How To Read Literature Like A Professor by Thomas C. Foster Essay

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.

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

“Sometimes the really scary bloodsuckers are entirely human” (Foster 18). In How To Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster argues that vampires in literature are not always actual vampires, but can be figurative as well: “Using other people to get what we want. Placing our desires above the needs of others...as long as people act toward their fellows in exploitative and selfish ways, the vampire will be” (Foster 22). In essence, Foster illustrates that the act of using others to attain one’s personal goal is analogous to a vampire sucking the blood out of it’s victim. Foer’s protagonist in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar, also shows these vampiric tendencies in his goal of learning about his father’s key. “‘Actually, I’m diabetic

With that in mind no matter how I look at it I wish the book would have started in a more interesting manner. It was very hard to start the book simply because it sounded like a regular high school life. Maybe that makes it a more interesting read to put in the realism, and yes I do understand that the book needs to start somewhere; to me it was just a bad start and could have been executed better. Now some people will probably say that it was a better start then how some books start and I definitely agree on that. To me I just wish that the book would have distinguished itself a bit

The author is very descriptive and gives readers a lot of information. Sentences like “The wait was electric, for Chicago was a prideful place” (13) are very formal and hold the character of that time. The author’s style is descriptive, and thoroughly narrates events. Sentences like “mounds of quicklime; a large kiln; a dissection table stained with what seemed to be blood” are very descriptive and add to the eerie feeling that readers get (364). The words the author chose helped readers know how they are supposed to feel about certain subjects. An example is the sentence “He possessed them all and reveled in his possession” (350). This sentence makes readers such as myself feel uncomfortable and adds to the depiction of Holmes. His wording helped readers understand his characters. This books serves as a reminder for other books like Great Gatsby but heavily contrasts Great Gatsby in the fact that it depicts much more gruesome events and is a darker read that Gatsby. The author also uses a lot of paragraph breaks to try to highlight something that is important for readers to not. The book was easy to read but packed with information. The author also implies a lot of things instead of outrightly stating

I love that the story starts with suspense as to what was happening with Daniel Burnham’s friend, Francis Millet. While reading a book involving history, the reader has a benefit that the characters in the story do not: the reader knows what happens before the characters do.

Characterization that Adams puts in his book shows off the characters in a new light. The details that were put in the book to show off the characters, but the personalities he gives the characters make them seem more real.

All in all the book was a great novel with great character development, but the bias, exaggeration, and predictable

The book was quite an interesting concept in retrospect but in action it was rather uninteresting and boring. This seems to be a book that was written in a very different environment to our own and now only serves as a book study in high schools.

The whole book felt a little disjointed to me. There were seemingly random events that left me feeling confused as to the significance, and flashbacks that weren’t clearly portrayed as flashbacks. The author also seemed to skip around a lot. Little parts were written from different characters perspectives which detracted from the overall flow of the plot.

I felt that the world building lacked… a lot. I was so confused a time to what was going on. Then there is these ‘Twisted things’ that just pop up and aren’t given any explanation to what they are and what they do. Also the war with the gods – I was so confused – I was asking all these questions and the answers didn’t come clear. Who are these gods? What are these gods? Why are they fighting these gods. We get some answers at the end of the book, but I was still really confused about the

The transitions between chapters often felt like the writer jumped. One chapter your reading one story then the next chapter you time jumped to something else. You got what's going on as you read then suddenly your on another subject and confused as to where that part of the story is going. It made the book hard to read. Thankfully most of those chapters that were confusing get explained later on as the story progresses. Also I think someone might want to get proof reader. Some of the sentences felt like words were missing. That made it hard to understand what the writer was trying to bring

As I read, however, it became patently clear how full of unchecked aggression the author sounds in this book. The intended viciousness almost seemed to seep from the pages at certain points throughout the text. Although quite dry, the book itself is superbly written, and at times Bloom seems to

There are some things that I don’t necessarily like about every aspect of the book, but it has a lot of really good insights. It shows different aspects. There are way to many things that he discussed. He had everything planned out and I really enjoyed his analogy for education. I never thought about what it meant to be educated.

I was really excited for this novel because mainly because I’d heard good things about it plus Simon Vance, my favorite narrator, was narrating the novel but whereas it was a good book for me it seemed to fall short.