Lessons for How to Read Literature Like a Professor

Are you looking to aggrandize your cognition of How to Read Literature Like a Professor? Exercise you lot desire do questions to assistance you written report?

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster is a crash course in the fine art of reading intelligently. Hither are 4 exercises to aid you analyze literature equally a professor would.

Continue below for How to Read Literature Similar a Professor exercises.

How To Read Literature Similar a Professor: Book Exercises

Do you want to learn to get more than out of the novels you read? Are you interested in learning how authors communicate through literary devices similar symbols, archetypes, and allusions?

How to Read Literature Similar a Professor by Thomas C. Foster is a crash grade in the art of reading intelligently. In this book, you lot'll learn how to identify common literary conventions and gain the skills necessary to clarify them similar a professor would.

Below are exercises to help you read like a professor:

Exercise: Draw on Your Literary Memory

When you read a novel or watch a picture, you want to continue your optics open for any references to or adaptations of the sacred texts. Practice looking for intertextual references of Shakespeare'southward classics.

In the musical film West Side Story, two New York City street gangs are in disharmonize. The Jets are led by Riff later on Tony leaves the gang, and The Sharks are led past Bernardo. One night, Tony and Bernardo's sis, Maria, meet at a trip the light fantastic and autumn in love. Both The Sharks and The Jets are furious, and the disharmonize reaches a boiling point. Simply earlier Tony and Maria are able to run away together, Tony is shot and killed. Maria holds him in her arms as he dies. The tragedy of Tony's decease is enough to end the disharmonize between the rival gangs.

• This is a musical adaptation of i of Shakespeare's archetype plays. Write downwardly which ane you think it might exist.
• If you thought of Romeo and Juliet, you lot were right! Now that you know it's the story of Romeo and Juliet translated into 1950's New York, think near the similarities and differences in the plotline. Write your thoughts below.
• Recollect of 1 of your favorite books or movies. Can you find thematic or narrative allusions to whatever sacred texts within the story? What are the similarities and differences?
• How does that allusion deepen the meaning of your favorite volume or movie? What might the similarities and differences between your favorite work and the sacred text illuminate?

Exercise: Recognize and Translate Symbols

Geography influences a novel's atmosphere, characters, and plot. Practice using the analytical skills you've learned in this chapter to analyze geographical symbols.

• In Mark Twain'southward The Adventures of Blueberry Finn, a immature boy, Huck, and an escaped slave, Jim, travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.
• In what ways is traveling into the Deep South thematically relevant for Huck and, especially, Jim?
• Consider the raft that Huck and Jim are traveling on for the majority of the novel. What could it symbolize?

Exercise: Identify the Quest Archetype

Every quest narrative includes a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to become at that place, challenges along the fashion, and a real mission that reveals itself in time. Practice identifying these elements in a story.

• One day, a immature boy named Kip agrees to get to the grocery shop to buy a loaf of bread for his mom. He chooses to ride his former, one-speed bicycle, of which he is deeply aback. When he gets to the store, he is humiliated to see the girl he loves, Karen, in the parking lot. She'south hanging out with a guy named Tony, who has an expensive sports car. Moments later, in the staff of life aisle, Tony decides to enlist for the military. He has learned his lesson: that he'll never go what he wants in this town, where people only care almost how much coin your family unit has.
• In the box beneath, identify the post-obit elements in this quest narrative: The quester, the place to become, the reason to go there, the obstacles faced, and the self-cognition acquired:

Your Turn to Read Similar a Professor

On your ain time, read the story "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield.

You can find the story online for free here.

When you've finished the story, respond the questions below. Read carefully and practice all of the strategies for interpretation that you've learned from this book. Write or type your answers to stay accountable, and don't look at any other sources for aid.

1. What does the story signify? That is, what do you interpret as the story'due south meaning?
2. Why do yous recollect that? What elements of the story gave you that interpretation?

One time you've answered the questions for yourself, compare your ain answers with some of these other interpretations:

• The story is about the indifference of the family in the story to the working class living down the colina.
• The story is almost the young girl's guilt over having a party while others mourn, and the indifference of the upper grade to the struggle of others.
• The story uses the metaphor of birds and flight every bit a means of showing the family as insulated from the lower grade. Ane character is described as a butterfly and the party guests are described every bit birds. The family unit domicile is similar to an aerie up loftier on the colina. Throughout the story, the chief character is trying her wings and gaining some independence, but ultimately chooses to stay in her lofty moral high ground.

If your responses were annihilation like these interpretations, you should give yourself a skilful course. Hither is some other, more in-depth interpretation of the story:

When Laura goes down the loma to visit the house of the expressionless man, she has actually gone into Hades. Laura is a representation of the mythical character Persephone.

That makes Mrs. Sheridan, Laura's mother, a representation of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and fertility. The proof? Throughout the story, Mrs. Sheridan has a fascination with flowers and her children.

Laura'south gamble downward the hill mirrors Persephone's trip to Hades in many means:

• When Laura crosses the wide road at the bottom of the hill, it is reminiscent of crossing the River Styx into Hades.
• Hades has a iii-headed dog at the gate, and Laura meets a canis familiaris at the gate in front of the dead man's house.
• The Gilded Bender, which is the access ticket into Hades in the myth, is replaced by the gold daisies on Laura'due south hat.
• In the myth, Persephone comes across a woman named Sibyl, who has a cave total of written oracles. In Mansfield's story, Laura meets an old woman who has newspapers at her feet.
• Laura'south brother, Laurie, is a representation of Hermes from the myth. In the myth, Hermes escorts Persephone out of Hades in a chariot. In this story, Laurie comes to choice upwardly Laura from the dead man'south house.
• Theme: The myth of Persephone is about a young woman acquiring knowledge of expiry. The same could certainly be said about "The Garden Party."

If you didn't brand any of these associations in your reading of the story, that'southward okay. If you understood the story in terms of what really transpired in the plot, you lot take still gotten something out of it. Y'all managed to come up to your ain conclusions, and that is the first footstep of reading intelligently.

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