PDF Summary:How to Read Literature Like a Professor, by Thomas C. Foster

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• Example: Watching Pale Rider starring Clint Eastwood might make you think of the movie Shane from 1953.

Symbol: When you read with a symbolic mind, you constantly look for metaphors and analogies. You not only see things for what they actually are, but also what they might represent.

• Example: The monster in Beowulf is not only an actual monster, but also a representation of the dark side of human nature which can only be overcome by achieving a higher version of ourselves.

Pattern: When you read to observe patterns, you recognize the similarities between life and books. You look beyond the plot to see how the drama and characters illustrate a truth of human experience.

• Non-literary example: A good car mechanic can use pattern recognition to diagnose a car. They can see that if these things are happening, it is probably caused by this. Then they know to check that.

The combination of using memory, identifying symbols, and recognizing patterns allows the reader to analyze literature in a new light. If you ignore memory, symbols, and patterns in literature, you will not be able to appreciate a book for everything that it says...

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For example, in one part of Berlin’s fantasy, he and his squad fall down a hole in the road. They end up in an otherworldly network of tunnels. One character even states that they need to fall back up. As a reader, you are invited to relate this part of the story to when Alice falls down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

Now that you have made that connection, your reading of the story will be nuanced by that awareness. You might expect that the tunnels the characters find themselves in will be some kind of wonderland for them.

Analyze Intertextuality Like a Professor

Don’t worry if you aren’t able to catch allusions to intertextuality right away when reading literature. The worst thing that happens is you miss the references and enjoy a good story anyway.

It takes a lot of practice and knowledge of other books to begin to make connections and consciously look for layers beyond the text on the page. When you do, you will enrich your reading experience and give yourself the opportunity to see the way an author might play with your expectations based on literary references.

• Example: In Wise Children, author Angela Carter uses...

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When interpreting symbols in literature, think of it as an imaginative and intellectual exercise. You should actively bring yourself to the encounter with the text. Use your instincts about how the text makes you feel, and don’t be afraid to use those feelings to infer meaning from symbols. Associate the symbol with everything you can, then toss out the associations that don’t seem to apply.

Remember: A symbol’s literal meaning within the narrative will always be its primary purpose. The metaphorical meaning is secondary to that. If a novel is unsuccessful at telling the story, no amount of symbolism will change that. On the other hand, if a novel presents a great story and a variety of figurative symbols and imagery, that is the sign of a great piece of literature.

Example: A Passage to India

In E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, a progressive woman named Adela is taken on an outing to the Marabar Caves by an Indian man named Dr. Aziz. In the cave, Adela has a confusing experience. She runs out of the caves bruised and scared, feeling as though she’s been assaulted. She later discounts her own story, unable to be sure of what transpired in those...

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• Restoration: Rain can bring nature back to life and restore new growth.
• Rainbows: Rainbows symbolize a divine peace—a harmony between God, people, and nature.

Of course, other weather has associations, too.

• Fog is a symbol of confusion. When an author puts fog over a scene, it shows that things are ethically, mentally, or emotionally murky.
• Snow can symbolize inhospitality, starkness, severity. On the other hand, snow is sometimes used to invoke playful, warm, and cozy images.

There are too many possibilities for weather to cover in one book. The most important thing is to learn to see weather as something to analyze as a purposeful choice on the part of the author.

Geography

Every time an author sits down to write a story, one of the first questions he asks himself is where will this story take place? An intelligent reader will recognize the geography of a novel as a conscious choice on the author’s part to deepen the story’s meaning.

In literature, geography is not only about the earth’s physical features, like hills, rivers, and seas. **Literary geography is about the ways in which a specific place forges the people who...

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As a reader, of course, we see Eunice’s violence toward herself as a literal act of personal despair. But Faulkner also challenges us to see it as a powerful metaphor for the lack of humanity in slavery. Eunice has no control over her own life or the life she brings into the world. The only choice she is given is the choice to die.

The title Go Down, Moses helps the reader grasp this metaphor. In the Bible, Moses is asked to “go down” and “set my people free” from Egypt. In the story, no one appears to go down and set Eunice free. Therefore, she has to set herself free in the only way she’s able.

Sex

In literature, sex and sexuality are used symbolically in two different ways:

1. Encoded sex: The author uses symbolic imagery to imply sex in a scene, but the reader never sees the sexual act take place.
2. Explicit sex: The author uses a sex scene to symbolize a larger theme in the story.

Encoded Sex

Sex is often disguised in literature and in film. At first, the primary reason for sexual symbolism was censorship. Artists were not allowed to depict sex on the page or on screen, so they had to find other ways of getting the point across.

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In this novel, Thomas Pynchon presents an example of a classic quest narrative.

Structurally, every quest consists of

• A quester: In this case, Oedipa, a young woman with many problems in her life
• A place to go: San Francisco
• A stated reason to go there: To execute a will
• Challenges along the way: Oedipa goes through a nightlong exploration, a dangerous visit to her therapist’s office, and a mysterious postal conspiracy
• The real mission: The real reason behind any quest is the search for self-knowledge

The stated reason to go on a quest is often in search of a “holy grail.” This can be as simple as going to the store to get a loaf of bread. Throughout the quest, the stated goal falls away and the real mission is revealed: the character learns about himself.

Questers are often young, inexperienced characters. This is because older characters would either already have self-knowledge or be too late to ever get it. In comparison, young characters have a lot of learning and development left to do.

(Shortform note: For more on the quest archetype and the hero’s journey, read our summary of Joseph Campbell’s _[The Hero with a Thousand...

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Blindness

Writing a blind character into a story comes with a lot of complications to the author—such as how the character will move around and be a part of the narrative. For that reason, when you see blindness in a novel, take notice. A blind character is a sign that themes of metaphorical blindness, sight, or insight will be issues in the work.

Many novels have themes of blindness versus sight, but not all of them have a blind character. So why do some authors feel the need to add a blind character into their writing? Simply put, to make the theme more obvious for the reader.

Once you see a blind character in a novel, you’ll instinctively look out for metaphorical blindness, as well. As a result, you’ll be more observant of the language and imagery that the author uses to depict that theme throughout the story.

• Example: In James Joyce’s Araby, the very first sentence contains the word “blind.” That alerts the reader to be on the lookout for other references to blindness versus sight. Throughout the story, the main character is using his sight in different ways: peeking out from behind “blinds,” being “blinded” by his own tears, and mentally...

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• Structural or dramatic irony: The author goes against the reader’s expectations of the plot or the overall structure of a story.
  • Example: In Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, two characters stand by the side of a road for the entire play. As we know, roads are normally associated with trips, and trips normally suggest a quest. But Beckett’s characters never go anywhere and the road never brings anything to them, either. Because Beckett knows the reader’s expectations of a road, he has the freedom to do the opposite and create irony.

Read With an Open Mind

In order to read like a professor, you’ll have to learn to read without your own biases and the fixed position of being you in the year that you are in. Instead, you should try to read every novel as it was intended to be read.

As a reader, you should remain open-minded enough that you can sympathize with the historical moment in which a novel was written. And sometimes the social, historical, or cultural background of that novel will clash with what you know or feel to be true.

For example, Greek epics have many unsympathetic qualities, like concubines and violent slaughter. But there are...

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Laura’s adventure down the hill mirrors Persephone’s trip to Hades in many ways:

• When Laura crosses the broad road at the bottom of the hill, it is reminiscent of crossing the River Styx into Hades.
• Hades has a three-headed dog at the gate, and Laura meets a dog at the gate in front of the dead man’s house.
• The Golden Bough, which is the admission ticket into Hades in the myth, is replaced by the gold daisies on Laura’s hat.
• In the myth, Persephone comes across a woman named Sibyl, who has a cave full of written oracles. In Mansfield’s story, Laura meets an old woman who has newspapers at her feet.
• Laura’s brother, Laurie, is a representation of Hermes from the myth. In the myth, Hermes escorts Persephone out of Hades in a chariot. In this story, Laurie comes to pick up Laura from the dead man’s house.
• Theme: The myth of Persephone is about a young woman acquiring knowledge of death. The same could certainly be said about “The Garden Party.”

If you didn’t make any of these associations in your reading of the story, that’s okay. If you understood the story in terms of what actually transpired in the plot, you have still gotten something out of it....