Is That a Symbol?

This is going to be my last post on “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” by Thomas C. Foster. For this last post, I have chosen to reflect on Chapter 12: Is That a Symbol? If you’ve graduated from high school, then you know what a symbol is. If you haven’t graduated from high school, then you should probably go do that before you read this post, but if you’re too lazy to go about all the schoolwork and exams and such, then I’ll explain; symbols are pretty self-explanatory. The bald eagle is  a symbol of our freedom as Americans and a book might simply symbolize learning and education (which you know nothing about if you haven’t graduated from high school).

The basic premise of this chapter: “if you think that it’s a symbol… than it probably is”. And the meaning of that symbol is going to differ depending on who the reader is. I thought this was a very interesting way to look at things. In past English courses that I have taken, whenever symbolism would inevitably creep its way into our reading, it always seemed like the answer to the question, “Now, what does that symbolize?” had to be similar for every student. Never before had I heard that the meaning of a symbol is based on who the reader is. Therefore, discovering symbolism in literature is an individual effort. In saying that, you shouldn’t need the help of your teacher to delve into your past experiences and personal historical knowledge to discuss what the flashing green light situated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock really means. There goes Foster again, making yet another terrific point. Like almost everything else that Foster has taught me through my reading of this text, his discussion on symbolism really does make all the sense in the world. However, I can also qualify what Foster says by bringing up this point: put the same book in the hands of any two readers with the same amount of historical knowledge and ask them to discuss what “the big white house on the hill” symbolizes. The chances that the two readers will give a similar discussion on symbolism are higher than if one reader was more knowledgeable than the other. For example, you (let’s say you’re a student, if you’re not already) and another student in the same grade level as you, read the same book. This book is about a neglected African-American child who is living as a slave in the late 19th century. Every evening, the child looks out his window toward the open horizon after working for hours out in the field. You could agree that the “open horizon” is indeed, a symbol. Now, what does that symbolize? There’s that question again. You know what African-Americans dealt with throughout much of the 19th century, and so does the other guy reading the book. You both know that many slaves who sought out freedom escaped through use of the Underground Railroad led by former slave Harriet Tubman. With this background knowledge, not only you and the other guy, but anyone who reads the book about the slave child could come up with the fact that the open horizon symbolizes freedom. Whether it be freedom from his owners, or freedom from being beaten and neglected every day, or freedom from slavery altogether, we go back to Foster’s words, that’s left up to the reader. Foster failed to mention this, yet I believe that his leaving it out was for an obvious reason. The way Foster talks about how no two readers could come up with the same definition of a symbol, leaves cracks for small possibilities like the one I stated in my example above.

After reading this chapter, symbolism now has a new and exciting definition to me as a critical literary scholar. Foster makes some superior points in this chapter, and I believe that he includes some rather fundamental aspects of symbolism in literature. I wouldn’t change a thing.

It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow

Another reflection post from “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” by Thomas C. Foster. This book is beyond enlightening and fun to read! Chapter 10: one of many chapters on how something so small and seemingly unimportant actually contributes to the text in more ways than meets the eye. First – communion. Who thought a group of people sitting around a table, enjoying a meal, having a good time, meant more than just that? All this deeper meaning stuff. That’s what successful literature is all about.

Now there’s weather. According to Foster and common sense regarding literature, weather can and most likely will affect the outcome of a piece of literature or even answer one of the most asked questions of all time: “What will happen next?” (Directly according to Foster, from an author’s standpoint, depending on how you make it known, the current weather circumstances can make or break a book). Foster focuses primarily on rain in this chapter. Whether you’re just getting started on the classics or if you’ve read every Dickens tale out there, you should be able to understand rain: what it is. What it causes us to feel. How it affects the environment that we live in. This goes for everything that rains down from above, including rain, sleet, lightening, fire in some stories, but like I said, Foster shows his love for rain. Rain is understood to compare to feelings of dreariness, sadness, or woe, but Foster takes it one step further, and ends up throwing something at me I never even saw coming.

While reading the first part of the chapter, I found myself nodding in agreement and even wanting to tell Foster, “I know all of this! It’s all obvious information.” But after getting through all of the “rain is scary and rain is sad”, Foster says, “Rain, though, can do a lot more.” I was almost certain that he covered it all with the allusions to the bible and the popular effect that rain has on any story, but he wasn’t even near finished. After looking critically at the effects of rain, it all came together and even made sense in comparison with the real world as opposed to the worlds posed through literature. I read that rain could be used as a plot device and that it (obviously) has an effect on the atmosphere, and I also read about something that Foster calls the “misery factor”. The “misery factor” basically states that when you, as an author, are wanting your characters to feel most miserable, then you throw some rain on them. I think we can all agree that rain has a pretty high misery factor. Something else that Foster said that contradicts everything he’s said thus far is that rain can be restorative and that it is the main cause of spring. It sounds contradicting but rain is one of those things that can have many different effects depending on who is being affected. Again, rain is the main cause of spring, and rain leaves behind some pretty hard evidence that makes this obvious: April showers bring May flowers, so – Rain equals spring and flowers and sunshine! Therefore adding to the restorative property of rain. Rain also keeps you and I alive. Also adding to its restorative property. Rain is the condensed moisture of the atmosphere falling visibly in separate drops… also known as water, and as human beings, we need water to live. Therefore rain is good, yet sometimes it can be bad. Spring also carries with it a number of positive affects, and rain causes spring to come into our lives each and every year.

We can’t talk about rain without rainbows coming into play. A beautiful display of the colors of the spectrum produced by dispersion of light that normally occurs after a rainstorm. Sure, it takes one hell of a rainstorm for a rainbow to be visible afterwards, but I’d say it’s worth it. In books, I had always connected rain to sadness and misery, and the oh-so-cliché, “it was a dark and stormy night” doesn’t help aid in rain’s plea to be noticed as “good” either. I had no clue that the effects of rain in literature ranged so widely from the “misery factor” to restorative properties. After finally realizing that rain affected a piece of literature in so many different ways, I could hardly imagine the effects of any other kind of weather on a piece of literature, but Foster scratches the surface of how fog and snow might stereotypically affect literature, but Foster ultimately leaves it up to the reader to decide how else fog and snow and other weather patterns may affect literature.

Foster says, “Snow… can mean as much as rain” (Foster, 80). Since rain is snow, just in a solid form, this wasn’t shocking. What was shocking was the huge difference between rain and snow. Snow had a much larger range of positive effects on literature as opposed to rain, but again, it depends on who the weather is affecting and how it affects them. For example, in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis, no amount of “positive” can be used to describe the snow that covers Narnia, the land that had been taken over by the White Witch. The snow isn’t even supposed to be there, at least not throughout the whole year, as it is now. The White Witch had control over Narnia, causing winter to occur all year-long. This is one example of snow carrying a negative connotation in literature.

Weather in literature was something I never paid really close attention to; it was just something else happening in the background of a story. Little did I know, the weather was affecting every character in the book and it even helped sway the outcome of the story.