Symbolism Of How To Read Literature Like A Professor

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Isaiah Kennedy Mrs. Mary Smith AP Literature 6 21 September 2017 Symbolism of: how to read literature like a professor In his book, how to read literature like a professor, Foster provides insight into the meaning behind recurring situations in literature such as the character of a vampire. The vampire in lore is typically an older man, corrupted by the world, who takes the innocence of a younger woman whom he leaves withered and aged. In books, the vampire character is rarely a literal vampire, but a figurative one instead; in fact, an older professor who uses a young student is the most common portrayal of the vampire. Symbolism is a critical literary technique, arguably the only literary technique given that all the others use symbols …show more content…

When a character travels, they do so for self-knowledge. When you travel to new places you experience new unfamiliar things, and you do not have your familiar surroundings to reinforce your familial values so the new things reach your core and have a substantial chance to change you. Often on the journey, you lose physical items to challenges on the way, symbolic of losing your personality traits to change and that can help to unravel the outer of a person to enable turmoil and change. The actual distance can be important as well, travelling a long distance passing landmarks as a character develops can help a reader appreciate the character development as the journey progresses. Therefore, why does a given event happen in high ground, it can carry a multitude of implications, the character could physically see much ground and then have a revelation, the character was above all the others and felt superior, the character was surrounded by low ground and surrounded by his physical enemies and his troubles. Moreover, you can follow the same process for any other environment or landform, low ground, the character is below the others, in the jungle the character surrounded by the unknown, physically and mentally, and so on and so forth. Following the idea of symbolic geography, weather can be symbolic too. A storm on the horizon can represent a tragic event, having happened or imminent, a character caught in the rain can be cleansed by the rain or muddy from tromping around in a heavy

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