Thomas C. Foster's How To Read Literature Like A Professor: Journey And Challenges

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, he outlines the five elements of a quest. The elements that are needed for a quest to occur is a quester, a place to go, reason to go, challenges and trials, and a real reason to go there. In The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins the main character, Katniss Everdeen, goes on a quest that tests her courage, bravery, and will to survive. The quester, Katniss Everdeen is a sixteen year old girl who has a younger sibling Primrose who is 12 years old. The government where Katniss lives is run from the capitol. Every year the capitol holds the hunger games which is a punishment placed on the districts after an uprising that failed. There is a public reaping

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.

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 Chapter 1 the author explains the symbolic reasoning of why a character takes a trip. They don't just take a trip they take a quest. Structurally a quest has a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and a reason to go there. Quests usually involve characters such as a knight, a dangerous road, a Holy Grail, a dragon, an evil knight, and a princess. The quest also involves the character to gain self-knowledge out of taking the adventure to the stated place where he or she is going.

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.

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.

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

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foster presents a guide to help readers further understand the novels they read. In chapter one, he claims that every trip is a quest, and every quest has five main components. Each journey consists of a “quester”, or a journeying character that lacks self-knowledge. This character has a desired destination and a stated purpose of going there. Throughout this journey, the character experiences challenges and obstacles, eventually learning something new about him or her self. Thus, we learn that a simple trip has a deeper meaning and purpose.

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.

4. The next key words were identified in the chapter and serve as an informal outline of the chapter. At the beginning of the chapter, Foster gives a brief example of a quest: a knight (Kip), a dragon road (German shepherds), Holy Grail (wonder bread), one dragon (’68 ‘Cuda), evil knight (Tony) and a princess (the laughing girl). In other words, each story has a quester, a place to go to, along with stated reason to go there and unknown challenges and trials en route; however, at the end there is a real reason for the whole trip - self-discovery (Foster 3). The stated reason is

From this chapter, In learned that the truth behind all quests is to find self-knowledge. Most of the time, the people on the quest are young and inexperienced, but by the end of their adventure, they’ve found their niche, and completed their mission. There is always a quester, a place to go, a reason to go, challenges and trials en route, and the real reason to go.

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.

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

Small or big, everything we do in life is part of our journey. Reg Harris’ “The Hero’s Journey” describes the voyage one takes throughout life to grow and change as a person. He breaks the journey down into eight steps leading to the return. It starts out as a goal that isn’t always easy to reach, one goes through hardship and personal doubts only to succeed and become a better person. An example of this journey can be found in the movie, Troy through the character Achilles. Achilles is a strong fearless warrior in the movie, Troy who goes through “The Hero’s Journey” and ends up with a change of heart.

In “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, chapter 18, Foster speaks on the topic of rebirth and renewal. He says that when a character's body is submerged into a body of water there is a symbolic meaning behind it. If the character arises from the watery depths ,then there has been some form of transformation whether it be internal or external. This is actually one of my favorite motifs to speak on, or think about. It shows the change and development of a character, how they grow, and their thought process has changed. This stage of rebirth in a literary work is the background, or building blocks, to the character's new persona/attitude.