Some Notes for Most of the Chapters:
“Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires” Chapter Study Guide Key Idea: “Ghosts and vampires are never only about ghosts and vampires.” *Real, actual vampires
-always alluring, dangerous, mysterious and love beautiful virgins.
-“nasty old man violates young women, leaves his mark, and steals their innocence and usefulness” (16)
-actually about selfishness, exploitation, a refusal to respect the autonomy of other people
*symbolism also applies to ghosts and doppelgangers
-i.e. ghost in Hamlet arrived to point out something was drastically wrong in Denmark’s royal household
*But, “vampires” and “ghosts” also appear in human/symbolic forms
-i.e. “social vampirism and cannibalism” where society can consume its victims in a vampire-like manner
*It really comes down to exploitation
-using others to get what you want, denying someone else’s right to live in the face of our overwhelming demands
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster Chapter 8: Hanseldee and Greteldum
Remember that “all literature grows out of other literature”
o If you stripped down the plot of every story—play, novel, movie, show—then they would all be about the same thing. Every story belongs to one big, basic story. This makes it easy to based current literature off of old text.
Think of an all-encompassing list of all works that have been produced as a “literary canon.”
o New writers will often times “borrow” pieces of these traditional works in order to create their own.
There are many great sources to choose from—Shakespeare, Homer, etc— but “kiddie lit,” or children’s stories, is something that readers worldwide can relate to.
“Hansel and Gretel”- “the story of children lost and far from home has a universal appeal” and is consequently the story of our time.
o A writer can mimic the plot of a story almost exactly in order to show how much of the original story remains with us
o A writer can put their own spin on an original piece in order to advocate a new idea (i.e. feminism)
o A writer can just borrow/emphasize bits and pieces from old text to leave you with a sense of resonance with the original tale
Why fairytales? Why not Homer and Shakespeare?
o In nearly every culture children have been raised with these timeless stories, so it is very easy for the writer to find common ground with a diverse audience. Irony
o “Whenever fairytales and their simplistic worldview crop up in connection with our complicated and morally ambiguous world you can almost certainly plan on irony”
For example, let’s say a writer references “Hansel and Gretel” by putting two young lovers lost in the woods with a BMW, Rolex, money, and material things. Although these two may be better off materialistically than the original Hansel and Gretel, they are not necessarily better off in finding their way home.
It’s not just “Hansel and Gretel!”
o “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” and” Rapunzel” never die either
As readers we want to look for “strangeness” in every story, just enough to make it different and interesting, but we also want a sense of “familiarity.” By picking up on these references we are left with a greater “sense of depth, solidity, and resonance” after reading a new piece.
How to Read Literature Like a Professor Study Guide Chapter 24 1. Important ideas about diseases that authors use to help them choose a disease
a. Authors usually use diseases that are picturesque or add drama: they choose diseases that have a terrible beauty towards them that adds to the story. b. Unknown origins
c. There is ALWAYS a strong symbol or metaphor behind a disease 2. Some examples of diseases and their symbolism
a. Malaria: literally means “bad air” so a character could be dying from something in the air like the atmosphere in a room or a really bad home life.
c. Paralysis: could be mental, physical, mental paralysis or a mixture of all of these. Look at a character and see if they are secluded from society.
d. Plague: it has the mystery since no one understands where it comes from and it comes quickly. Is a great metaphor for social devastation, or divine wrath. e. TB: called the wasting disease so it has the graceful, slow decay of a person that
adds to effect. Also called consumption, and lung disease.
How to Read Literature Like a Professor Study Guide Chapter 22: “He’s Blind for a Reason, You Know”
1. Physical blindness can represent moral or intellectual blindness
2. Author wants to emphasize other types of sight which the characters lack (truth and reality vs. emotionally guided choices)
3. In many books or plays, there is an ironic twist because the blind “see” while the sighted are blind to one thing or another
4. Watch for light vs. dark references throughout the work
a. darkness = blindness
b. light = sight
Chapter 11. …More Than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence 1. Defining Violence in Literature
i. The difference between aggression and literal violence in literature is that it most likely encodes a theme or symbol (ie. symbolic, thematic, biblical, Shakespearean, Romantic, allegorical, transcendent)
Example: Sethe, an escaped slave has the intention of killing her children to save them from slavery but only succeeds in killing one. The theme symbolizes the horrors of slavery.
2. There are two types of violence in Literature, 1st type of violence is character-on-character and 2nd unplanned.
ii. There is always a purpose for killing off a character
iv.
3. It is generally hard to generalize what the symbolic meaning of violence is.
v. There is generally more than one meaning (ie. psychological dilemmas spiritual crisis, hierarchal or social or political concerns)
Chapter 5 Study Guide; “Now, where have I seen her before? 1) No piece of literature is completely 100% original
2) Through the use of characters similar to characters in past books, authors are able to create a subconscious connection to those past characters that will help readers anticipate what will happen next. This also helps authors do the most “unexpected” things with their characters.
…And the Bible Titles and names may contain biblical references
Look at the title of the book/movie/poem. It may contain a reference to the bible - East of Eden, Tongues of Flame, Absalom, Absalom!, Go Down Moses
- The title, East of Eden references a fallen world, as it is a title showing that the story takes place outside of the Garden of Eden, a perfect place.
The names of characters have meaning - Jacob, Jonah, Joseph, Mary, etc.
- Each figure has a biblical significance of what they have done in their life
Symbolism: many references to the bible are symbols
In Tony Morrison’s Beloved, 4 horsemen go up to the main character
- This is symbolism for the apocalypse and the four horsemen set to bring judgment on everyone they pass
- In the book, Sethe kills her baby to save him from going through “judgment”. James Joyce’s “Araby” shows a loss of innocence or a fall
- The boy sees flirting he should not have seen and learns about how he was blinded by the opposite sex
- It is a fall because he has gained knowledge, just how Adam and Eve fell when they ate the fruit and learned the difference of good and evil.
- The boy being driven away is like God forcing Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. Eudora Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.” with sibling rivalry, where one leaves home on her own
will and must come back. Yet, the sister who comes back is showered with “hugs and kisses.” - Such rivalry is in the bible, with the prodigal sons where one son leaves, spends all his
money, and comes back dirt poor.
- The father takes pity and celebrates his return with a feast, having two fattened calves butchered (it is celebration because his return is from being figuratively lost, as in not knowing what moral direction to take)
“Sonny Blues” by James Baldwin has much to do with pain and redemption, and the Bible has much to do with that (Christ redeeming mankind of their sins).
- The specific phrase picked out, “like a very cup of trembling” has something to do with the pain and redemption in the story.
- Biblically, it is God’s judgment and fury, but there is hope of redemption (as in Christ), which is the same for Sonny.
Ch. 21- Marked for Greatness
Physical abnormalities:
-Marks a character as a villain or hero
-Physical abnormalities as symbols is common among Elizabethan, Shakespearean, and Puritan writing
-Natural deformities such as birth defects can either mean
a) That the character is as twisted or vial as their physical appearance or
b) That the character must over come some type of difficulty -Physical differences help certain characters to stand out
-Some character markings stand as indicators of the damage life inflicts -Self inflicted damage can mean atonement or guilt (Oedipus Rex) -Scars can show a personal history
-Monsters can represent a thing relevant to the time period which is viewed as evil. Example: Frankenstein monster as a symbol of science without ethics
-Some times a beauty or a lack of can be used as a kind of juxtaposition. Example: Beauty and the beast or Hunchback of Notre Dame.
-The reason this is commonly a symbol rather than a whim of the author is because giving a character a handicap early on can limit the actions of the character later on in the story.
Chapter 2 Outline
Main Idea: “Whenever people eat or drink together, it’s communion” (8). There are different ways to look at how it represents communion.
1. Meaning: Sharing food is an act of peace and sharing since “if you’re breaking bread, you’re not breaking heads” (8.)
Support: Eating is so personal that we only want to eat with people we are comfortable with. Exception: Villains inviting someone to dinner to have them killed. Authors sometime use our understanding of eating as a peaceful communion to strengthen the evil of the villain’s act since evil should not be performed at a meal.
Support: Tom Jones (1749) by Henry Fielding. Tom and his girlfriend are eating ferociously; “a more leering, slurping, groaning, and, in short sexual meal has never been consumed” (9). They want to be with each other, in this scene they are really consuming desire, not just food.
Symbolically they are consuming “the other’s body” (9) and together share that experience 3. Idea: If dinner is refused then someone is denying communion to someone else. They do not want to share any experience with the other
Support: We only eat with people we like and we do not want to waste such a personal experience with someone we hate.
4. Idea: “writing a meal scene is so difficult, and so inherently uninteresting., that there really needs to be some compelling reason to include one in the story.”
5. Idea: Reconciliation. Eating can help people get over previous conflicts or prejudices through the act of eating, the act of communion.
Support: In Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, the mother tries to get the family together to eat but something always comes up. “Not until her death can her children assemble around a table at the restaurant and achieve dinner. At that point, of course, the body and blood they symbolically share are hers, her life-and her death-become part of their common experience. 6. Idea(even though it does not directly relate to eating): “The only reason to give a character a serious hang-up is to give him the chance to get over it. He may fail, but he gets the chance” (10).
Support: In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” the narrator hates people that are different than he is. The Narrator and a blind man eventually have dinner together and the narrator sees that the blind man is not that different, he eats just like everyone else. They share this “fundamental element of life” (10).
7. Idea: the ultimate thing that we share is death and mortality, "all the differences in our lives are mere surface details. When the snow comes...it covers, equally" (14).
How to Read Literature like a Professor Study Guide Chapter 23 1. The heart is the center of emotion within a body.
2. Heart ailments can be used as a shorthand for the character.
a. Could mean bad love, loneliness, cruelty, pederasty, disloyalty, cowardice, lack of determination.
3. Readers can play this two ways.
a. If heart trouble shows up, start looking for the significance.
b. If a character has difficulty of the heart, do not be surprised when the emotional trouble becomes the physical ailment.
Chapter 16: Its All About Sex… Outline
1. Sex is an important theme for character development and political activism in novels.
a. Authors use symbols to express it with more meaning as well as hide it from people who can make no use of sex as a plot device.
b. Sex symbols can be found all over in literature hidden as curtains, chalices, scrabble boards, etc.
i. Practice dates back to Freud who stated that sex was hidden in every day speech
ii. Used throughout the 20th century to hide from censorship such as the Hayes Code (p137)
iii. Later used to describe sexual acts with more intensity and style as well as code things for older readers into the text.
1. Examples of this include the boy and his rocking horse on page 140 and Shakespeare on page 142
2. The relationship of two friends described through wrestling on page 139 iv. Grail myth often used as sex symbolism with the knight and pure male objects uniting with pure female objects to solve the troubles of the land—Fertility is often an important theme here as well as described through symbols such as lances, chalices, swords, etc.
c. Sex is an object best discussed in disguise, we use other symbols to describe it in the best detail for the type of act we need.
It’s Greek to Me Notes Important facts to keep in mind from this chapter:
1. Myth doesn’t necessarily “untrue.”
2. Myth is the ability of a story to explain ourselves to ourselves in ways physics, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry.
3. Myth is a body of story that matters.
4. Without pathos there is no narrative or thematic power
5. Myths can overt subject matter for poems and paintings and operas and novels. 6. Situations match up more closely than we might expect.
7. In our world parallels maybe ironized.
or only because we know the Looney Tunes version. That recognition makes our experience of literature richer, deeper, and more meaningful, so that our own modern stories also matter, also share in the power of MYTH,” (page, 73).
Chapter 20a …So Does Season
Characteristics Associated With Each Season
Spring Summer Fall Winter
Childhood/youth Adulthood Middle-aged Old age/death
Easter: Crucifixion and resurrection
Passion Anger and hatred Resentment
Fertility Love Decline Hibernation
Life Romance Tiredness Christmas/ holiday
season Growth and
development Fulfillment Harvest Lack of growth
Happiness Freedom Reap what we sow Punishments
Same seasons can be portrayed differently
o Example- Summer could be warm, rich, and liberating, or it could be hot, dusty, and stifling
Nearly every early mythology had a story to explain that seasonal change
o Roman god Janus (God of two faces) is where January comes from, because he can look back at the previous year and forward to the new one
Notes for How to Read Literature like a Professor Chapter 4 If it’s a square, it’s a sonnet
If you see a poem in literature it probably is a sonnet because it is the most used form of poem Look for a square, 14 lines, rhyming on the end
Read the sonnet as two sentences
Look for the main idea in each sentence, don’t read every line separately The sonnet consists of two parts, the sestet and the octave
Chapter 12—Is that a symbol? A symbol can't be reduced to standing for only one thing.
(If it can be reduced: It's NOT a symbol it's allegory—where things stand for other things on a one-for-one basis, there is absolute clarity regarding the correspondence between the
Ex: Goerge Orwell's Animal Farm is made popular because it is easy to understand what things mean. This was Orwells intention to be very clear that people who come to power are corrupted by it and reject the values and principles they initially embraced.)
Things to remember about symbols:
-probably involves a range of possible meanings and interpretations
-require you to bring something of ourselves to the story to figure out what a symbol means
-questions, background, experience, preexisting knowledge, etc.
-symbols aren't just objects and images they can be events or actions as well (mowing, apple picking etc.)
To understand a symbol:
-brainstorm, take notes, organize your thoughts, reject/accept different ideas that may apply
-ask questions of the text (“what's the writer doing with this image, this object, this act, etc).
-BIG QUESTION: What does it feel like it's doing (listen to your instincts)
-read more: the more you exercise the symbolic imagination the better and quicker it works
If a symbol meant one thing for all of us and for all time, stories would cease to be what they are —a network of meanings and significations that permits a nearly limitless range of possible interpretations.
How to Read Literature Like a Professor Chapter 6 Study Guide Works between the 18th and 21st century are full of Shakespeare allusions Some commonly used Shakespeare quotes:
o To thine own self be true
o All the world’s a stage, / and all the men and women merely players
o The better part of valor is discretion
o We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
o What’s in a name?
Writers might use Shakespeare because it makes them seem smarter
Use of Shakespeare can come out of writers bouncing their ideas off of his texts
Shakespeare is well-known so writers can draw on well-known characters and situations to add more depth to their writing
“If you’re reading a work and something sounds too good to be true, you know where it’s from” (p. 46)
- Many stories in literature dream of flight. - Flying is freedom, in most cases
- People can spiritually fly while being physically on the ground
o Meaning that spiritually they may be free while their physical body is not. - Nights at the Circus
o Person who can fly ends up being caged and locked up o Ironic
o Trapped by the own ability that signifies freedom - Irony trumps everything
- When flight is interrupted generally bad things happen
o Sort of like an airplane falling.
o Surviving the fall is just as miraculous as flight itself.
- Flying in a spiritual manner represents freedom just as much as in a tangible way.
How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Chapter 18 Outline If She Comes Up, It’s Baptism
When a character is submerged in water it can often symbolize baptism or a form of rebirth.
In Judith Guest’s Ordinary People (1976), two brothers are swept in Lake Michigan but only one brother survives. It is the weaker, younger brother, Conrad, who survives leaving him to question why he is alive and not his swimming star older brother. When Conrad emerges from the water without his brother “he’s not just alive. He’s alive all over again.” (154)
Conrad follows the symbolic pattern of baptism: “death and rebirth through the medium of water.” (155)
When a character suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, in Louise Edrich’s Love
Medecine, commits suicide by walking into a flooding river he is acting out the way he had been drowning in life.
In Song of Solomon, written by Toni Morrison, Milkman Dean is “baptized” three times. This coincides with baptism rituals where one is immersed three times, for the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Milkman has left the ties to his family and old life behind, and important step as he becomes a new person.
While baptizing a character generally means death, rebirth, and new identity, it is not always a literal rebirth, surviving a near death experience. The act of submerging a character can often be a symbolic rebirth, such as Christian baptisms.
O’Connor’s “The River” (1955), a young boy who has seen baptisms on a Sunday, returns to the river to join God on his own.
“So when your character goes underwater, you have to hold your breath. Just, you know, until you see her come back up.” (162)
How to read literature like a professor - Chapter 14 Yes, She’s a Christ Figure, Too
Characteristics of a Christ Figure:
1. crucified, wounds in hands, feet, side, and head 2. in agony
3. self-sacrificing 4. good with children
5. good with loaves, fishes, water, wine 6. thirty-three years of age when last seen 7. employed as a carpenter
8. known to use humble modes of transportation, feet or donkeys preferred 9. believed to have walked on water
10. often portrayed with arms outstretched
11. known to have spent time alone in the wilderness
12. believed to have had a confrontation with the devil, possibly tempted 13. last seen in the company of thieves
14. creator of many aphorisms and parables 15. buried, but arose on the third day
16. had disciples, twelve at first, although not all equally devoted 17. very forgiving
18. came to redeem an unworthy world
Key tips to remember
If reading European or American literature, knowing something about the Old and New Testaments is essential.
As a reader, put aside belief system (while you’re reading).
Christ figures are necessary always male, they don’t even have to be “good”
Christ figures deepens our sense of a character’s sacrifice, thematically has to do with redemption, hope, or miracles.
o If used ironically, makes the character look smaller rather than greater
Chapter 13- It’s All Political
1. Politics in literary texts spacious
In A Christmas Carol Scrooge is used to represent what is happening in society, and how things should be changed to make society better.
2. Political content doesn’t look like it, but it’s rather expressed by another object.
II. D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love represented the prime minister with a robin, but the
real conflict was racial individualism.
III. Edgar Allan Poe used a plague to represent nobility, poor and afflicted society.
3. Liberty brought problems
IV. People speak their minds and do what they want but not everything is better, but liberty.
Chapter 10 - Interlude Outline “…does [the author] really intend to do that?”
No one knows for certain if every symbol found is a conscious effort by the author A case is built on an author-by-author basis
The “Intentionalists”
These would be the writers that “control every facet of their creative output…” Examples would be T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Faulkner and other modernists These authors don’t hide the influence from other works.
o Histories, myths, religious texts, etc.
Ex: Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! uses a biblical title and the plot features a Greek mythology storyline.
What about other authors?
Before 1900, most writers received an education in the Classics – Latin and Greek, poetry, Dante and Shakespeare
Readers also had rudimentary knowledge of these topics
Writers wrote so people could recognize the same themes and ideas across works What are our clues to the authors intended meaning?
Authors are readers – they have a base of literary knowledge to draw from when writing It takes a considerably longer time to write than to read; the time spent writing means that the
ideas are well constructed and come from connections the author makes Even the lowest order of author can bring in “tangentially related material”
Every Trip is a Quest (Except When It’s Not) What Makes a Quest?
A quest generally is made up of a knight, a dangerous road, a holy Grail (whatever one of those may be), at least one dragon, one evil knight, one princess. In the example that Foster gives in the first paragraph of the chapter the knight would be Kip, the dangerous road is made up of the nasty German shepherds, the loaf of bread as the Holy Grail, the ’68 Cuday can be considered the dragon, and the evil knight as Tony, and the princess who can either keep laughing or stop.
Structurally the quest consist of five things: a) A quester
b) A place to go
c) A stated reason to go there d) Challenges and trials en route e) A real reason to go there.
The Real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge. More often a quester fails at the stated task. We know that quest is educational for the quester and the reader.
“Always” and Never are not words that have much meaning in literary study.
A quest may not always seem as if it were a quest, it could quite possibly be a journey. For example A drive to work-no adventures, no growth. The same is true for writing. Sometimes plot requires that a writer gets a character from home to work and back again. What said, when a character hits the road, we should start to pay attention just to see if you know something’s going on there.
19. Geography Matters a. Homes can be represented by geography.
b. Confusion i.e wilderness and danger are represented by jungles and tunnels. c. Going south dosen't always refer to an actual direction. It also means going badly. d. low places: Think dirty streets, crowds, dirt, and death.
e. high places: Think clean, pure, quiet, alone, cold.
Chapter 17: “…Except Sex”
a. “When [authors] write about sex, they’re really writing about something else" (144) i. Hard to write without seeming like pornography
ii. Pornography is when sex is about sex, literature is when sex means something else to the story
iii. Writing about it can be very difficult, cliché is hard to avoid
they progress through the story
v. It’s not only men that write about sex in their books, many women do it as well
vi. Also, can be a very freeing experience, as one author’s writing is about “liberation, or sometimes the failure of liberation; it’s religious or political or artistic subversion” (149)
vii. Can create a scandal in the novel’s plot, similarly to the real world
viii. Sex in books is really the same as sex in real life, usually people don’t do it just to do it. It usually symbolizes something else, and can represent a wide variety of meanings
It's More Than Just Rain or Snow
-Lighting matters
-Dark and stormy night? Not a happy place, nothing good is going to happen. -Sunshine is associated with spring, renewal, life and hope.
-Floods are often references to Noah's ark. -washing/cleansing (removal of sins, etc) -getting a clean slate/new beginning. -Man vs the elements
-searching for cover from the weather can bring people together, sometimes in very odd combinations and circumstances.
-weather can present the misery factor; fog can represent being lost/hopelessness.
-rain can be very unpleasant and when combined with wind can result in hypothermia and death. -Great example of irony on page 78 about cleansing and then immediate death.
-Rainbows represent peace, happiness and equilibrium between heaven and earth -God promised Noah he would never wipe us out entirely
-Snow can mean just as many things as rain -cleanliness
-severity
-perfection/unspoiled
-warm when used as an insulator (ironic)
Chapter 20b summary
