Read Literature Like A Professor Analysis

Thomas Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor, is a thought provoking guide to reading literature. This book helps with understanding the “language of reading” and the importance of details. Foster opens up a new side of literature where rather than reading emotionally, you dig deeper into the grammar of the literary work to discover the true meaning.

Foster notes that most stories and movies follow a pattern concerning quests (Foster 6). A character’s quest

By reading “How to Read Literature like a Professor” and “The Kite Runner”, the reader is aided in his or her ability to understand the true meanings behind the text. One is able to decipher how the act of coming together to eat can mean anything from a simple meal with family, to an uncomfortable situation that leads to anger or stress in an individual character. The reader is able to understand the use of rain or other weather in a novel to transform the mood and tone of scene, or understand the cleansing or destructive qualities that weather may have on the overall plot of the story. The use of illness can be transformed, as it can lead to the reader discovering veiled means behind tuberculosis, cholera, a simple cold, or even cancers such

“Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not)”, chapter one of the novel How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, discusses the presence of quests and their importance in literature. Foster uses both hypothetical examples as well as examples from literature to provide cases in which quests are present and significant. Kip, a hypothetical example of daily life, is a normal high school student that is out to buy some Wonder Bread for his mother. He is confronted by a rich kid driving a nice car accompanied by Kip’s crush. Although this may seem like an extremely ordinary scene in high school, Kip’s adventure out to the grocery store is a quest of a sorts; the stroll out to the store fulfills all of the requirements of a quest.

Chapter five of How To Read Literature Like An English Professor is about how Shakespeare is prominent in both old and current works of literature and in the media. 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.” (33). So why Shakespeare? Foster states “There is a kind of authority lent by something being almost universally known, where one has only to utter certain lines and people nod their heads in recognition.” (38). People recognize parallels to his stories. Foster also writes that Shakespeare provides a character in which authors can bounce ideas off of to further develop their own stories. Some famous books and movies that parallel Shakespeare are The Hunger Games, Star Wars, and The Fault In Our Stars.

What is the purpose of a quest? We see people going on quests everyday in the news, at school, even in the books we read. Every human has gone on at least one quest in their lives, but why do we do it? What is the purpose? What do we get out of it? The answer to these questions can only be answered by ourselves. But sometimes, we can figure out why other people go on quests and what they learn from them by reading their own story. In the epic The Odyssey by Homer, the main hero of the story, Odysseus, leaves Troy to go back home to Ithaca to see his family and to stop the suitors that have placed themselves in his house, although there are many challenges he faces. In the poem The Journey by Mary Oliver, the speaker of the poem, instead of trying to go back home

What is violence? Violence is, as described by Google,”behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Strength of emotion or an unpleasant or destructive natural force. And the unlawful exercise of physical force or intimidation by the exhibition of such force.” Both 1984 by George Orwell, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley have violence threaded throughout each novel. 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley are books written about how these two men saw their world changing and morphing into something they did not like, something dreadful, something alarming. Both of these books illustrate the way they saw their world’s future.

There are many factors in a story that makes a story more interesting and fun. The book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor for Kids by Thomas C. Foster, introduces some that help readers make a joyful experience while reading. A few important and essential factors are symbolism, having only one story, and little details.

How to Read Literature Like A Professor by Thomas C. Foster is a guide to the aspiring advanced literature reader on how to analyze and understand works of literature through the eyes of an individual trained in the specialty. It aims to provide different techniques of delving in to literature in attempt to find deeper meaning within the book. After reading this book, the reader should be able to read a novel and find topics discussed in the book, and then using their knowledge find hidden meanings that add to the underlying theme of the book. In the context of the Lord of the Flies, there are many instances where the ideas discussed in Foster’s book can be found in the novel. The weather, baptism and a Christ Figure are all themes described

How to Read Literature Like a Professor is a book that shows numerous ways and strategies to understand what their reading. Each chapter shows examples from books and use of literary devices that can help develop the meaning of the story. Think of this book as reading between the lines. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald used people to symbolize objects or things to let the reader have an interpretation on the characters. For example, the green light represents Gatsby's future for him and Daisy to be together. The green light is the most important symbol of the book because it has a meaning for many things. It also was interpreting the American Dream and money. Gatsby lived a poor life when he was younger and being in his situation now made him want to impress business and famous people, even Daisy. The first technique is used in chapter 10: Is That A Symbol? called allegories. Allegories are stories that reveal a hidden meaning. ¨Things stand for other things on a one-for-one basis (Foster 98).¨

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster teaches readers the meanings behind commonly used symbols, themes, and motifs. Many readers of all ages use this book as a guide to understanding messages and deeper meanings hidden in novels. The deeper literary meanings of various symbols in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale are explained in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. By using Foster’s book, readers can better understand the symbols in The Handmaid’s Tale. In Atwood’s novel, symbolisms of sex, flowers, and color add to the development of the novel and the deeper meaning of the plot.

In the beginning of Chapter ¬15 of How To Read Literature Like A Professor, Thomas C. Foster first introduces the very known fact that humans cannot fly. So if a human is able to in a piece of literature, it belongs to the categories he lists later on. However, the categorization is an superficial analyzation of flying. He introduces the history of flying and how humans have strived to defied the laws of gravity forever.

In Thomas C. Foster's How To Read Literature Like a Professor, he describes the setup of the adventure of the protagonist, dividing it into five parts: Our quester, a place to go, a stated reason to there, challenges and trials, and the real reason to go. A protagonist must experience all of these things in order to accomplish their goals and learn their lessons. In The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens, the main character, must encounter these things in order to unlock the mystery of what really happened to her mother the night she was killed, in addition to learning about the passion of writing and telling stories, the dangers and foolishness of racism, and female power.

Chapter seventeen of How to Read Literature Like a Professor focuses on how authors employ sex in their writing as a way to encode other things. For example, in the 2015 romantic comedy film, Trainwreck, Amy Schumer plays a young woman with a liking for booze, sex and drugs. The film begins with a scene where Gordon Townsend is explaining his reasoning for why monogamy isn’t realistic to his two little girls. The film then flashes twenty three years forward, directly into a sex scene featuring Amy and a one night stand. The scene is fairly short and it is obvious that the attraction on Amy’s side is limited, for she pretends to fall asleep soon after walking in the door. After the man falls asleep, one can hear Amy speaking. She explains her

In 2003, the motion picture, Kill Bill Volume 1, debuted in theaters. Set to a backdrop of bloodshed and violence, the film offers 112 minutes of savagery, as the main character attempts to get back at every person who has wronged her in the past four years. Kill Bill is only one of the many films in which violence is the number one attraction. “Kill or be killed,” seems to be the overarching motto, as millions of moviegoers flock into theaters each weekend to watch as characters fight to the death. In contrast, violence portrayed on the silver screen is no longer acceptable outside of the theater. Groups such as “Black Lives Matter” protest the violence enacted against minorities at the hands of authority figures. Legal courts are designed