Rain or Shine...Weather Means More Than You Think

Chapter 9 (It's More Than Just Rain or Snow) explored the greater significance behind all types of weather in literature. There are several different meanings and interpretations of weather like rain, fog, and snow. Something that I found really interesting in this chapter was how Foster pointed out that weather is kind of like the ultimate equalizer in that it affects everyone. Everybody has to endure the same storm, but what happens during the storm and how it changes characters can vary in different stories.

One thing Foster discussed was the duality of rain, how it can be cleansing, or a mess making agent. This reminded me of one of my favorite childhood movies, the Lion King 2: Simba's Pride. For those who aren't familiar with the plot of the movie, the climax of the story is a huge fight between Simba and his lions from Pride Rock, and a rival group of lions from the Outlands. During the fight, it begins to pour down rain and all of the lions get covered in mud. Rethinking about this part of the movie, years after the appropriate age to be watching it, I see the mud as an indicator of the dirty and despicable hatred that has taken over the lives of these two groups. In the end these lions are all the same, and share the same thoughts, problems, and emotions. But the deep-seeded rivalry, like mud, messed up their views of one another, as well as their values of family and community. When the fighting stops and everyone realizes that they are better off together, the rain washes away the mud and both groups of lions return to a very lush, restored looking Pride Rock. 

So rain can dirty things up, or clean and restore life, and sometimes both at one time. We all know the dark and stormy night cliche, but this chapter allowed me to explore why authors put these different kinds of weather in their work. Fog can be a sign of confusion and deceit (i.e. scary monsters emerging from the fog or characters lost and bewildered in a cloud of fog). In this case, weather can add a great deal of suspense to a story. Then we have snow which can have a few different meanings, like rain. There is the classic holiday scene with snow falling outside the window and families gathered around the fire, showing the beauty and cleanliness of snow. But snow can also be cruel and unforgiving like in Stephen King's horror book-turned-movie classic The Shining. Not only is the snowstorm in this book used as a plot device that forces Jack and his family inside the hotel with no escape, the snow and its severity highlights the crazy and extreme person the hotel turned Jack into. In the end the cold, harsh snow brings death to Jack in the final scene. 

There are so many different meanings and uses behind weather in literature. It is a key element of every story that should not go overlooked. So next time you're reading about a dark and stormy night, know that it is dark and stormy for a reason.

http://thetouchtypist.hubpages.com/hub/rain-and-literature

I Was About to Drain the Pool Old Sport

Chapter 11: ......More Than It's Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence

Once again, Foster has shown me that in literature, everything is not what it may seem. Chapter 11 explores the deeper meaning behind violence. With violence so heavily present in today's culture, people grow so accustomed to shooting and stabbing and big explosions that when we read, it is hard to realize that sometimes these acts of violence are actually more than just acts of violence.

For anyone that does not know, I am an avid Criminal Minds fan. Now on every episode of Criminal Minds, a different person get kidnapped or killed or hurt, and the Behavioral Analysis Unit has to figure out how to save the victims and stop the unsub (or unknown subject). The show continues on and a variety of different kinds of violence and crazy scenarios come up for the B.A.U. to solve, but all of that doesn't hold any weight. In this show and other shows and books of the crime/mystery genre, these reoccurring acts of violence don't mean anything. Foster explains that in this genre, the violence is just necessary for the plot to build and continue, but not symbolic of another meaning. Cold-blood real life violence is different from literary violence in that literary violence usually represents a bigger idea.

In literature, violence can be used symbolically or metaphorically, it can be historical or biblical, or thematic. There can be different interpretations to the significance behind a particular act of violence, like there can be different interpretations of symbols. While reading this chapter, I began to wonder if I had overlooked violence in some of the books I have read and not taken the time to explore if any of it had a deeper meaning to me. I quickly thought of the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which to this day is one of my favorite books. There are a couple violent scenes in this book but the one that stood out to me the most was the final scene. For those who haven't read Gatsby, at the very end on the last day of summer in West Egg, Jay Gatsby, our main man, is shot in the back of the head and falls into his swimming pool and his shooter, George Wilson then proceeds to shoot himself. There are a couple of different ways I thought about this famous ending. Set in the middle of the roaring twenties, this book heavily revolves around the idea of the American dream. Jay Gatsby was a character that epitomized the American dream, but he was never fully satisfied. He couldn't be happy until he had Daisy back, and even when the two lovers reunited, Gatsby wanted Daisy to tell her husband Tom that she never loved him and leave him for Gatsby. When Gatsby dies, I think it was a way of Fitzgerald to show unattainable and unrealistic the American dream really is. Gatsby always needed bigger and better everything to win Daisy back, and even when he did, that still wasn't enough for him. In this I think the author was trying to show how living a life in constant obsession with materialism and an insatiable need for more will never produce a happy ending. In addition, while Gatsby led a lavish and rich lifestyle, George Wilson's was quite the opposite. He literally lived in a place called "The Valley of Ashes" which was a place of filth, poverty, and depression. George's murdering Gatsby could have also represented the social tension and disparity between the two very different lifestyles seen in this book. Now primarily, yes, George Wilson did kill Gatsby because he thought Gatsby was responsible for the death of his wife, but I think there was definitely a huge socioeconomic gap between Gatsby and his companions and people living in the Valley that caused a lot of resentment. Through both Gatsby and George's deaths I think Fitzgerald also could have been highlighting the tension that lies among social classes in America. There are probably even more underlying meanings in the events that happen in the last scene of this book that I haven't thought of yet.

Maybe these ideas only make sense to me but the great thing about literature is that it can be interpreted and analyzed in so many different ways that thousands of people could read one book and have different thoughts about the meaning behind something. Foster's writing continues to challenge me to think more critically and look past the surface level. I am interested to read more of this book and discover new concepts and ideas in literature.

http://journals.library.wisc.edu/index.php/wej/article/viewFile/390/419

Here Lies Dobby, a Free Elf

How to Read Literature Like a Professor Chapter 10: Never Stand Next to a Hero

We all have that one friend that we constantly feel out-shined by. Maybe they have a perfect GPA or are the soloist in choir or they are captain of the basketball team (maybe not at Booker T. but you get what I'm saying) or they are the famous wizard who survived an attack from Lord Voldemort and is one day destined to bring about his downfall and save the wizarding world. Whatever the situation may be, nobody likes to feel like second-best in comparison to their best buddy.

The friends of heroes seem to always get the short end of the stick. Sacrifices have to be made in order to save the beloved protagonist right? I mean without the protagonist, the stories we have grown to love would not even be stories. In the tenth chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foerster explains why not all characters are created equally in our favorite books and movies. If all characters had the same importance and significance to a story, we as readers would constantly confuse the individual circumstances and backgrounds of each character and the entire plot would become a huge jumble inside our heads. So we have to have a hero. As the hero goes along his or her quests and journeys, bad things sometimes happen. When these bad things happen, the hero usually emerges a little beaten and battered, but the supporting and minor characters receive the brute of whatever challenges may arise.

The friends of the hero risk life and limb for that person so they can continue their quest and ultimately bring about a positive outcome for the greater good. For example, in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, the young wizard Harry Potter is the sole person that can kill the evil Lord Voldemort. Harry's parents, best friends, mentors, teachers, and even complete strangers die throughout the series because Harry's survival is so important. I sobbed for a solid twenty minutes when Dobby the House Elf died in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after taking a knife to the chest that was meant to hit Harry. Later in that book Harry kills Voldemort and saves the world. He marries the love of his life and has three beautiful children that attend the same wizarding school he did. The story ended up so happy and hopeful yet I still couldn't shake the fact that this made up elf and countless other characters were killed in the process. Foerster also explored why readers (me especially) become so emotionally attached to the characters we come across. In this chapter Foerster explained that the combination of the readers' and writers' imaginations are what create such a strong connection between reader and character. We recognize personality traits of characters that we can observe in our own lives. We spend time building clear and detailed images of characters in our minds so that every time we open back up the book we are thrust back into this different world that we (alongside the author) have created. An article from Azusa Pacific University says that as humans, our natural tendency is to want to form relationships, so naturally we form our own relationships and connections with these fictional characters when we read a book. http://www.apu.edu/writingcenter/announcements/21098/

Real life, however, is not like a novel. There are no magical elves that throw themselves in front of daggers to save teenage wizards. There is not one person in this entire world, and in our individual lives whose well being and achievements dictate the lives of those around them. The only person whose successes and failures you really need to worry about is are your own. Thankfully we are not all forced to put ourselves in danger for a hero like the characters in a book because we are not bound to a specific plot, and we have the ability to chose the outcome of our own stories.
Rest in Peace Dobby.