Literature Like A Professor Quest

In the first chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster introduces the readers to the idea of a literary quest. After giving two examples, he outlines the criteria: a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go, challenges and trials en route and a real reason to go. Careful consideration has shown that the 2013 film Frozen, includes a quest that meets Foster’s criteria. When the ice princess, Elsa, becomes angered at her younger sister, Anna’s hasty decision to marry a man she just met, her powers are revealed and she is declared a monster. Elsa flees and inadvertently unleashes winter on the kingdom. Anna leaves to find her older sister, but it is cold and she falls multiple times, eventually stumbling onto Wandering Oaken’s Trading Post and

They eventually reach the mountain where Elsa is staying, only to find that she does not wish to have been found. In a fit of emotional turmoil, she strikes Anna in the heart. She refuses to come back with Anna and creates a snow monster to throw the group out of her palace. They escape and leave to find a cure for Anna who is suffering from the blow to the heart that she received. But it is the original quest that Anna set out on that follows Foster’s models perfectly. Anna herself is the quester, who sets out to North mountain, because she wants to find her sister. Her plan appears quite simple, as if it only had two steps: go to North mountain, find and bring back Elsa. But it is not as simple as it seems, for she is presented with challenges and trials en route. Her original reason for going to North Mountain had been to find Elsa. But when she finds Elsa and is not met with sisterly love, she sets out for a completely different reason: self-knowledge. Foster wrote, “the real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge,” and it stands true with