Analyzing Literature: It

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

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

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Objects, thoughts, people, activities, elements
associated with WATER.
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Objects, thoughts, people, actions associated
with WAR.
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Taking what you know and learn and applying it to
what you read
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How to Read Literature like a Professor

• A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading
  Between the Lines

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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

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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

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Examples of a Quest??

• Movies
• Books
• Television shows
• Come up with your own examples

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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.

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What comes to mind when you hear the word
communion?
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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.

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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?

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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.

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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

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Now, take a look at your movie collection.
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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?

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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

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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

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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!

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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?

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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!)

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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

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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.

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Its all about Sex

• Holy grail and lance fertility
• Lock and key
• Curtains blowing in the wind
• Wrestling
• Clip Tom Jones

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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.

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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

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Baptism (cont.)

• So when a character goes underwater, figure out
  why.
• Clip Ferris Buellers Day Off

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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.

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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)

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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?

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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

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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.