PRESENTATION OUTLINE
How to Read Literature Like a Professor
Chapter 21: Marked for Greatness
In the Dark Knight, The Joker makes the scars on his face very known. With every confrontation, he asks them, “Do you want to know how I got these scars?” I think he does this because he isn’t afraid of them. He lets people know that his face has been carved. In the movie, he doesn’t explicitly reveal how he received the scars. He tells two different tales: his belligerent father cut his mouth to “make him smile” and he did it to himself to spite his wife. Since he has a damaged face, I think it reflects his damaged soul. Upon seeing his face for the first time, one can assume that he is twisted or damaged in some way.
Chapter 22: He’s Blind for a Reason, You Know
The Great Gatsby has been analyzed countless times. One of the recurring theme in the book is blindness. Jay Gatsby is not physically blind, but emotionally. He is unaware of the fact that the daisy he once loved is no longer around. That she has moved on, whereas Jay is stuck in the past and reliving memories. His failure to see the truth about Daisy, is the main theme in the novel. Every action made by Gatsby to win over Daisy builds up to the climax where Gatsby’s dreams tragically fall.
Chapter 23: It’s Never Just Heart Disease...
Chapter 24: ...And Rarely Just Illness (chapters combined)
In the book The Probability of Miracles by Wendy Wunder, the main character falls ill with cancer and her mother is convinced that if they move to Maine, she will be cured. When her, her mother, and sister all move to Maine where she meets new people, and falls in love. At the very end of the book, the main character dies. Death doesn’t always have to symbolize death. It can symbolize cleansing, like in the book. Although the main character has died, her and her family no longer have to suffer. The burden that is cancer has gone away, and in a way, they are now cleansed.
Chapter 25: Don’t Read with Your Eyes
In chapter 25, Foster explains that not everything we read is literally about what we read. There may be an underlying meaning to actions done by characters. A person reading Much Ado About Nothing in this time period compared to a person reading it from the time period it was written would interpret the play in different ways. The person reading it in our current time period would take every word literally. Someone not trained to analyze literature wouldn’t bother to find a deeper meaning. A person living during the time of shakespeare could easily pick up on the lines that contain double meanings.
