How to Read Literature Like a Professor

Chapter 1-Every trip is a Quest

Chapter 1 consisted of telling the reader about a simple story of a boy running to the grocery store for his mother and seeing the girl of his dreams with another guy in his expensive car. It was actually a heroic quest. The boy who is the knight, a dragon (the expensive car), an evil knight (the boy with his girl), and the princess (the girl of his dreams). The author wanted us to think structurally, to dig deeper. The 5 quest structures are our quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials, and the real reason to go.

Chapter 2- Nice to Eat with You Acts of Communion

Eating or dining scenes in a book can be hard to figure out and even hard to write. To break it down they tell us that whenever people eat or drink together, it’s a communion. Not the communion you have heard about in church.  They mean communion with or with words. A classic example would be friends are eating together and another joins them later on. One of the friends dislikes the other and excuses themselves from the table and leaves. This shows that one did not enjoy the other. Maybe they fought before hand or maybe they never knew each other. What the author is getting at is people only eat with others if they are comfortable. Sharing food with another means you like that other and are comfortable around them. An example in the book about a man who was asked to show a blind man what a cathedral looks like. To show the man he would draw it while holding the man hand. The man was uncomfortable with the blind man. He thought this man is so much different from me. They shared a meal together before hand and he realized that they eat and drink the same way. He became more comfortable with him just over a meal.

Chapter 3- Nice to eat with you Acts of Vampires

Dracula, the world famous vampire of any age, luring young woman and taking their life is not the vampirism the author is speaking of. Vampirism is about losing the innocence in anything. An example a young woman longing for the desire of one man. She went out every night trying to get his attention in any way but he never noticed her. After awhile she caught malaria and died. According to the author that is not what actually killed her. Her energy, virtue, and the stripping away of her youth took her to her limits. The man not even knowing took her life. So is he the vampire? The act of vampirism is in almost every book whether it’s little or big.