“There’s only one story,” in literature because all stories take pieces from other stories so nothing is completely original which is what Thomas C. Foster explains in, “How to Read Literature like a Professor.” Foster talks about an, “Egyptian papyrus complaining that all the stories have been told and that therefore nothing remains for the contemporary writer but to retell them,” (Foster 195). This is partly true because people who write have read other stories and often incorporate pieces of those stories in their own work. Also the basic layouts of all stories are quite similar which makes every story similar. Foster explains that with good writers it, “is usually no that the work seems derivative or trivial but just the opposite: the work actually acquires depth and resonance from the echoes and chimes it sets up with prior texts, weight from the accumulated use of certain basic patterns and tendencies” (Foster 195). Here he portrays how writers using pieces from other text in their own is not boring, but interesting because they have to include it in a way that benefits and enhances their writing. This type of writing requires great skill to be done well enough that the novel or play is insightful and interesting to those who read it with out copying the older work to much. Also, “works are actually more comforting because we recognize elements in them from our prior reading” (Foster 195). When readers recognize those elements it benefits them because they remember the emotion or feeling they received from that prior text and now feel that way about the newer text. Writers know this and use it to create certain moods and themes in their writing. While there is only one story in literature, because prior texts are used to create newer texts, that one story is interesting every time it is rewritten.
Thomas C. Foster in, “How to Read Literature like a Professor,” explains the significance of the depth of water in literature. Foster gives the example where, “a young man sails away from his known world, dies out of one existence, and comes back a new person, hence is reborn,” and, “symbolically that’s the same pattern we see in baptism” (Foster 163). By providing this example Foster depicts how going into a body of water and dying for real or just characteristics of the person dying can represent baptism. It can be considered baptism because they are a new person when coming back because the experience has changed them. Foster goes on to explain that the depth of water is important because, “Rain can be restorative and cleansing, so there’s a certain overlap, but it generally lacks the specific baptismal associations of submersion” (Foster 165). While standing in the rain can cause someone to be completely soaked to the point where it seems that they did jump in a pond, in literature rain still does not hold the same qualities as actual submersion. The act of being completely submersed in a body of water is really the only act that portrays all the qualities of baptism and being reborn. Foster also explains that, “the thing about baptism is, you have to be ready to receive it,” which leads to the example dealing with Milkman who has to lose, “all the things he has acquired from being the son of his father,” before, “he’s ready to become a new person, to undergo his baptismal immersion” (Foster 165, 166). Milkman first goes into a stream, then a bath tub, and lastly a river which is where he is reborn. He has to go through all three bodies of water because he must become ready to be baptized in a way. This is also why the bodies of water become bigger and deeper because each time he goes in deeper water to become more cleansed. Foster explains the impact of the depth of water in literature by providing a plethora of examples in literature.
Thomas Foster, in “How to Read Literature like a Professor,” describes the significance of water and how it is used in literature. Foster explains how often times in literature when characters face death by drowning (Foster uses an example from Ordinary People, where two brothers go sailing, a storm appears, one drowns and one doesn’t; he’s focusing on the one who survives) but resurface, it’s symbolically “the same pattern we see in baptism: death and rebirth through the medium of water;” “a young man sails away from his known world, dies out of one existence, and comes back a new person, hence is reborn” (Foster 163). When characters face peril but prevail through the struggle, symbolically, they are never the same person. Characters may keep their physical aspects, but their emotions, thoughts, and values generally take a different turn, or develop deeper as they process the fact that they escaped death throughout the work. Foster discusses an example that from D. H. Lawrence’s Ulysses that symbolically represents rebirth by is reminiscent of actual childbirth, in which a woman attempts to drown herself but is saved by a “Dr. Fergusson;” The doctor brings her forth from her water bed. She is coated not with clean water but with slimy, smelly, rather disgusting fluid. When she awakens, she has been cleaned up and wrapped in a blanket, under which she’s as naked as, well, the day she was born” (Foster 168). In this case, while the act of the woman drowning and resurfacing resembles a rebirth inside of her, as she finds herself attracted to the Dr. after this, the scenario is even more symbolic through the way the author sets it up. D. H. Lawrence beautifully sets up a scene highly reminiscent of a child delivery taking place for this significant event; he reminds us of birth for the woman’s RE-birth. Foster brings out the importance of drowning as well, as he interprets every drowning having “its own purpose: character, revelation, thematic development of violence or failure or guilt, plot complication or denouement” (Foster 169). When authors “rebirth” characters, they generally do so with similar intentions; new outlook on life, waking up to see what they have, new directions for the character. Ironically, drownings give are designed with a plethora of purposes in mind to add to a story, something one would think could come from rebirths. The “depth” of water in literature is primarily present through, basically, life and death, seen throughout literature as symbolic rebirths and tragic drownings.
Thomas C. Foster in "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" discusses how immersion into water can represent many different things. Foster generally agrees that "when writers baptize a character they mean death, rebirth, new identity" (Foster 167). He gives an example of a young boy who was out in the ocean with his brother on a boat during a storm. The boy's stronger, older, popular brother dies while he survives; Foster uses the story to explain how that young boy was born again. Foster provides an example from Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon". The character, Milkman, gets wet three times during the book and in his third experience "he whoops, he hollers, he laughs at danger, he's a brand new person and he feels it" (Foster 166). Foster states that this is "what dying and rebirth is all about" (Foster 166). Foster also speaks of the near drowning of a girl and a doctor saves her in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter" by D.H. Lawrence. Once Dr. Fergusson saves her, she comes out of the lake covered in slime which represents rebirth. She woke up all clean and they seem to love each other. Foster explains how these characters both went through a rebirth. Also, Foster mentions how Iris Murdoch has someone drowning in all of her books. He says that "every drowning is serving its own purpose: characters revelation, thematic development of violence or failure or guilt, plot complication or denouement" (Foster 169). He explains that death has a big influence on themes of stories and he calls it baptism when they do not die and come out of the water.
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ReplyDelete“There’s only one story,” in literature because all stories take pieces from other stories so nothing is completely original which is what Thomas C. Foster explains in, “How to Read Literature like a Professor.” Foster talks about an, “Egyptian papyrus complaining that all the stories have been told and that therefore nothing remains for the contemporary writer but to retell them,” (Foster 195). This is partly true because people who write have read other stories and often incorporate pieces of those stories in their own work. Also the basic layouts of all stories are quite similar which makes every story similar. Foster explains that with good writers it, “is usually no that the work seems derivative or trivial but just the opposite: the work actually acquires depth and resonance from the echoes and chimes it sets up with prior texts, weight from the accumulated use of certain basic patterns and tendencies” (Foster 195). Here he portrays how writers using pieces from other text in their own is not boring, but interesting because they have to include it in a way that benefits and enhances their writing. This type of writing requires great skill to be done well enough that the novel or play is insightful and interesting to those who read it with out copying the older work to much. Also, “works are actually more comforting because we recognize elements in them from our prior reading” (Foster 195). When readers recognize those elements it benefits them because they remember the emotion or feeling they received from that prior text and now feel that way about the newer text. Writers know this and use it to create certain moods and themes in their writing. While there is only one story in literature, because prior texts are used to create newer texts, that one story is interesting every time it is rewritten.
ReplyDeleteReread this prompt - I think you posted the wrong response in the wrong place. This one is asking about the depth of water.
ReplyDeleteThomas C. Foster in, “How to Read Literature like a Professor,” explains the significance of the depth of water in literature. Foster gives the example where, “a young man sails away from his known world, dies out of one existence, and comes back a new person, hence is reborn,” and, “symbolically that’s the same pattern we see in baptism” (Foster 163). By providing this example Foster depicts how going into a body of water and dying for real or just characteristics of the person dying can represent baptism. It can be considered baptism because they are a new person when coming back because the experience has changed them. Foster goes on to explain that the depth of water is important because, “Rain can be restorative and cleansing, so there’s a certain overlap, but it generally lacks the specific baptismal associations of submersion” (Foster 165). While standing in the rain can cause someone to be completely soaked to the point where it seems that they did jump in a pond, in literature rain still does not hold the same qualities as actual submersion. The act of being completely submersed in a body of water is really the only act that portrays all the qualities of baptism and being reborn. Foster also explains that, “the thing about baptism is, you have to be ready to receive it,” which leads to the example dealing with Milkman who has to lose, “all the things he has acquired from being the son of his father,” before, “he’s ready to become a new person, to undergo his baptismal immersion” (Foster 165, 166). Milkman first goes into a stream, then a bath tub, and lastly a river which is where he is reborn. He has to go through all three bodies of water because he must become ready to be baptized in a way. This is also why the bodies of water become bigger and deeper because each time he goes in deeper water to become more cleansed. Foster explains the impact of the depth of water in literature by providing a plethora of examples in literature.
DeleteThomas Foster, in “How to Read Literature like a Professor,” describes the significance of water and how it is used in literature. Foster explains how often times in literature when characters face death by drowning (Foster uses an example from Ordinary People, where two brothers go sailing, a storm appears, one drowns and one doesn’t; he’s focusing on the one who survives) but resurface, it’s symbolically “the same pattern we see in baptism: death and rebirth through the medium of water;” “a young man sails away from his known world, dies out of one existence, and comes back a new person, hence is reborn” (Foster 163). When characters face peril but prevail through the struggle, symbolically, they are never the same person. Characters may keep their physical aspects, but their emotions, thoughts, and values generally take a different turn, or develop deeper as they process the fact that they escaped death throughout the work. Foster discusses an example that from D. H. Lawrence’s Ulysses that symbolically represents rebirth by is reminiscent of actual childbirth, in which a woman attempts to drown herself but is saved by a “Dr. Fergusson;” The doctor brings her forth from her water bed. She is coated not with clean water but with slimy, smelly, rather disgusting fluid. When she awakens, she has been cleaned up and wrapped in a blanket, under which she’s as naked as, well, the day she was born” (Foster 168). In this case, while the act of the woman drowning and resurfacing resembles a rebirth inside of her, as she finds herself attracted to the Dr. after this, the scenario is even more symbolic through the way the author sets it up. D. H. Lawrence beautifully sets up a scene highly reminiscent of a child delivery taking place for this significant event; he reminds us of birth for the woman’s RE-birth. Foster brings out the importance of drowning as well, as he interprets every drowning having “its own purpose: character, revelation, thematic development of violence or failure or guilt, plot complication or denouement” (Foster 169). When authors “rebirth” characters, they generally do so with similar intentions; new outlook on life, waking up to see what they have, new directions for the character. Ironically, drownings give are designed with a plethora of purposes in mind to add to a story, something one would think could come from rebirths. The “depth” of water in literature is primarily present through, basically, life and death, seen throughout literature as symbolic rebirths and tragic drownings.
ReplyDeleteGreat
DeleteThomas C. Foster in "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" discusses how immersion into water can represent many different things. Foster generally agrees that "when writers baptize a character they mean death, rebirth, new identity" (Foster 167). He gives an example of a young boy who was out in the ocean with his brother on a boat during a storm. The boy's stronger, older, popular brother dies while he survives; Foster uses the story to explain how that young boy was born again. Foster provides an example from Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon". The character, Milkman, gets wet three times during the book and in his third experience "he whoops, he hollers, he laughs at danger, he's a brand new person and he feels it" (Foster 166). Foster states that this is "what dying and rebirth is all about" (Foster 166). Foster also speaks of the near drowning of a girl and a doctor saves her in "The Horse Dealer's Daughter" by D.H. Lawrence. Once Dr. Fergusson saves her, she comes out of the lake covered in slime which represents rebirth. She woke up all clean and they seem to love each other. Foster explains how these characters both went through a rebirth. Also, Foster mentions how Iris Murdoch has someone drowning in all of her books. He says that "every drowning is serving its own purpose: characters revelation, thematic development of violence or failure or guilt, plot complication or denouement" (Foster 169). He explains that death has a big influence on themes of stories and he calls it baptism when they do not die and come out of the water.
ReplyDeleteAlways use a more specific word than "thing"; don't repost.
ReplyDelete