How to read literature like a professor geography matters chapter19

1. How to read literature like a professorgeography matters chapter19 Michael Jones

2. Setting is symbolism • Where the story is set is another important factor in literature • Certain places stand for safety, like a suburban town, while places like the jungle brings wilderness and confusion. • Movement from place to place could express major changes like when people are sent south, it's so they can run amok which means having a “direct, raw encounter with the subconscious.” • (Foster 171)

3. Literary geography • Setting effects how the character acts .For example a person in Texas would not be depicted the same way, talk the same way or act the same way as somebody from New York. • William Faulkner often said he set the majority of his work on his “ little postage stamp of ground” or his fictional setting in his books. He used the setting so much that he was very familiar with the setting and didn’t even have to think about it anymore. • Also some areas affect the main character and the reader for example if somebody died in the mountains it would be foreshadowing that something may happen to the character if he goes into the mountain's

4. Psychology • “when Huck meets the Shepherdsons and the Grandfords or sees the duke and dauphin tarred and feathered by the townspeople he sees geography in action.(Foster 166) • This depicts how the people act. Geography isn't only just hills and what not , it is anything people do to each other in a region. • Also when people react to there environment it is geography. For example when Napoleon was in war he ran into two forces he couldn’t over come , the hard winter and the people protecting there home land

5. Character development • “In Barbara Kingsolvers story Bean trees (1988), the main character and narrator reaches late adolescence in rural kentucky and realizes she has no options in that world” (Foster 167) • The main character moves away and feels amazing in her new environment. This expresses how her life reaches a climax when she changes her scenery . • This also stunts a new horizon for the story and can pick up a dying book .

6. Plot • In A Room With A View (1908) “ Much of the comedy in the novel grows out Lucy’s battle to reconcile what she ‘knows’ is right with what she feels to be right for her” (Foster 169) • In this book Lucy is very racial and she meets a man that she loves but does not share her views since they are from different parts of the world. The man she met wants freedom and represents how the geography of the Italian city has impacted him

7. Meanings • Lows • Swamps • Crowds • Fog • Darkness “why did jack and Jill go up the hill? Sure, sure, a pail of water, probably orders from a parent. But wasn’t the real reason so jack could break his crown and Jill come tumbling after? That’s what its usually is in literature . Who's up and who's down. “ (Foster 173) What do up and down mean? Ups and downs are the whole point of literature and there is no good story if there is no change. Geography helps explain what is going on. Highs Snow Ice Purity Clear views

8. Great expectations • Setting matters in Great expectations a lot. Especially when Pip goes to london and his whole life changes from being that one little boy that was raised by hand to being on his road to “ Great Expectations” and he himself has changed to a very snobbish adolescent.

9. Real world application • In our world today geography matters. A great example would be how adults work today. Some Parents have stay at home jobs which is very comfortable and depending on what type of person you are you can work better or worse than at an office building were people are all doing there work and may get very hectic at times were you actualy need work done. Or like a cowboy from texas visiting california, he may feel alienated from most people who are used to that settingbut those same people would also feel the same if they were in his situation.

10. Works cited • Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: Bantam Dell, • 1986. Print. • Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. • New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc., 2003. Print.