Throughout my two years during high school, I have learned a fairly good amount about analyzing literature. Although I am not fully confident about it, I do know the basics of analyzing literature and it is not just straightforward. Analyzing literature is not just about summarizing the text, it’s more than that. Out of the many ways of analyzing I learned to take each element of the story and looking at it “beneath the story.” Over the years of learning, I always thought analyzing literature is just a simple summary of the storyline. Ever since I was in middle school I would automatically think that analyzing was to summarize because when it came to reading a book or any assignment, we would summarize it because we didn’t know what it meant. But during my years in high school, I finally learned what it was. I was taught that looking in deeper to find the meaning of the context and pay attention to every little detail when reading. Usually every week we would read books, poems, articles, or even watch movies and we would write down the characters, set, and plots. I would explain why the characters would act or feel a certain way if the setting wasn’t in a specific place then would the story still happen the same way as the original? This really increased my critical thinking.
In the beginning of analyzing literature, having a theme is important because then you would draw out literary elements which would lead to finding deeper meaning and understand more about the theme
-As readers we come across many details in literature that hole significance, however the common reader usually misses the deeper
Thomas C. Foster in ‘How to Read Literature like a Professor’, references the different literary devices that authors use in literature, in order to enhance the reader’s ability to critically analyze literature from any time period. Foster expands the reader’s understanding of literature by exploring the profound impact of symbols and common themes on literature.
Theme. A lesson in a novel or story that is not directly stated in the book. Between the excerpts Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt and The Street by Ann Petry is a common theme. The theme that desperate times call for desperate measures.
In the novel How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, the value in reading William Shakespeare’s works is displayed. Shakespeare’s works enables readers to help understand literature and pick up references in modern day entertainment. For example, Foster states “[William Shakespeare is] everywhere, in every form you can think of. And he’s never the same: every age and every writer reinvents its own Shakespeare” (30). This statement depicts that Shakespeare’s legacy lives on to today and even though he is dead, he continues to impact lives today. All authors create their own form of Shakespeare and if you know Shakespeare, it’ll make understanding literature so much easier. This is because authors based their works off of
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.
Literature is the window to realizing the negatives of society and how destructive certain norms can be. Readers are brought into a completely different story than their own, but by using similar issues in today’s world, the readers can actually learn from the story and its overall message. All writers write for a purpose, whether it’s for a new meaning to life, to live a different life than our own, or to impact others on an emotional level by teaching them to see the importance of the little things. As a reader, you search for pieces of literature that interest you whether you find the story like your own, or wish you lived the life in the story. By using issues in today’s within their works, authors are able to grab the reader's attention long enough for them to get across what they wanted to get across. Often in many works of literature, writers use societal issues as their basis for the work’s themes and symbols. By doing so, this allows the reader to question the morality behind social norms and how impactful certain ideals can be in people’s lives.
In Thomas Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, both authors demonstrate the use of violence between characters in multiple ways. In Chapter 12 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster describes two different ways that violence is used in literature, both of which can be found in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. In addition, both books also explore how each type of violence has a different effect on the plot and the characters. These two books are related because of their exploration of a deeper meaning of violence between two or more characters in literature and the different effects each type has.
“The Hobbit” and “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” are both very interesting books. These books have many similar and different concepts. Eating with others, eating others, quests, and geography are all concepts that are in both books.
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.
The theme is the subject of the essay and it helps the reader to get the full understanding about the message or a big idea. “School of Hate” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely and “18 Tigers, 17 Lions, 8 Bears, 3 Cougars, 2 Wolves, 1 Baboon, 1 Macaque, and 1 Man Dead in Ohio” by Chris Heath have one similar theme and it is isolation because they both experienced as the outcasts and it was hard for them to getting along with the society. Erdely developed the theme by showing the experiences of a girl in the middle school. The author made the
Almost all stories have plots, and authors employ plots in many different ways. If you can show the particular way in which an author makes use of plot to further his or her story, you have said something substantial. We are interested in learning about the particular way that Hawthorne uses colors and names as character symbols in “Young Goodman Brown,” or the specific way that Updike in “A & P ” shows the world of the grocery store society as a way to enable Sammy 's character to hopefully mature. Try to develop your discussion by focusing on a particular strategy the author uses and what effect that strategy has on the reader. Why did the author choose this particular strategy over other options that might have presented themselves? Does the strategy enable the author to do anything? Are there any constraints in using the strategy?
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”.
Literary Analysis: The Literary Analysis was by far my best essay and the one I most enjoyed writing. The new critical thinking skills I learned in the first essay made writing this paper much easier. I also found the topics of the
In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster teaches readers about the most commonly used symbols and their meanings and the similarities between stories.
Theme gives the reader a general idea about what the piece of literature is about. The character’s action and thoughts takes part in creating the theme. Animal farm was a book about animals taking control of the farm from their tyrannic farmer. The animals attempts to make the farm a democracy, but Napoleon, the pig leader, takes over and eventually becomes the new tyrant. The Pearl was about a family, Kino, Juana, Coyotito, who catches a huge pearl. They go through a journey to get away from any harm such as the trackers. In the book Animal Farm and the book The Pearl, the two characters, Napoleon and the Doctor, created a theme that greed can change their perspective.