Examples Of How To Read Literature Like A Professor

Ben Price

Mrs. Mary Smith

AP Literature

20 September 2017

How To Read Literature Like a Professor Essay

In the story, How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster uses many examples to show how deferent types of ligatures can be connected by a common theme, purpose, or other books. In the book he uses examples such as Greek and Roman Mythology, Shakespeare, Fairy tales, and the Bible to show how common their themes are in literature. Foster uses symbols to point out the similarities and connect these books to others.

“He’s everywhere, in every literary form you can think of” (page 34) says Foster about the man himself, Mr. William Shakespeare. Authors throughout literature use his work to tie their characters and story to Shakespeare’s more commonly known writings.

These were told and written mainly for kids but have a lasting impact into adult hood. Writers use these tales to appeal to older audiences. They do this to allow the reader to go back to when they were a kid. Writers also write these innuendos to appeal to the readers’ comic side. Like if you hear “Who ya gonna call” you will probably think of ghostbusters. But in a hundred years from now people won’t understand that reference. And the same thing goes for the other way around. If a writer a hundred years ago writes about something of that time period, he could mean it one way but we could interpret it in a completely different way. Authors will also use childhood tales as themes to stories. If there was a character that was being led on a journey then it is referring “Alice in Wonder land”. Or if it’s about a poor person become rich and powerful then it is referring to “Cinderella”. We can see lots of these symbols because the writer needs the reader to be able to relate to the story and its characters, and by making them similar to childhood books, the writer can increase his odds of reaching the readers