BethanyBouchard

Close Reading Diagnostic -- Jerz: EL150 (Intro to Literary Study)
"If the story is good and the characters work but you don't catch allusions and references and parallels, then you've done nothing worse than read a good story with memorable characters."

I had always wondered how my high school English teachers were always able to pick out all the symbolism and knew what was what in every piece of literature we ever read. I thought maybe the things we read as part of the curriculum came with some kind of teaching guide, but some of the things they came up with were so off the wall that I thought that couldn't be right. (I can't think of anything in particular that I could classify as "off the wall" right now as an example because there were so many). Another theory I had was that maybe they learned it all in college or maybe they just knew it all because they were English teachers. However they found out all that stuff though, I wanted to know how they could pick it out so easily. This is one of the reasons that I found How to Read Literature Like a Professor such an intriguing read. The tone is light and humorous, and when I read it, it's like listening to a friend inside my head who just happens to be an expert on picking out symbolic things and allusions in English literature. Whenever I was in middle school and starting out in high school, I could always read anything and not really give two cents about what the symbolism of the bird flying in the rain was, or whatever we were supposed to be trying to figure out. As long as the story was good and I got some entertainment out of it, I was satisfied. Around the middle of my sophomore year, though, I started to care. High school English classes went so much more in-depth with the reading, and I found it fascinating. I really wanted to know how my teachers knew all of that stuff. (I think that's another thing that prompted me to become an English teacher). After reading the first few chapters of Foster's text, though, I've realized it is not knowledge that just comes into the English teacher's head out of thin air; it is a skill that has to be picked up and mastered just like any other knowledgable subject.