Thomas Foster's How To Read Literature Like A Professor

Thomas Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor, is a thought provoking guide to reading literature. This book helps with understanding the “language of reading” and the importance of details. Foster opens up a new side of literature where rather than reading emotionally, you dig deeper into the grammar of the literary work to discover the true meaning. How to Read Literature Like a Professor, is beneficial when reading any kind of literary work. It explains the particular “set of conventions and patterns, codes and rules” (Foster xxv) used when dealing with literary works. Foster puts into words how these determine the setup and meaning of literature using examples and ideas that are useful for high school and college students.

Foster explains a quest consists of a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials along the route, and a real reason to go there (Foster 3). A quester starts a quest believing they are going for their stated task but throughout the quest that stated task fades away and the real reason comes out, self knowledge (Foster 3). In the book, Real Time, by Pnina Moed Kass, Sameh, a suicide bomber starts his quest of bombing the bus with the stated reason that he is going to get respect for his family. Throughout Real Time, Sameh goes through challenges and trials that make it difficult for him to follow through with his intended reason and realizes what the consequences of his actions will be, but it is too late for him to change his actions. In the end, Sameh becomes aware of the pain that he has caused people and that you cannot fight fire with fire. Fosters book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, is useful when analyzing quests because it helps readers see the changes that a character goes through as they mature and develop through their quest to gain self