What Diseases Symbolize in Literature: Analyzing Chapter 24 of Thomas C Foster's 'How to Read Literature like a Professor'

Mental illness and madness is a theme often explored in literature and the range of texts exploring these is tremendously varied. Various factors can threaten a character's sanity, ranging from traumatic events which trigger a decline to pressure from more vast, impersonal sources. Generally speaking, writers have tried to show that most threats to sanity comprise a combination of long-term and short-term factors - the burning of the library in Mervyn Peake's novel 'Titus Groan' precipitated Lord Sepulchrave's descent into madness, but a longer term problem can be discerned in the weight of tradition which caused him to worry 'that with him the line of Groan should

In “How to read literature like a professor” by Thomas Foster he explains different literary techniques that writers use when writing a story. Some of these techniques were symbolism, tone, major conflicts, foreshadowing and using certain settings. Even though all of these techniques are important to the story, symbolism is more important because it is used the most throughout the book. Symbolism is the use of people or objects to portray a certain idea or quality of something.

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.

While most of the population has not attended medical school for six or more years, every patient still needs to understand what is wrong with them. Similarly, while readers of a medical narrative aren’t experts on the medical topics they are reading about, but they still need to understand the story. Books written about illness can be confusing for a reader who isn’t familiar with that condition, which makes the author's job to explain the condition, while still maintaining an interesting story line. Metaphors and similes help to bridge the gap of understanding between patients and doctors, and readers and authors. When someone is unfamiliar with medical terms, giving a scientific definition of a diagnosis does no good, that is

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

Chapter One of of Jim Murphy’s book, An American Plague, opens with the quote, ‘About this time, this destroying scourge, the malignant fever, crept in among us” (Murphy 1). This quote is accredited to Mathew Carey in November, 1793. The term scourge is defined as, “a person or thing that cause great trouble of suffering,” and the term malignant is defined as, “tending to produce death or deterioration.” These are very strong terms with extremely negative connotative meanings. The figurative language which is evident in the quote at the opening of Chapter One is personification. Carey’s quote give yellow fever an eerie, human-like quality when he writes, “the destroying scourge, the malignant fever, CREPT in among us” (Murphy 1). CArey’s word choices and use of personification help to create a powerful image in the reader’s mind of the threat looming over the city of Philadelphia.\

Authors tend to get very political in between the lines of their stories. In “How to Read Literature Like a Professor,” by Thomas C. Foster, there is a chapter that discusses about how almost every author gets political with their writing. “Nearly all writing is political on some level.” (“How to Read Literature Like a Professor” 118.) “Animal Farm,” “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave,” and “Nature” are some examples that’ll be used to prove this point.

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.

Another example from the book is in chapter 2 on page 15 the idea that illness was caused by microscopic organisms, such as bacteria and viruses, was not known at the time. Instead, doctors based their medical thinking on the 2,500-year-old Greek humoral theory. THis concept stated that good health resulted when body fluids, called humors, were balance. This means that you could have the humors. The humors were phlegm, choler, bile, and blood.

Every character that travels down a path, that encounters obstacles on their journey, that makes sacrificial decisions faces each of these components as they undertake a life-altering quest. Often times the hero ventures out to save someone or solve a problem, but in fact, their true journey is a search for self-knowledge. Through every obstacle and road-block along the way, the character discovers more about themselves and their true identity. Though they may have journeyed across great lands to accomplish their mission, the thing they were searching for was inside of them all along; the journey and challenges only helped to reveal their real character. As explained in Thomas C. Foster’s literary criticism, How to Read Literature Like a Professor,

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.

In the footnote of aphorism 31 he states: “When I call a disease a derangement of man 's state of health, I am far from wishing thereby to give a hyperphysical explanation of the internal nature of disease generally, or of any case of disease in particular. It is only intended by this expression to intimate, what it can be proved diseases are not and cannot be, that they are not mechanical or chemical alterations of material

Illness is defined as a disease of the body or mind; poor health; sickness. Not only is it a disease, but it’s also evil and wickedness. Let’s travel through Shakespeare’s Macbeth to see how Shakespeare proves this to be true. While Macbeth’s power expands, his physical illness shows his evilness. Lady Macbeth’s increasing physical illness represents her growing guilt. As evil and guilt appear more and more, it makes clear the decrease in mental stability. By examining illness, one can determine that physical illness is a metaphor for the illness of their minds.

Crosby introduces the novel by detailing the plague seemingly at its worst level. The symptoms of the fever are described,

The nature of their illnesses also reflect the gender roles of the era. While Roderick’s illness amplifies his senses, Madeline’s disease, described as “a settle apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person”, dampens hers, reducing her into an ‘barely-there’, almost ghostly, individual. Roderick is able to isolate himself from the outside world to spare him from the torture