In the early stages of Life of Pi, Martel mentions a place that Pi and Ravi had gone to visit while on vacation. While looking aimlessly through the window, they noticed three hills. On top of one hill was a catholic church, another a Hindu temple, and the other a Muslim mosque. Each hill portrays each of the religions in Pi’s complex faith. The hills represent Pi’s struggles to understand each religion. Later on, we find out that Pi is caught in between these three religions. He couldn’t completely disregard any of the religions, so each one kept warring for a place in his life. In How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster repeatedly says how symbols usually have more than one possible meaning. So another possible meaning for the three hills is that each of the warring religions has a different part in his life. The religions are separated by being on each hill, but they live simultaneously in the same general area. Just as, in Pi’s life, each religion has its separate area of his mind, but they all partake in his life.…
In Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Chapter 12 is dedicated to symbols, and how they are not concrete. Symbolism is all about interpretation, which makes them difficult to understand. Foster says the most difficult thing about symbolism is that everyone wants to have one concrete answer. He argues that symbolism has multiple gray areas, and a majority of people confuses symbolism with allegories. Allegories are things that stand for one certain thing.…
In the first chapter of Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster discusses the five aspects of a typical character’s quest and alerts all readers that “when a character hits the road, we should start to pay attention” (6). To start out the chapter a rather dull scene is set of a young boy commuting to a store to retrieve bread for his mother. Foster reveals that the seemingly unimportant commute is actually a quest. It is determined that “a quester” (3), a destination, an obvious reason for the travel, trials and tribulations and a real reason are all necessities to a character’s quest. While differentiating the obvious reason and the real reason can be challenging, Foster explains that the obvious reason to a quest…
The fourth chapter of How to Read Literature is “Interpretation,” which happened to be the longest chapter of this book. Eagleton gave the reader a very well-known example of the poem, "Baa, baa, black sheep.” He presented his argument, in this case, his literary theory in a quite interesting way. Eagleton pointed out that you can’t write with any interpretation. His argument for the chapter was that the work you write much be true, depending on the context. It is understood that interpretations will happen now and then, but you must not allow the narrative to be so ignorant and biased to one meaning. Like the rest of the chapters in the book, Eagleton used a book to give an example. The chapter allowed the reader to realize that works being…
In "Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning" by Christina Haas and Linda Flower, the authors tells us in reading we should have strategies. The two main strategies they elaborate through out the passage are literary theory and cognitive research. Both take a huge part while reading to have a better understanding. As Haas and Flower say "'Critical reading' involves more than careful reading for content, more than identification of conventional features of discourse, such as introduction or examples, and more than simple evaluation based on agreeing or disagreeing"(170). That's why these strategies come in place, a good reader should be able to identify the topic sentence, supporting points, and conclusion. Students lack…
Does everything in “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” match “The Hobbit”? Breaking down “The Hobbit” will help to further conclude what concepts it does and does not follow in Thomas C. Foster's book “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”…
Within chapter 23 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foster discusses the in-depth reasons authors use heart complications in novels and the meaning it can add to a story. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses these various heart techniques that Foster talks about to further emphasize character’s personalities and guilt.…
techniques in How to Read Like a Professor ‘How to Read Like a Professor’ is a book that discusses several broad yet detailed techniques of reading. While I am positive everyone who reads this book knows how to read, they may not know how to read to fully comprehend all of a volume, even that which is not on the page. One such technique that really helps to reveal much about a story is symbolism, or the use of something to represent something else usually not in the story. Symbolism is important to know how to recognize because it can easily change a significant amount of a story. Some things are so closely associated with forces of nature that descriptions of the environment often infer undertones and meaning.…
Chapter One: A casual definition of a quester would be an individual that goes on a quest, or mission, in hopes of looking for something. However, in How to Think like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, we are challenged to look at this term in a very different and mind stimulating way. Foster challenges our minds to look at quests as everyday things. Foster points out 5 aspects to every quest and how we can find these within everyday situations. These include; the quester, a place to go, said reason to go there, challenges and trials, and the real reason to go. The places do not have to be physical places and can be places within our minds and hypothetical places. With every quest we gain new life experience and knowledge not previously known to ourselves. We gain self-knowledge. In Pride and Prejudice, we can see a quest that Elizabeth Bennet goes on. The place she goes is self- acceptance against her family and to be content with her love for Darcy. Elizabeth continuously goes on a self-battle of whether or not she deserves what she has, including; love, life, and happiness. Austen emphasizes the character of Elizabeth self-deserving attitude early in the novel: “I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.” (Austen 76)…
Most of the time, when a piece of literature involves someone going somewhere and doing something, it is a quest.…
Thomas C. Foster talks about the symbolic meaning of blindness. He says that in literature, the person who is blind isn't literally blind. They have sight but they are self centered and selfish. 13 Reasons Why: Everyone is blind to Hannah’s suicidal tendencies. They are too worried about what others will think of them and their actions/behaviors/thoughts/opinions.…
Throughout the story, Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, readers are shown the other side of blindness. In the world, one may assume that there is just one type of blindness- being sightless. “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to” (Carver, 1). The meaning of blindness goes much deeper than that. Through the actions and words of a character, the husband in this short story, readers are shown how much ignorance, fear, and confusion one can have for someone who has literal blindness. All these negative feelings towards the blind man leads to the husband finding the blindness within himself.…
Chapters five of ' how to read literature like a professor' tells us that ; nothing is original, that everything is taken from something that has previously been told of a or wrote about. The road by Cormac McCarthy abides by this. When i was in the eight grade I read The Picture of Dorian Grey, When i was in the ninth grade i read The Twilight Saga, and last week i read Fifty Shades of Grey. All three of the listed books are derived from one another , in all three books reader is presented with an irresistibly sexy, mysterious man. All three books also contain some naive, sheltered girl who falls hopelessly in love with the man. The man in all of the books is corrupt in some way, rather it be a power hungry prince, a vampire or a "dominant".…
First of all I would say thank you to our Almighty God for giving me the wisdom and the knowledge in doing this project.…
objective is to investigate the reading habits of Primary 1 to Secondary 5 students relating to…