Analysis Of How To Read Literature Like A Professor By Thomas Foster

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In the chapter “The Test Case” in How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas Foster, Foster presents several different interpretations of the story “The Garden Party”. Foster then shows the readers interpretations of the short story that his college students have articulated. Foster’s interpretation, however, goes much deeper. Along with asserting that the clear theme of the story is about class indifference and struggle, Foster also claims that on a noumenal level, Laura in The Garden Party has taken a metaphorical trip to down to hell, the Greek version of it, representing the Greek goddess Persephone; Foster does this in order to deepen his understanding of the themes in the story. Foster starts by explaining that the title

Like “The Garden Party”, Lockwood’s trip can be interpreted as a trip to Hades. By alluding to the Underworld through Lockwood’s trip to Wuthering Heights and subsequent attempt to leave, Bronte is able to foreshadow the dark events at Wuthering Heights to come. When Lockwood first reaches Wuthering Heights, he is attacked by Heathcliff’s vicious dogs. “In an arch under the dresser reposed a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer, surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies; and other dogs haunted other recesses” (Bronte 3). The dogs are an allusion to Cerberus, the guard dog of the Underworld, because they are described as huge, vicious, like a brood of tigers. Similarly to Cerberus, these dogs reside in the shadows, with Cerberus’s “shadows” being the darkness of the Underworld and Heathcliff’s dogs the arches around the threshold of the home. Like Cerberus, these dogs also stand guard at the threshold of the realm they guard. In this way, Wuthering Heights can been seen as representing the Greek Underworld. It is isolated, dark, and ruled by a malevolent and creepy gentleman, Heathcliff. When examining Heathcliff’s character, one can also see how Heathcliff parallels Hades. Like Hades, Heathcliff was cast out by a brother. Whereas Hades was sent into exile, excluded from all in the Underworld, Heathcliff was excluded from the family and treated just as a servant by Heathcliff’s brother, Hindley. Interestingly, this exclusion and being overlooked by Catherine in favor of Edgar, increasingly makes Heathcliff similar to Hades. Hades has a helmet of invisibility, which can be interpreted metaphorically that Hades feels invisible and ignored, in the shadows, just as Heathcliff feels he has become. Furthermore, the dogs also prevent Lockwood from leaving Wuthering Heights, just as Cerberus prevents people from trying to leave the Underworld. “seemed more bent on stretching their paws,