How To Read Literature Like A Professor Chapter Analysis

In the book How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, the first chapter illustrates the elements and ideas of quests in literature. Foster starts off the chapter with a hypothetical story where an average sixteen year old boy named Kip goes to the A&P, a local super market, to buy a loaf of Wonder Bread. Along the way, Kip unpleasantly encounters a German shepherd but meets Karen, the girl of his dreams, laughing with Tony Vauxhall in his ‘68’ Cuba. Kip continues to search for the bread in the store, but he is disturbed by a marine asking him to join the Navy. The story is immediately paused, and Foster analytically explains how Kip’s trip to the A&P was actually a quest. He shows that a quest consist a knight, a dangerous

Most of the time, the questers go on the quest believing that the stated reason is their assignment, but “the real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge” (Foster 3). In addition, Foster provides an example from a published work, Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon in order to examine the five literary elements. The quester of the novel is a young woman named Oedipal Maas, who is not pleased in her marriage. The place she must go is Southern California, while the stated reason to go there is to fulfill her task given from her former lover. The challenges and trials she face during her quest may include the dangerous people she encounter. Finally, the real reason is to find her self-knowledge or how she can rely on herself. Foster shows that this novel satisfies the five literary elements and the setup of “someone going somewhere and doing something, especially if the going and the doing wasn’t his idea in the first place” (Foster 6). Throughout first chapter, Foster claimed that a quest consist five elements, but he soon says “Always’ and ‘never’ are not words that have much meaning in literary study” (Foster

Foster. The knight or the quester of the novel is Janie, an half African American woman who wishes to find her soulmate or Holy Grail. However, unlike most novels, Janie has multiple places she must go and multiple evil knights she must surmount in order to find her soulmate or the stated reason. In the beginning of the novel, Janie is forced to marry a wealthy man named Logan Killicks, the first evil knight, to satisfy her grandmother, Nanny’s wish. Although, Janie initially married Logan only to grant Nanny’s wish, Janie believed that she can truly love Logan one day because “Husband and wives always loved each other” (Hurston 21). As a result, Logan’s house became Janie’s first destination to find her love. However, as time went by, Janie began to feel that her marriage is not the marriage she had fantasized about for the past years. Thus, Janie constantly believed that she cannot be content with Logan. One day, when Janie was at the barn peeling potatoes, she encounters a man named Joe Starks, the second and final evil knight. Joe explains that he is on his way to a town being built by only African Americans, and persuades Janie that she should come with him. Janie is convinced that she can find her perfect marriage with Joe and leaves the next day. As Janie’s second destination becomes Eatonville, the town being