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    How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids
    How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids
    How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids
    Ebook156 pages2 hours

    How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids

    By Thomas C. Foster

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The go-to bestselling guide to help young people navigate from a middle school book report to English Comp 101

    In How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids, New York Times bestselling author and professor Thomas C. Foster gives tweens the tools they need to become thoughtful readers.

    With funny insights and a conversational style, he explains the way writers use symbol, metaphor, characterization, setting, plot, and other key techniques to make a story come to life.

    From that very first middle school book report to that first college course, kids need to be able to understand the layers of meaning in literature. Foster makes learning this important skill fun and exciting by using examples from How the Grinch Stole Christmas to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from short stories and poems to movie scripts.

    This go-to guide unlocks all the hidden secrets to reading, making it entertaining and satisfying.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 23, 2013
    ISBN9780062200877
    Author

    Thomas C. Foster

    Thomas C. Foster is the author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, How to Write Like a Writer, How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor, and other works. He is professor emeritus of English at the University of Michigan, Flint, where he taught classes in contemporary fiction, drama, and poetry as well as creative writing and freelance writing. He is also the author of several books on twentieth-century British and Irish literature and poetry.

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    Reviews for How to Read Literature Like a Professor

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed reading this book. As several reviewers before me have said, Foster's tone is very readable and "un-snobbish." Each chapter is devoted to one specific theme/symbol/etc. with titles like "It's Greek to Me," "It's More Than Just Rain or Snow," and "It's Never Just Heart Disease." He covers quite a bit of material in this relatively thin book, but obviously, there are still some stones left unturned. He gives a list at the end of the book for more titles on literary criticism as well as literature and movies to check out. Another thing this book offered was a "test case" at the end. Foster includes Katherine Mansfield's short story "The Garden Party" at the end and challenges you to put your new knowledge to use.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed reading this book. As several reviewers before me have said, Foster's tone is very readable and "un-snobbish." Each chapter is devoted to one specific theme/symbol/etc. with titles like "It's Greek to Me," "It's More Than Just Rain or Snow," and "It's Never Just Heart Disease." He covers quite a bit of material in this relatively thin book, but obviously, there are still some stones left unturned. He gives a list at the end of the book for more titles on literary criticism as well as literature and movies to check out. Another thing this book offered was a "test case" at the end. Foster includes Katherine Mansfield's short story "The Garden Party" at the end and challenges you to put your new knowledge to use.
    • 4/5
      Do you remember when you were in English or literature in school and the teacher told you that a specific literary element was symbolic for what-have-you, and you wondered what part of the air the teacher pulled that from? If you did, this book can help you understand the deeper meaning behind literary elements. For example, if the protagonist is going on a journey this may mean that he or she is going on a quest of self-discovery. What if the protagonist falls into the river and re-emerges? Could this be symbolic of new life and renewal? The author provides an entertaining analysis of symbols in various stories and their underlying meaning. Now that I have completed the book, I will never read another book without mining it for deeper meanings.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this guide to reading literature. The author is a college professor and this book is a short course in how to study and appreciate literature. It gives the reader a broad overview of literature; the origins, themes and motifs, narrative devices. He uses poems, short story, plays, movies, and songs. So I guess it is fitting to give the Nobel for literature to a song writer. Finally you get to practice what you've learned on the short story The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield. I've read that particular short story for a total of 3 times now since reading this book. The book also contains a list of novels, poems, and plays that he recommends to the reader. This book will add to your tbr.
    • 3/5
      Introduction to literary symbolism and reading between the lines and beyond. Interesting introduction or fun reminder for casual readers but may be too shallow for university-level students.
    • 5/5
      Winter 2021 (December);

      Tested out using this through the year in our classes as a new version instead of the main brick volume (which remains my favorite), and it worked FABULOUSLY. I am going to be integrating this into the classroom every year from here on out.
    • 3/5
      Liked some points - The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge.That's pretty much what a vampire does, after all. He wakes up in the morning - actually the evening, now that I think about it - and says something like, "In order to remain undead, I must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own."Why writer turn to ShakespeareIt makes them sound smarter?Smarter than what?Than quoting Rocky and Bullwinkle, for instance.
    • 2/5
      First off, I would not have picked this up (and certainly not read all of it) if it hadn’t been assigned reading for school. I have little interest in reading a book on how to read, and the idea itself strikes me as nonsensical.What How to Read Literature turned out to be was pages and pages of examples from books I’d never read before. If your point is “near drowning often represents baptism and rebirth” why can’t you just say that once? Is there really need for an entire chapter on it?I think this would have worked better as an outline than a book. Instead of a chapter, you could have the “look out for this when you’re reading” suggestion, which was all I really needed anyway. The numerous lengthy examples could all be listed below this main point.I don’t know how much I can fault what you chose to reference for examples. While I would have liked for him to use texts that high schools students would actually have read, I will acknowledge that high school students were not his intended audience. In the introduction, he made it clear that he was writing for adult students returning to college and is completely surprised that his book is mainly read by high school students who have it assigned as summer reading. So maybe he was assuming that adult college students have read a lot of classics? Or maybe he didn’t care that his readers likely won’t share his joy of Toni Morrison?Which is another thing. He uses the same books for examples over and over and over again, and each time, he has to remind you what it is, who it’s by, and the basic plot. Like it hadn’t already been discussed in the previous chapter.Occasionally, just occasionally, he’ll make a brief reference to something modern and popular. Like, in the chapter on physical deformities being meaningful he says something along the lines of “oh, yes, you can bet that Harry Potter’s scar means something” and then goes right back to talking about older and less familiar works. He had a golden opportunity here! He could have used an example from something that the vast majority of his audience would have read or at least seen the movie of! But he doesn’t!Another instance, in his reading list at the end of the book, he includes Life of Pie as an example of a heroic quest story. Would have been nice if he’d used that one in the chapter on quest stories.He had some good points, but possibly not enough for a novel. He should have tried some more diverse examples instead of using the same few authors over and over again. I couldn’t recommend this one for anyone but English teachers.
    • 4/5
      This is a great guide for all of us who love to read but whose education was at the other end of the campus. His style is informal, chatty and humorous -- now that he has the cautiously curious in his room, he doesn't want to scare us off with concepts that seem dry or irrelevant. He wants to show us how to apply these ideas so that our deeper understanding of the book will take our enjoyment of it to a new plane. "Reading literature is a highly intellectual activity, but it also involves affect and instinct to a large degree. Much of what we think about literature, we feel first. Having instincts, though, doesn’t automatically mean they work at their highest level. Dogs are instinctual swimmers, but not every pup hits the water understanding what to do with that instinct. Reading is like that, too. The more you exercise the symbolic imagination, the better and quicker it works."
      He illustrates his ideas with numerous works of different types, and doesn't restrict them to the classics. Popular modern books (eg Inspector Banks) are as easily discussed as the traditional classics and are mixed in with occasional movies too.
      "... when writers send characters south, it’s so they can run amok....Conrad’s visionaries, Lawrence’s searchers, Hemingway’s hunters, Kerouac’s hipsters, Paul Bowles’s down-and-outers and seekers, Forster’s tourists, Durrell’s libertines—all head south, in more senses than one".
      For instance, vampires and other monsters are explained in terms of "...exploitation in its many forms. Using other people to get what we want. Denying someone else’s right to live in the face of our overwhelming demands. Placing our desires, particularly our uglier ones, above the needs of another." The vampire/monster thinks, ' In order to remain undead, I must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own.' Foster says, "I’ve always supposed that Wall Street traders utter essentially the same sentence. My guess is that as long as people act toward their fellows in exploitative and selfish ways, the vampire will be with us."
      You can't go wrong with someone who can so easily link vampires with Wall Street.
    • 5/5
      It's a rare day that I'm willing to give a full five out of five stars to a book. It's rarer still that I'll give the five stars, and then put it back on my bed-stand for continual reference in my future reading.

      It's just that kind of a book, and every bibliophile should read it.
      In "How to Read Literature like a Professor," Thomas Foster has given us a delightful little romp through literature, producing a guide to the themes, symbolism, ironies, allusions, and plots that reoccur through-out almost all of the fiction we read. Whether it's Charles Dickens or Charles Schulz or even Tom Clancy, Foster's collection of essays are each a fun and enjoyable guide to what you've been reading, and what you will read, when you pick up a work of fiction.

      For example: in chapter 10, "It's more than just rain or snow," we read that "weather is never just weather. It's never just rain." Rather, Foster says, instead of providing just a setting, a backdrop to the story, weather in fiction is rooted in our fears and hopes. In addition to appearing as a feature character in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic biblical tale of the great flood, it makes notable and significant sightings in mythologies from all over the world, often, if not always, appearing and appealing to our fear of drowning. "Rain," Foster says, "prompts ancestral memories of the most profound sort. So water in great volume speaks to us at a very basic level of being.

      So rain--and floods--signifies drowning? Kind of, but it doesn't stop there. Citing D.H. Lawrence's "The Virgin and the Gypsy" (1930), which I've not read yet, Foster sees it as a "big eraser that destroys but also allows a brand-new start."

      Kind of like baptism? Yeah. If you're part of that Christian tradition, this is what baptism is: death of the old, imperfect, and flawed man, and rebirth of a new man. And such is the role that this element--rain and floods--plays in literature. Well, most of the time. Fog can represent a lack of clarity, sunshine hope and clarity. In short, weather is rarely just setting.

      That's rain and weather. Each chapter is a written with a quick and light wit that allows a reader, whatever his level of experience with literature, to follow along, see the theme, enjoy the examples, and find a taste for the point. Other chapter titles include the following:

      •"When in Doubt, It's from Shakespeare..."
      •"…Or the Bible"
      •"It's All Political"
      •"Marked for Greatness"
      •"Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion" and, of course,
      •"Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampire." (Stephanie Meyer ought to pick that one up to understand why people who love literature hate Twilight).

      Weighing in at just under three hundred pages, "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" doesn't require deep commitment, deep concentration, or deep literature reading. My brain-candy of choice usually falls in the science-fiction or fantasy categories, and yet, I've started to find the themes and allusions and ironies that I saw in classics like "Howards End" and "Bleak House" appearing there, too. Whatever you read, it applies the symbolism that Foster walks through. As a result, my experience, whatever I'm reading, has been more enjoyable since I started it. It's that moment of sudden realization when the whole theme of Steven Erikson "Book of the Fallen" subplot (and there are a lot of them) is an allusion, or imitation, to Spartacus (I think). Or that the journey (all journeys are quests) across the water is a journey of transformation, where the fallen man chooses to start a new life, emerging from the water, as it were, reborn.

      It's fun. A lot of fun. Even just reading the book itself is fun. To boot, at the end Foster provides a list of all the books he refers to throughout his essays to allow you, the reader, to pick them up and read further. And what could be more fun about reading than delving into great fiction?

      Pick it up, start reading, and enhance your general reading experience. If you're going to read fiction, and you should, you might as well get the most out of it.
    • 5/5
      Foster provides a basic but interesting primer on symbolism in literature. He uses fairly standard classics to provide examples, but still makes them interesting and witty.Not for the very learned, and not for the novice reader. This book would be most helpful for the college freshman or the adult reader who's decided to look at books a bit more seriously but still have fun reading.
    • 5/5
      Whether you're a relatively new reader of literature or you have decades of reading experience under your belt, you're sure to learn something from this book to enrich your future reading experience. Although I'm convinced that I will never achieve Foster's depth of analysis, Foster has also convinced me that reading is a skill that I can improve through practice. Foster reassures his readers/students that ”if the story is good and the characters work but you don't catch allusions and references and parallels, then you've done nothing worse than read a good story with memorable characters. If you begin to pick up on some of these other elements, these parallels and analogies, however, you'll find your understanding of the novel deepens and becomes more meaningful, more complex.” So, it's not like I've been reading the wrong way all these years, but I can work at becoming a better reader and have a better appreciation of what I read. I'll be referring to this book often from here on out. Highly recommended.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I feel like I need to defend this book. Many readers are submitting poor reviews of How to Read Lit simply because it doesn’t sound literary. They don’t envision a graying, sixtyish lit professor in a high-backed, winged armchair beside the fire saying these things while he smokes his pipe. And guess what. That’s exactly the point. For some nonsensical reason, there is a portion of the literature world that dons an offensively Holier Than Thou attitude, and it is precisely because of those people that this book is so good.I’m an English major at Maryland, and too many times I’ve seen professors demeaning students who don’t fully grasp a concept (a symbol, a theme, an allusion – whatever it may be that day). In his book, Foster talks about how it’s hard to be really, totally wrong about a book, but that the more you read and experience literature the more you have to base your opinions on and the deeper your connections with literature become. These are words of a teacher. The complimentary disdain shown by the PhD’s in the classroom could not be more unproductive, and, frankly, it is exactly what scares people into picking up books and joining the lit world – the fear that they don’t measure up to these goofy, unreasonable expectations. It’s all about personal experience. In this book, Foster offers his own personal thoughts and ideas (as well as those of a few others occasionally) on some of the more common concepts and symbols in literature. He fully discloses that these are personal ideas formed through his own reading, but goes on to explain that the majority of them are popularly held ideas and why. There are lots of literary examples and citations to help readers grasp what Foster discusses, and a wonderful suggested (if you are feeling inclined at the book’s close, and, well, I certainly was) reading list. Furthermore (and this is, apparently, a big part of this book’s criticism), he explains everything in a humorous, easily accessible way. How dare he.In his closing remarks, Foster states quite plainly that there is no way to put every symbol/pattern/etc into one volume, because there are so many and for the simple fact that symbols are so subjective that anything can be one. This is another issue many of this book’s antagonists harbor. I also thoroughly enjoy that Foster – as opposed to that asshole of a college professor we’ve all had at least once – encourages his readers to disagree with him and defend their reasons. Afterall, that’s what literature is about – the forming and sharing of concepts and ideals to strengthen and broaden information. If you’re looking for yet another stuffy professor exercising his higher intelligence on you, this is not the book for you.4 stars.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      How to Read Literature Like a Professor is a nice, easy-to-read book on identifying some of the patterns and motifs we come across as readers. It's certainly not a comprehensive list, but gives the budding bibliophile something more to look at than your simple book report topics: plot, setting, characters, and theme. There's a lot more going on in a story, and there's a lot more that an author puts into their works than just rain being rain or a death being a death.

      Foster details how to look for some of these patterns in various pieces of literature in an easy to read style. This is not an in-depth look at literature; it's not critical analysis of how to read a book. It's simply: these are certain elements you might find in a story, and you're literary world will be more expansive than ever if you begin to make these connections, begin to read through the eyes of the writer and the time they lived in, and so on. Each book you read is an enlightening experience, in my opinion. So why not enlighten yourself even more by picking up on the cues and clues that writers have left over for their readers to dig through over generations into the future.

      The chapters aren't too long, and could be useful for using in a high school English class.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      My wife's been after me to read this one and I finally got round to it. I was put off by the title thinking it would be a boorish, condescending exercise in Harold Bloom-like pretentiousness. It's quite the opposite. Foster does a very good job of deflating the myth that only a Ph.D. can really appreciate and understand literature. His approach is accessible, practical, and frequently entertaining. He draws some great comparisons between the classics and familiar films and TV series. He also doesn't hold his nose at contemporary popular writers. I can see why this book frequently appears on lists of recommended reading for high school students.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      In a lifetime of avid reading, I honestly never put much thought into what anything meant beyond the basic story itself. Not even the required English courses in high school and college provided me with the tools to search for symbolism or allegories or the like. I'm sure that teachers dutifully brought up the question of "so, what does this story mean?". Whether it was their fault, or mine -- my curiosity was never sparked enough to go beyond the surface layer of a story (be it a short story, a play, poetry, literature or a novel). How to Read Literature Like a Professor (note: I read the first edition, not the new revised edition) was an eye-opener for me. While it's not the be-all/end-all resource for literary concepts, it has been a very good introduction to the topic. I will probably be reading literature with a new eye from now on. It doesn't mean, though, that henceforth all books I read will be discussed in this way. As Professor Foster does point out by quoting Freud's statement "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", yes sometimes a story is just there for the sake of story-telling. That's fine. However, Foster convinces me that one's reading can be enriched otherwise when looking beyond the basics; it's like unlocking a treasure box. Not only does Foster touch upon varied devices such as symbolic references to Greek mythology, he also gives a good reminder: "don't read with your own eyes" (p. 228). What does the latter mean? It means that we need to try to read the work as it was intended by the author. He gives the example of "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin -- we need to try to read it as it was meant to be read back in 1957, and especially not from the perspective of whether addiction is good or bad, because it was meant to be about a relationship between two brothers. I plan to pick up his other book, How to Read Novels like a Professor (and I'm sure he'll discuss the difference between "novels" and "literature").

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Reading between the lines (pun intended) he seems a little dismissive of "non-literature." E.g., he basically dismisses world building, so that wipes out huge swathes of sci fi and fantasy. Also seems to not consider mysteries on the same level as literature, though he enjoys them. As far as being successful in what he set out to do, then he was, because now I'm thinking about his approaches while doing my other reading.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Originally Posted on bellesbeautifulbooks.blogspot.comWhat I Thought:Most of the book seemed unnecessary, and somewhat obvious. Having said that it was somewhat helpful, and should help me in my future studies.The Good:Will help me with school.Some new things that I haven't been taught before.ShortThe Bad:He would go on long tangents about specific books that I haven't ever heard of or ever plan to read and that just seemed unnecessary.Overall just boring.Recommend?:I would recommend reading this if you're having trouble subtextually analyzing books, or if you have to read it for school, but if you don't fall into either category I would say it is not needed.
    • 3/5
      I read this mostly out of curiosity -- with my BA behind me and my MA in progress, I didn't have much to learn from Foster. To me it's obvious that a garden will conjure up Eden, that the sharing of food is a kind of communion, that a lot of things are metaphors for sex. It doesn't seem to require professorial level training to me, though I went to university in the UK and this book is very explicitly aimed at people from the US. So maybe the expectations for the skill set for a graduate are different. I think for people in the UK it'd be a more useful leg-up for people doing GCSE and A Level -- if they're interested in being A* students, anyway. Once you get to university, this level of reading is expected.

      The tone of the book is a little condescending, but otherwise it seems pretty good, anyway. Surprisingly, it doesn't just draw examples from the canon of dead white men, which was good. The allusive nature of it requires quite a wide frame of reference to avoid getting lost and bored, though -- it's hard to learn to see a book in a whole different light when you haven't read it in the first place.
    • 3/5
      Just picked it up on a whim, its always on reading lists. Not bad, but nothing earth-shattering if you are a constant reader...
    • 5/5
      his wonderfully witty, relaxed, accessible explanation of what all of our lit professors were talking about contains all of the play and enthusiasm that let me to a degree in English lo these many years ago, and serves as a gentle reminder of what it was I knew and focussed on back then. Foster is just delightful, or he makes me full of delight, or both. I heartily recommend this to everyone, even some of our most accomplished reviewers and readers. Delicious. My only complaint was that it wasn't longer.
    • 5/5
      Ever had an English class where you wondered, "How on earth does the professor come up with this interpretation stuff?" Though Thomas Foster himself is a college professor, he clearly remembers what it was like to be a high school or college undergrad reader. In short chapters, he engagingly and clearly explains the motifs, symbols, and patterns one can look for and expect when reading.I truly wish that I had read this informative and entertaining book when I was in college. I was an English major, but I didn't buy a good fourth of what I wrote in my papers, feeling like I was reading too much between the lines. The main issue for me was "How could the author have possibly meant ---- or been reacting to ---- ? How do you know?" I never felt that my English professors answered this satisfactorily, but in one chapter, Foster does: since stories are, at their core, interconnected, an author may have read (and reacted to) one book that was informed by a previous one. Even if the author never intended the connection to the original story, his/her writing has indeed been affected by it because of that later book (I'm not explaining this very well, but trust me, Foster does).I may never read quite like an English professor (I think it would take multiple readings of any text to do so). His attitude that it's OK to enjoy the story at its most literal level and not pick up on every nuance or have exactly his interpretation made me think that I could be a better reader than I have been, and has inspired me to read more texts that take a reader's effort to fully appreciate.
    • 3/5
      Foster, an English professor at the University of Michigan, writes about literature with an endearing, self-deprecating style, which allows the reader to be entertained while being, if not educated, than at least encouraged in her reading.The main thrust of Foster's book is that the reader should watch for patterns and symbols while reading and that things such as weather, food, sex and violence rarely mean only one thing. In other words, writers are always trying to say more than one thing at a time. Subtext and allegory. Symbol and irony.While he may not bring anything terribly new to the discussion of literature, this is a book I would recommend to any young person who wants to deepen their reading or, for that matter, any reader who wants to graduate from pop fiction to something with a little more meat on its bones.The reader list Foster provides at the end of the book is a fine one.
    • 4/5
      Basic refresher of what I learned so many years ago. Never hurts to learn, or to relearn the essentials.
    • 5/5
      This is the book that I read through before my English Paper 1 (Unseen Commentary) paper. As an introduction and a summary to the literary devices that writers employ, this book is excellent. The prose is readable, unlike the more "academic" books, but at the same time, does not come off as having no content - Homer is mentioned repeatedly, as is Chaucer. By integrating many books as examples into the text, it gives the reader a practical example of how to apply the device. The range of devices is also fairly adequate. Topics covered include: eating (communion), the paranormal, water, flight and illnesses and others. In each chapter, you can see the "literature professor" aspect, since his chapter titles neatly summarize the chapter, just like what we are told to do when writing an essay. Although a test case is given at the back of the book, there are no explicit lessons on how to write a literature essay. However, since he gives you the tools to analyse the essay, I assume that the implication would be that one already knows how to structure and write an essay. If, for example, you're not a literature student, have no interest in the classics, you should still read this book. Just knowing how writers can use various plot devices can help you enjoy reading so much more, and it may even entice you to read the Canon (which as he says is "a master list of works everyone pretends doesn't exist (the list, not the works) but that we all know matters in some important way"). The myriad amount of books he references is also an excellent way to find new books and authors, such as Toni Morrison. In conclusion, this book is wonderful. It's not an academic work, and if you're looking for a detailed, how to book that covers every aspect of literature, then don't bother with it. But if you're looking for a light read that happens to be educational, or a way to make literature fun again, then just try the book. There's no harm done.
    • 4/5
      This was a very entertaining book. My daughter had to read it in her Junior year of high school, and it has become one of my favorites. It opens up the worlld of literature for the common man.
    • 5/5
      “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” until you read Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Many writers in the history of writing smoked cigars. One of them a famous neurologist as Foster points out. But that probably has no consequence and points to the fact that sometime a cigar is just cigar unless they are all connected in some way. Then a cigar is never just a cigar it’s the cigar or so it seems. It is a phallic symbol of sexual consequence in some way or other. Or maybe the smoke from the cigar forms a haze that clouds the thinking of the protagonist in the story who is unable to see beyond the end of his nose but whenever he smokes a cigar some mysterious happening occurs that affects the story in various revealing ways. Memory. Symbol. Pattern.....and Irony.
    • 4/5
      I found this to be edifying, entertaining, and a great introduction to literary analysis. As a long time reader I found this helpful in understanding symbols in literature.Being the product of an an era and an educational background that never really examined literature in depth I am eagerly anticipating delving into some of the recommended reading materialsto experience reading on a deeper level.
    • 3/5
      This is a nice primer on literary analysis. Individual chapters could be very useful in high school literature classes, especially when reading classics that most students don't relate to--such "The Old Man and the Sea".
    • 4/5
      I recommend this book to my incoming 10th grade Honors American Lit classes because it's one of the few books that covers archetypes, motifs, literary theory, and other important literary elements that's actually readable. Throughout the course of the year, we will put all of his chapters to use using varied works, and they will see how viable the information he provides actually is. I love too that Foster repeats that much of literary analysis has to do with "feeling" that there's something important about a certain aspect of a novel, because reading should be an emotional journey as well as a cerebral one.

    Book preview

    How to Read Literature Like a Professor - Thomas C. Foster

    cover-image

    Dedication

    For my sons, Robert and Nathan

    Contents

    Dedication

    Introduction: How’d He Do That?

    Chapter One: Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not)

    Chapter Two: Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion

    Chapter Three: Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires

    Chapter Four: If It’s Square, It’s a Sonnet

    Chapter Five: Now Where Have I Seen Him Before?

    Chapter Six: When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare . . .

    Chapter Seven: . . . Or the Bible

    Chapter Eight: Hanseldee and Greteldum

    Chapter Nine: It’s Greek to Me

    Chapter Ten: It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow or Springtime

    Chapter Eleven: Is That a Symbol?

    Chapter Twelve: It’s All Political

    Chapter Thirteen: Geography Matters

    Interlude: One Story

    Chapter Fourteen: Marked for Greatness

    Chapter Fifteen: He’s Blind for a Reason, You Know

    Chapter Sixteen: It’s Never Just Heart Disease . . . and Rarely Just Illness

    Chapter Seventeen: Don’t Read with Your Eyes

    Chapter Eighteen: Is He Serious? And Other Ironies

    Chapter Nineteen: A Test Case

    Envoi

    Reading List

    Acknowledgments

    Searchable Terms

    About the Author

    Credits

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    INTRODUCTION

    How’d He Do That?

    MR. LINDNER? THAT wimp?

    Right. Mr. Lindner, the wimp. So what did you think the devil would look like? If he were red with a tail, horns, and cloven hooves, any fool would know to turn down his offer.

    The class and I are discussing Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun (1959). The confused questions arise when I suggest that Mr. Lindner is the devil.

    The Youngers, an African-American family in Chicago, have made a down payment on a house in an all-white neighborhood. Mr. Lindner, a meek little man, has come to visit with a check in hand. He (along with all the neighbors) wants the family to take the check and move right back out again.

    At first Walter Lee Younger confidently turns down the offer. He believes that the family’s money (a life insurance payment they received after the death of Walter’s father) is secure. But shortly after sending Mr. Lindner away, he discovers that two-thirds of that money has been stolen. All of a sudden Mr. Lindner’s insulting offer comes to look like the family’s salvation.

    Bargains with the devil go a long way back. Most take the form of the Faust legend. In this old story, the devil offers Faust a life of pleasure, riches, and power, in return for his soul. Faust accepts happily, enjoys his good times, and then repents too late as the devil drags his dying soul to hell. It’s a story that’s retold often. Each time, the hero is offered something he desperately wants—power or knowledge or a fastball that will beat the Yankees—and all he has to give up is his soul.

    In Hansberry’s version, when Mr. Lindner makes his offer, he doesn’t mention Walter Lee’s soul. He doesn’t even know that he is demanding it. He is, though. Walter Lee can be rescued from his family’s crisis. All he has to do is to admit that he’s not equal to his new white neighbors, that his pride and self-respect, his identity, can be bought.

    If that’s not selling your soul, what is?

    But Walter Lee resists the devil’s temptation. He looks at himself and at the true cost of the bargain and recovers in time to reject the devil’s—Mr. Lindner’s—offer. Walter Lee grows into a hero as he wrestles with his own demons as well as with the one who comes to visit with a check, and he comes through without falling. His soul is still his own.

    SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS in this conversation between professor and students. Each of us gets a look on our faces. My look says, What, you don’t get it? Theirs says, We don’t get it. And we think you’re making it up. Basically, we’ve all read the same story, but we haven’t used the same tools to analyze it.

    It might seem as if the teacher is inventing a way to interpret the story out of thin air. Actually, the teacher just has some more experience. And the teacher has gathered, over the years, a kind of grammar of literature. That’s a certain set of patterns, codes, and rules that we can learn to use when we’re reading a piece of writing.

    Stories and novels have a very large set of conventions, or rules, or things that you can learn to expect: types of characters, plot rhythms, chapter structures, points of view. Poems have a great many conventions of their own. Plays, too. And there are certain conventions that show up in all three. Spring usually means the same thing, whether it’s mentioned in a poem or a play or a novel. So does snow. So does darkness. So does sleep.

    Whenever spring is mentioned, we all start to think of the same ideas: youth, promise, young lambs, children skipping . . . on and on. And if we keep thinking, we might get to other concepts, like new birth, new life, renewal.

    Okay, let’s say you’re right and there is a set of conventions, like a key to reading literature. How do I get so I can recognize these?

    Same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice.

    When readers first read a piece of fiction, they focus on the story and the characters: who are these people, what are they doing, and what wonderful or terrible things are happening to them? They will respond emotionally, with joy or horror, laughter or tears, anxiety or delight. This is what every author hopes for.

    But when an English teacher reads, though he will respond emotionally as well, a lot of his attention will also be fixed on other things. It will be asking other questions. Where did that joy or grief or anxiety come from? Does this character seem like any others I’ve read about? Where have I seen this situation before? If you learn to ask these questions, you’ll read and understand literature in a new light. And it will become even more rewarding and fun.

    CHAPTER ONE

    Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not)

    OKAY, SO HERE’S the deal: let’s say you’re reading a book about an average sixteen-year-old kid in the summer of 1968. The kid—let’s call him Kip Smith, who hopes his acne clears up before he gets drafted—is on his way to the A&P to get a loaf of bread. His bike is a one-speed with a coaster brake and therefore very embarrassing to ride, and riding it to run an errand for his mother makes it worse. Along the way he has a couple of disturbing experiences, including an unpleasant encounter with a German shepherd. And it’s all topped off in the supermarket parking lot when he sees the girl of his dreams, Karen, laughing and fooling around in Tony Vauxhall’s brand-new car, a Barracuda.

    Now, Kip hates Tony already because he’s got a name like Vauxhall and not Smith, and because the Barracuda is bright green and goes approximately the speed of light, and also because Tony has never had to work a day in his life. Karen, who is laughing and having a great time, turns and sees Kip, who asked her out not so long ago. And she keeps laughing.

    Kip goes on into the store to buy the loaf of Wonder Bread that his mother told him to pick up. As he reaches for the bread, he decides right then and there to lie about his age to the Marine recruiter, even though it means going to Vietnam, because nothing will ever happen to him if he stays in this one-horse town where the only thing that matters is how much money your father has.

    What just happened here?

    If you were an English teacher, and not even a particularly weird English teacher, you’d know that you’d just watched a knight have an encounter with his enemy.

    In other words, a quest just happened.

    But it just looked like a trip to the store for some white bread.

    True. But think about it. What is a quest made of? A knight, a dangerous road, a Holy Grail, at least one dragon, one evil knight, one princess. Sounds about right? That’s a list I can live with. We’ve got a knight (named Kip), a dangerous road (nasty German shepherd), a Holy Grail (a loaf of Wonder Bread), at least one dragon (trust me, a ’68 Barracuda could definitely breathe fire), one evil knight (Tony), one princess (Karen).

    Seems like a bit of a stretch.

    At first, sure. But let’s think about what a quest is made of. It needs five things:

    1. a quester;

    2. a place to go;

    3. a stated reason to go there;

    4. challenges and trials along the way;

    5. a real reason to go there.

    Item 1 is easy; a quester is just a person who goes on a quest, whether or not he knows it’s a quest. In fact, he usually doesn’t know. Items 2 and 3 go together: someone tells our main character, our hero, to go somewhere and do something. Go in search of the Holy Grail. Go to the store for some bread. Go to Mount Doom and throw in a ring. Go there, do that.

    Now remember that I said the stated reason for the quest. That’s because of item 5.

    The real reason for the quest is never the same as the stated reason. In fact, more often than not, the quester fails at the stated task. (Frodo makes it all the way to Mount Doom, but does he throw the ring in the fire? No, he does not. Really—go read it again if you don’t believe me.) So why do heroes go on these quests, and why do we care? They go because of the stated task, believing that it is their real mission. We know, however, that their quest is educational. They don’t know enough about the only subject that really matters: themselves. The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge.

    Frodo may have saved the world from Sauron, but that really just turned out to be a bit of luck. What his quest actually brings him is a new understanding of the value of mercy and who needs it: Gollum, Frodo himself, and probably everybody in Middle Earth.

    Or here’s another example. You know the book, I’m sure: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957).

    Wait a minute. The Grinch is on a quest?

    Sure. Here’s the setup:

    1.Our quester: a grumpy, cave-dwelling creature who’s had it

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