How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. FosterMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
As Alan Jacobs has asked regarding this book, who wants to read literature like a professor? Why not just read to enjoy yourself? But as the subtitle shows, this book is fun and easy to read, and it’s a great help if you want to dig a little deeper into the stories you read.
In this book, Thomas Foster takes a few common literary patterns (such as the quest story, the vampire archetype, the symbolism of weather, etc.) and condenses them into overviews of about 5-10 pages each. Despite some offensive elements in the book, it’s very helpful overall.
I first read this book for the first time in the early 2000’s. After I did so, the first movie I watched was Pixar’s Finding Nemo. As I watched, with Foster’s book fresh in my mind, I remember having quite a literary experience, noticing several literary aspects that I had just read about in the book (for example, the quest story, the symbolism of Nemo’s undeveloped fin, etc.).
Here are just a few of the patterns that this book discusses.
1. The Quest Story
In the chapter “Every Trip Is a Quest,” Foster points out that every story that involves a journey is about more than the journey itself--it’s about the main character gaining self-knowledge. Quest stories are all over the place: Odysseus’s journey home in The Odyssey, the Knights of Camelot searching for the Holy Grail, Indiana Jones’s quests for ancient relics, Oedipa Maas’s quest in The Crying of Lot 49, the journeys of Bilbo, Frodo, and Luke Skywalker, and even a trip to the grocery store in John Updike’s "A&P"—-all of these are quest stories. And quest stories always involve five elements:
1) a quester,
2) a destination,
3) a “stated reason to go,” (to rescue the princess, to discover the treasure, to save the world, etc.),
4) “challenges and trials” along the way, and
5) a “real reason to go”—-which is always self-knowledge.
Foster points out that as the main character takes the journey, he always finds out that there is more to himself than he realized. And according to Foster, that’s what it’s all about. (By the way, this chapter got me interested in the Hero’s Journey, which has become one of my favorite lenses through which to look at stories.)
2. The Symbolism of Meals
In the second chapter, “Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion,” Foster points out that throughout human history, meals have been moments of peace and fellowship. The act of nourishing ourselves is highly personal, and we tend to put food and drink into our bodies only with people who we are not fighting with. So, as Foster shows, every time people eat together in a story, the author is probably portraying a sense of communion, maybe even symbolizing religious communion. Foster points out that because it’s so hard to create a meal scene (just try it), whenever we read about characters eating together, the author (or director) is probably showing that the characters are gaining some sort of intimate connection with each other. I think Foster is right. I think of Hiccup and Toothless eating a fish together in How to Train Your Dragon, and Princess Leia and the Ewok eating crackers in The Return of the Jedi—these are moments when the characters have, at long last, gained some sort of connection with each other after being initially skeptical.
Conversely, an author can use a meal to highlight tension: people who should be enjoying fellowship may not be doing so (for example, the disastrous Christmas dinner in James Joyce’s “The Dead,” and the restaurant assassination scene in The Godfather). So whenever a character throws down a fork, gets up from the table, and angrily storms off, the tension is heightened.
3. The Vampire Archetype
In “Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires,” Foster shows that ghost stories are not about ghosts, but about values—whether political or moral or both (for example, Dickens’s Christmas Carol and Shakespeare’s Hamlet are more about morality than they are about ghosts). Foster also explains that there is a vampire archetype that reoccurs throughout literature—not only in vampire stories. The vampire archetype tends to be an older figure—often male—who represents older, outworn values (often a ruling class that exploits a lower class), whose goal in a story is to exploit a younger, innocent character—often female—for his own, selfish reasons. Some of Foster’s examples are The Turn of the Screw and Tess of the D’Urbervilles. But you could throw Scrooge and Darth Vader into that category too--any characters who suck the life out of weaker characters, whether literally or figuratively.
4. Re-occurring Characters
In his chapter entitled “Now Where Have I Seen Her Before?” Foster asserts that “there’s no such thing as a wholly original work of literature,” and he demonstrates how story after story includes elements from older stories. His best example here is Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam war novel Going after Cacciato, which draws from Ernest Hemingway, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Sacajawea, and other figures. When authors do this, their stories “[gain] a kind of resonance from these different levels of narrative that begin to emerge; the story is no longer all on the surface but begins to have depth.” Foster also points out that “there’s only one story.” By that, he means that all literature is connected: all literature is about the human story—what it means to be human, to experience this world, this life, joy and grief, love and pain, all that is.
5. References to Shakespeare
In his chapter “When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare,” Foster shows that Shakespearean plots and characters are frequently re-created in new books, films, television episodes, operas, etc., from Woody Allen to West Side Story, from Bugs Bunny to Brave New World, from Gilligan’s Island to Rocky and Bullwinkle. As Foster says, “The Bard is everywhere.”
6. Biblical Allusions
In the chapter “. . . Or the Bible,” Foster shows that writers often re-write and allude to Bible stories. Just look at some book titles: Steinbeck’s East of Eden (Cain and Abel); Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (Ecclesiastes); Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses!; even Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider is a reference to Revelation.
7. References to, or Rewritings of, Fairy Tales
In the chapter “Hanseldee and Greteldum,” Foster explains that writers today tend to refer to fairy tales to add parallels, irony, or depth to their stories. For example, Angela Carter, John Barth, Tim O’Brien, Toni Morrison, and Thomas Pynchon have all written stories of lost children—directly showing the influence of Hansel and Gretel. As Foster says, “Fairy tales, like Shakespeare, the Bible, mythology, and all other writing and telling, belong to the one big story, and because, since we were old enough to be read to or propped in front of a television, we’ve been living on that story, and on its fairy variants.”
8. References to / Rewritings of Greek Myths
In his chapter “It’s Greek to Me,” Foster shows that Greek mythology is also all over the place in modern literature in references and plots. For example, Derek Walcott’s Omeros, a modern story set in the Caribbean, has all kinds of parallels to The Iliad and The Odyssey. Even the title Omeros means “Homer.” Joyce’s Ulysses and Joel and Ethan Coen’s film O Brother, Where Art Thou? are modern retellings of The Odyssey. Foster also asserts that Indiana Jones’ quests for treasure are similar to the story of Jason and the Argonauts and that the Oedipus story has been re-written in all kinds of variants. And Foster was writing before the Percy Jackson books came out.
9. The Symbolism of Weather
In his chapter “It’s More than Just Rain or Snow,” Foster advises that whenever we read a book or watch a movie, we should watch the weather, because it’s always significant. Rain and fog tend to signify mystery, confusion, misery, and social leveling (it affects everyone—no matter whether they are rich or poor). In another chapter, Foster explains that rain can also mean baptism—rain is cleansing. So writers often have characters get soaked in the rain (or dunked in water) during some intense emotional experience, symbolizing a baptism, some sort of new beginning. In another chapter, Foster explains that seasons are also significant: spring means romance, renewal, awakenings; summer means wildness, craziness, emotional intensity, things getting out of control; autumn means celebration, or decline; winter often means death.
A few other archetypes in the book:
Flight, or a character physically rising somehow, is often a symbol of freedom. (Think of the endings of E.T., Up, etc. You'll be surprised at how many times someone flies at the end of a story. Even Dumbo just popped into my mind.)
In “Geography Matters,” Foster advises us to watch the geographical direction that characters go in a story. Going north often means doing what is right morally. When characters go south, they often do so to “run amok.” (For example, watch out whenever a character in England heads to Italy.) Going west connotes adventure and exploration.
In the chapters “Marked for Greatness,” “He’s Blind for a Reason, You Know,” and “It’s Never Just Heart Disease,” Foster explains that characters’ physical traits, including their defects, are always full of meaning. Just consider some literary characters who have physical issues or scars: Oedipus (pierced feet, blindness), Frodo Baggins (a hidden scar on his shoulder), Richard III and Quasimodo (hunchbacks), the Frankenstein monster (tall and deformed), Grendel (deformed), every single Hemingway protagonist (hidden scars), Nemo (undeveloped fin), Luke Skywalker (hand cut off), Anakin Skywalker (hand cut off, then his whole body nearly destroyed), etc. . . . These characters all have scars, sicknesses, deformities, and so forth—and all of those physical traits mean something.
All in all, a helpful book.
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