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Analysis Of How To Read Literature Like A Professor

956 Words4 Pages

Kyle Guimarin

Mrs. Mary Smith

AP Literature

September 20, 2017

How to Read Literature like a Professor

In the novel “How to Read Literature like a Professor,” Foster gives insights on how to spot and pick up on many common literary terms such as irony and symbolism by using a very relaxing tone and referencing many common novels that most readers can identify and relate to. The novel is very educational and can leave the reader asking many questions, and by the end the reader should be reading books and literature in a very different way than they have before.

To start off, Foster uses many examples to show the reader how to pick up on the different types of irony and what it really means in a story. One example Foster uses is in the …show more content…

He starts off by saying in chapter 12 that symbolism has multiple meanings, not just one set and stone. This is simply because everyone interprets literature in different and unique ways, and each person may take an object in a story a different way than someone else. But, if something in a piece of literature only has one meaning, it is an allegory. Foster mentions “The Pilgrims Progress” in his writing. He shows that a man named Christian is trying to reach Celestial City (Heaven) and he encounters other characters in the story such as Faithful and Evangelist. These characters and the city name have one main purpose in the story, and that is to symbolize Christianity as we know it today. If you take it in another way, the story is now wrong and the meaning is gone. That is why it is considered an allegory. Foster mentions the book “The Republic” which involves in the story the locals can’t explain or describe the caves at all. The caves actually symbolize consciousness and perception, hints why they can’t explain the “caves” because everyone has their own opinions and perception on things, which is why this is one of the main examples of symbolism Foster uses. He wraps up by saying “Pay attention to what you feel about the text. It probably means something,” referring back to how everyone can symbolize something

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