mistake to think they have familiar attributes of Count Dracula. The term “vampire” appeared in literature since the 18th century. Vampires might be viewed as either blood-sucking creatures or sexy ones, but they represent much more than that. Vampires represent fear and contempt of people with different beliefs.
Based on Thomas Foster’s, How to Read Literature like a Professor, a quest is like a journey. For a journey to be considered a quest, it must include (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (d) a real reason to go there. A quester is usually just a person who has no idea that they’re going on a quest until it actually happens. Items (b) and c) directly correlates with each other because normally, the quester is ordered to go somewhere and then perform a certain task. The real reason for a person to go on a quest is almost never the stated reason. The purpose for the real reason for a quest is usually so that quester can learn more about themselves. For that reason, questers are almost always very young and inexperienced.
According to the Oxford Dictionaries, a vampire is “a corpse supposed to leave its grave at night to drink the blood of the living by biting their necks with long pointed canine teeth.” Vampires were seen as a villain, evil, or even a monster. This type of vampire can be seen in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. However, the newer vampires “drink blood to survive and maintain their powers” (Truebloodwiki). This description of vampires is similar to the Oxford definition.
* Quest consists of 5 things: A quester, place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and a real reason to go there.
“Here's the thing 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” (8).
Dating back to folklore, vampires were vicious night crawlers who endeavoured to greedily drink the blood from their victims. They were corpse-like with sharp fangs and monstrous features. Later, they evolved to the more regal, noble adaption that garnered the popularity that is so well known today, but more recently, the vampire has evolved