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Analyzing Literature: It

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Title: Analyzing Literature: It


1
Analyzing Literature Its a lot easier than you
think!!
2
Objects, thoughts, emotions, actions, and people
associated with the color RED
3
  • Objects, thoughts,
  • emotions, actions, and people associated with the
    color GREEN

4
  • Objects, thoughts, emotions, people associated
    with the color WHITE.

5
Objects, thoughts, people, activities, elements
associated with WATER.
6
Objects, thoughts, people, actions associated
with WAR.
7
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Taking what you know and learn and applying it to
what you read
13
How to Read Literature like a Professor
  • A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading
    Between the Lines

14
Every Trip is a Quest (Except when its Not)
  • Quests consist of five things
  • A quester
  • A place to go
  • A stated reason to go there
  • Challenges and trials en route
  • A real reason to go there

15
The Goonies
  • Questers The Goonies group of
    outcast/mistfit kids
  • Place to go seeking the pirate ship of One Eyed
    Willy
  • Stated reason to go hoping to find enough
    treasure so they will be able to save their homes
    from being destroyed
  • Trials/challenges booby traps, being chased by
    convicts
  • Real reason to go to learn about friendship,
    acceptance of each other, sticking together etc

16
Examples of a Quest??
  • Movies
  • Books
  • Television shows
  • Come up with your own examples

17
Every Trip is a Quest (cont.)
  • The real reason for a quest is always
    self-knowledge.
  • The quester often fails at the stated task.
  • They dont know enough about the subject that
    really matters themselves.
  • This is why questers are young, inexperienced,
    immature, sheltered.

18
What comes to mind when you hear the word
communion?
19
Nice to Eat with You Acts of Communion
  • Whenever people eat or drink together, its
    communion.
  • Communion
  • The act or an instance of sharing, as of thoughts
    or feelings.
  • Religious or spiritual fellowship.
  • There are all kinds of communions its not
    solely religious.
  • Communion doesnt have to be holy or even decent.

20
Communion (cont.)
  • Thing to remember about all communions In the
    real world, breaking bread together is an act of
    sharing and peace, since if youre breaking
    bread, youre not breaking heads.
  • Were very particular about those with whom we
    break bread.
  • Think about the people you eat lunch
  • with. Why do you spend time with
  • them instead of other people?

21
Communion (cont.)
  • Mob boss may invite enemies to lunch and then
    have them killed. Such behavior is considered
    very bad form.
  • Has to be a compelling reason to include a meal
    scene (as theyre difficult to write and
    inherently uninteresting).
  • Ex. The Things The Carried, Of Mice and Men
  • Clip Pieces of April watch the face of each
    character his or her gestures, expressions,
    overall attitude.

22
Nice to Eat You Acts of Vampires
  • Vampirism selfishness, exploitation, a refusal
    to accept the autonomy of others
  • Look for ghosts and doppelgangers (evil twin)
  • Ghosts and vampires are never only about ghosts
    and vampires
  • Look for a character who grows in strength by
    weakening someone else.
  • Think about some of the people you go
  • to school with!
  • Ex. The Crucible, Huck Finn, Their Eyes Were
  • Watching Gog, The Great Gatsby, Anthem

23
Now, take a look at your movie collection.
24
Now Where Have I Seen Her Before?
  • There is no such thing as a wholly original work
    of literature.
  • Theres only one story. And that story is about
    ourselves, about what it means to be human.
  • Horror Movies, Spoof Movies, Romantic Comedies,
    Disney Movies
  • Clip O Brother, Where Art Thou?

25
When In Doubt Its from Shakespeare
  • If youre reading a work, and something sounds
    too good to be true, you know where its from.
  • Shakespeare coined em
  • To thine own self be true (What does it mean?)
  • We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
  • Double, double, toil and trouble
  • O brave new world / that has such people in it

26
Or the Bible
  • Look for serpents, gardens, plagues, floods,
    parting waters, loaves, fishes, forty days,
    betrayal, denial, etc.
  • Look for loss of innocence
  • Four horsemen, the Apocalypse, and Judgment Day
  • Clip Beloved

27
Its More than Just Rain or Snow
  • Its never just rain.
  • Rain can be cleansing or restorative.
  • Rain is the principal element of spring.
  • Fog almost always signals some sort of confusion.
  • Snow is clean, stark, severe, warm, inhospitable,
    inviting, playful, suffocating, filthy note
    paradoxes!

28
Weather (cont.)
  • Clips
  • Rain Garden State, Tsotsi
  • Fog Hotel Rwanda
  • How is each weather element utilized in these
    scenes? What do you think the elements represent?

29
Is that a Symbol?
  • Sure it is.
  • Not all symbols are objects or images action can
    also be symbolic. What are a few examples of
    symbolic actions?
  • Symbols rarely have one specific interpretation.
    (Think about the exercise we did yesterday the
    color red/the American flag can mean a variety of
    things!)

30
Is that a Symbol? (cont.)
  • Ask what is the writer doing with this image,
    this object, this act? What possibilities are
    suggested by the movement of the narrative or the
    lyric? And most important, what does it feel
    like its doing?
  • Use your instinct as well as your knowledge,
    literary background, education, etc.
  • Clips Schindlers List, Of Mice and Men

31
Flights of Fancy
  • If it flies, it isnt human.
  • Scripturally, flight is one of the temptations of
    Christ Satan asks him to demonstrate his
    divinity by launching him from the precipice.
  • Flying is freedom from not only specifics burdens
    but from those more general burdens that tie us
    down.
  • Flying is escape, the flight of the imagination.
  • Clip E.T.

32
Its all about Sex
  • Holy grail and lance fertility
  • Lock and key
  • Curtains blowing in the wind
  • Wrestling
  • Clip Tom Jones

33
Except Sex
  • When authors write about sex, theyre really
    writing about something else.
  • Sex can be pleasure, sacrifice, submission,
    rebellion, resignation, supplication, domination,
    enlightenment, the whole works.

34
If She Comes Up, Its Baptism
  • If a character gets wet, pay attention.
  • Baptism is symbolically the death of the old self
    and the rebirth of a new self.
  • Drowning serves its own purpose character
    revelation thematic development of violence or
    failure or guilt plot complication or denouement

35
Baptism (cont.)
  • So when a character goes underwater, figure out
    why.
  • Clip Ferris Buellers Day Off

36
Geography Matters
  • Geography rivers, hills, valleys, buttes,
    glaciers, swamps, seas, islands you get the
    picture! (The Things They Carried, Their Eyes
    Were Watching God, The Great Gatsby, The
    Crucible)
  • In fiction and poetry, geography may be mostly
    people. Literary geography is typically about
    humans inhabiting spaces, and at the same time,
    the spaces that inhabit humans.
  • Geography is setting, but its also (or can be)
    psychology, attitude, finance, industry
    anything that place can forge in the people who
    live there.

37
Geography (cont.)
  • Geography can also define or even develop
    character.
  • When writers send a character south, its so they
    can run amok. (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

38
So Does Season
  • Seasons have stood for the same set of meanings
    for about as long as anyones been writing
    anything. Since you know this pattern, start
    looking for variation and nuance in this use.
  • For example Spring renewal
  • Summer ?
  • Fall?
  • Winter?

39
Marked for Greatness
  • Physical markings (scars, deformities, handicaps,
    missing limbs, etc.) call attention to themselves
    and signify some psychological or thematic point
    the writer wants to make.
  • So if a writer brings up a physical problem or
    handicap or deficiency, he probably means
    something by it.
  • Clips Finding Nemo, Forrest Gump

40
Dont Read with Your Eyes
  • Dont read only from your own fixed position in
    the year 2008.
  • Try to find a reading perspective that allows for
    sympathy with the historical moment of the story,
    that understands the text as having been written
    against its own social, historical, cultural, and
    personal background.
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