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Thomas C. Foster's How To Read Literature Like A Professor

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Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor is the perfect handbook to help students understand literature. It is meant to help you see past the story and into what the story means. It also helps in understanding what different symbols stand for and finding common themes and patterns across different works of literature. One of the most helpful ideas in his book is “Every trip is a Quest (Except when it’s Not)”. This chapter focuses on how to recognize when a character goes on a quest and what a quest actually consists of. One of the most important rules of a quest is that whatever reason the character says they are going on a quest for, is never actually what ends up happening and “the real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge” (Foster, 3). The reason “questers” are usually so young and naïve is because the whole point of the quest is to become wiser and more mature. A second note-worthy idea from Fosters book is “Don’t Read with Your Eyes” (Foster 232). What he means by this …show more content…
(Foster, 8) It is not always religious, and not everyone has to be eating. For instance in Great Expectations , when Pip shares a meal with the convict, it is more than just giving him food. Pip’s generosity in this scene introduces his character, it demonstrations that although he’s deathly afraid of the convict, although the convict is threatening him and he felt the floorboards were calling “’Stop thief!’ and ‘Get up Mrs. Joe!’”(Dickens, 16), he still finds it in his heart to bring the convict food. Pip, at his own risk, stole food from Mrs. Joe for the convict. He is such a naïve yet compassionate boy that instead of telling the police or anyone else about the escaped convict, he brings him food. So in this part of the story, sharing a meal isn’t just sharing a meal, it is an act of communion which bonds Pip and the convict together for the rest of the

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