How to Read Literature Like a Professor Outline Essay

In Thomas Foster’s book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, it is written that there are five aspects of a quest: “the quester; a place to go; a stated reason to go there; challenges and trials en route; a real reason to go there” (Foster 3). In the book The Poisonwood Bible, the Price family were the questers going to the Congo to bring Christianity to the villagers. During their stay at the Congo, they faced hate, disease, violence, and even the death of Ruth May. Although the whole family was attempting to bring Christianity to the villagers, Nathan Price’s real goal was to baptize all the villagers.

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

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.

Chapter 14 is about how almost everything, in some form, is a Christ figure. The chapter gives a list to relate characters to. The list is 1. crucified, wounds in the hands, feet, side, and head 2. in agony 3. self-sacrificing 4. good with children 5.good with loaves, fishes, water, wine 6. thirty-three years of age when last seen 7. employed as a carpenter 8. known to use humble modes of transportation, feet or donkeys preferred 9. believed to have walked on water 10. often portrayed with arms outstretched 11.

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.

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

In Thomas Foster’s book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor,” readers learn how to look past the surface of a literary work to find a deeper or hidden meaning. Writers use devices, such as symbolism, imagery, foreshadowing, irony and allusion to reveal these meanings. If these are overlooked, important aspects of the story can be lost. One literary device that Foster emphasizes in his book is allusion. Every story has elements of another story, and Foster devotes Chapters Four through Seven explaining the meaning of allusion in works by Shakespeare, the Bible, and fairy tales.

Weather can be a very important aspect to telling a story. For example, in the book Holes, there was a town that relied on the lively lake in order to survive. This lake was the center of life and provided all the nourishment needed for the town. Unfortunately, the town abruptly stops receiving any fall of rain when Sam, a man obtaining income from the lake crops, is murdered. As a result, the entire lake ends up evaporating, leaving the town to slowly disintegrate.

When the situation with the dwarves was very sad and dreary, and when there isn’t a lot of hope in the adventurers, it starts raining. Rain usually symbolises sadness and mourning, and when it rains the adventurers are in despair over losing their items and having no shelter. The book says: “The lightning splinters on the peaks, and rocks shiver, and great crashes split the air and go rolling and tumbling into every cave and hollow; and the darkness is filled with overwhelming noise and light. Bilbo had never seen or imagined anything of the kind. They were high up in a narrow place, with a dreadful fall into a dim valley on one side.

One of the first items the author states is that all symbolism is intentional, there are no accidents when it comes to analyzing famous literature. He describes certain authors like James Joyce and T.S. Elliot as “intentionalists” or writers who purposely try to control every part of the story through symbolism. The author Thomas Foster teaches us never to overlook anything in a novel even if it be little things like the color shirt they are wearing or what the weather is like outside. Building more off the last statement, precipitation, whilst being a little detail added into a story, holds a lot of important roles in moving the story along and even providing hardships for characters to overcome. Even more than that though, he says “It’s never just rain”, rain provides as a symbol in the story so that if someone is in the rain it’s almost as if they are being cleansed.

Like with The April Rain song by Langston Hughes, it kinda makes you fall in love the rain without realizing with the way uses words like lullaby and silver liquid drops in his poem. However he does use the rain very repetitively in his poem where he loses some of his meaning unlike in April Rain by WIlliam Buchanan where the word is used only twice. April Rain gives off a more energetic vibe than the April Rain Song does, letting light to a whole nother perspective to

If you look at the similarities in these two stories, it is apparent that both of the authors use weather to

Weather affects the lives of everyone. When the weather turns foul, it makes life more difficult. Stormy weather in Tony's dreams represents the conflict in his life, and the lives of those

I feel as though weather has a small effect on some people but a huge one on others, such as Catherine. In the novel when Frederic wants some “alone time” with Catherine they find themselves in a hospital like building to take shelter from the rain. While it’s raining Catherine explains to Frederic why she is afraid of the rain and it is because she sometimes sees herself dead in it. Rain represents death in

Wind-blown, she reaches the roof top and looks for a way over. The tower is taller than the roof she is on. Torn, she realizes that she can’t make it to the top in time. Sighing, she sits down with her legs hanging over the edge of the building, the soft breeze tickling the bottoms of her feet. There is always tomorrow, she thinks. Inhaling, the crisp morning breeze fills her lungs and spreads through her. The air smells like rain, from the night’s storm. A memory tugs her mind, and she recalls a voice that she can’t place to a specific person any more. The rain doesn’t smell like anything it says ringing through her memory, it just makes everything it touches smell more. So really when you smell rain, your just smelling the whole world around you for the first time. As the breeze whistles around her, she takes another deep breathe. Thoughtfully, she decides that she likes the smell of this part of the world.