Always ask where you are going because you never know where it may take you or what you will need to go there. Authors who create their own mystic settings know those lands so well because great thought had to go into creating each little detail. As a reader you have to think about why did the author pick this setting and is their a hidden meaning. Harsh geography equals tough people to defeat since they have to be tough to live their. In poetry and fiction it may be people inhabiting spaces and the same time the spaces are inhabiting the humans. The geography can define and develop a character even like a rebirth of the person. Tunnels in a landscape can turn the land into enemies, but will the animals of such landscape turn menacing. Specific plot role in a literacy work need to dig deep into their subconscious delving into the region of darkest fears. The geography can discover darkness within or shatter romantic dreams during the first experience of the land. An authors reason for sending a character south is usually so the can run amok. Heaney the poet uses geography to get an in-depth knowledge of his poems and see where he is coming from . A low land can be swamps, fogs , and heat meaning its dirty un clean and inhabitable. A high place like mountains snow and ice give sense of purity to the untouched , but on the downside the thin air can mean death in such purity. An alpine environment is clean , un clustered almost inhuman.
In many books that are read the literacy characters often get wet or covered in water however you want to take it. The character may be tripped , pulled, pushed, and dragged into the water quite literally. The rain can be a wish of fulfillment for a person or an exorcism of primal fear. The authors that have a messy plot line with difficulties water can be a handy solution to it. What happens to a character is symbolic in its own way. For example of Baptism is Conrad and Henry brothers , and one dies on their trip. The brothers go sailing and hit a storm when the boast flips Conrad hangs on ,but Henry the strong athletic one doesn't which is a fatal mistake. Conrad thinks it should have been him ,but he was smart enough to hang on. He was the younger brother living in a shadow, and he comes a change boy who is reborn. It resembling baptism a person was once covered in sin and the water washes away those sins. Rain is restorative it helps a parch yellow field of grass turn green and healthy once more. Drowning is a character revelation, thematic development of violence or failure or guilt and the plot complication or denouncement.
When many think of myths ,they think untrue or even fake tales, so many will have difficulty uniting a myth with religious beliefs. Foster is rather trying to suggest that shaping and sustaining power of story and symbol. The readers should be chiefly concerned how a story functions as material and the way it informs a story or how it is perceived. For example biblical myths cover great ranges of human situations which encompasses all ages , this does include folk tales as well. Myths are like a story that can explain our lives when we can't ,it is like a body of a story that truly matters. When people think oh myths they think of Greek or Roman tales. These myths can reference Trojans, Spartans , Troy, or even Athens. They can be seen as city names or mascots of schools nation wide. Foster explains this as an parental attempt to save children and if that doesn't work the grief of failure. An example of this can be Auden's poem of private nature of suffering , which the world does not take an interest in private disasters often. Even the seasons changing because of Persephone going down to the Underworld with Hades , causes Demeter to plunge the world into winter a myth can create a story to natures work. Recognizing our experiences of literature can be deeper, richer, more meaningful, so the modern story always matter.
In all ,foster tells us that most writers avoid writing about sex itself , because its just awkward. After D.H. Lawrence the sex talk became sorry and underdeveloped , after his era authors were just trying to match his level. It take unbuttoning to a whole new level readers before had never seen. Charles was horrified at the ill judged marriage , and how women were not being loving. For example ,Sarah she is a forbidden fruit , tempting other to try and get near her. Sex is on one level symbolic action claiming for individual freedom from convention, celebrating removal of restrictions. O' Brien's novels take on a political cast as characters explore their sexuality, throwing off restriction's of a conservative religious society. It can even mean liberation or sometimes the failure of liberation in a situation. Carter for example uses it as attempts to discover paths by which women to be attaining the standing in the world that is dominated by men.
Foster implies that many professors can easily recognize sexual intentions of writers , and its because they are not perverted just experienced in how to interpret a authors writing. When a author reference a tall building you can think od a tall strong male or rolling fraud hills as a female. Sexuality can be encoded in a writers book, as the readers you must know what you are looking for first. Knight s are usually young virile males who ride out to save their village that's is dying, so they ride of to restore fertility to their village and the order to the chaos. In another era sex was not talked about so they would reference it by in movies the curtains blowing . Hayes code was in films that living bodies couldn't get horizontal together, so no husband or wife could share a bed ,they had to have separate beds. The also used key and locks as another way to saying the deed. Some will get what the author is saying the other s will look to the ceiling like its about to fall on them, they just need a little help to understand the true meaning.
If it flies it is not human , humans will go splat , we are earthbound creatures for a reason if you think about it. The Greek tale Icarus has a boy who's father built wings for him to fly away. This tale is one of a fall which causes a wall of guilt and grief. The emblems of flight and music are natural properties of birds. The term flying is freedom ,tell us that general burdens that tie us down need to have some time to let go. The spiritual side is the soul can sour above everyone else. Foster mentions that the indoors is not freely open to allow a person to join others. Another, topic to know is irony trumps everything. Flight is freedom, while Fevvers counter flight . A free spirit during the Victorian period ,allows a young women to dress , speak and even act differently then those who are confined to strict rules. For example a child of divorce who gets kidnapped for the parent without rights , but floats safely from the jet to the ground. While the other two land of a snow beach, which is seen as a rebirth in their lying and cheating ways that could have ended with their death. Flight can metaphorically be a escape of any society structure.
Christian culture is from Europeans that immigrated and the early settlers who brought it over and spread it. Now no one can longer assume class is just a Christian based idea. When trying to find an authors meaning the reader needs an idea of what the traditions of a culture might entail. It shows the individual involvement and the role it plays in society, for example women in public life used to not have a say, until they got the right to voice their opinions. Religious knowledge is helpful ,but the beliefs that are too tightly held can be a problem when interpreted another's ideas of religion. The value of hope , faith, and the attainment of grace can we seen in many new lights depending on who is reading the novel. No literacy Christ figure can ever be as pure as Jesus Christ. Shell is like an egg, her pure self is untouchable , she was in essence she is the one who walked over snow. So untouched and pure anyone can be a Christ figure even if she is the opposite gender of Jesus. Just look into her life and she how she has moved people like Jesus did and still does.
Foster points out the politics that pop up randomly or are seen throughout a writing they mean something. Scrooge is not actually about children or Christmas festivities. Dickens is a social critic who is very sneaky. In his work he critiques the social short coming of society. His programmatic pushes a single cause or concern that does not do well in its own specific time period. Writing that engages the realities of the world addresses the right or wrong in the certain power ruling. Lawrence resembles the Prime Minister , he sets a radical individualism conflict with established institution, and the refusal to behave or submit to a higher power. The role of Individualism is always a politically charged matter of autonomy and free will. When a prince has a party he is locking all of the aristocrats away from the sickness of the poor society , but ironically all the people locked up die due to how close they were and how fast the disease spread. The house of usher shows the European monarchy and aristocracy, which can be seen as unholy, and an un-American relationship. Politics are not just skin deep , they can rule peoples lives and even bring them to their knees.
A symbol does not always mean something in particular, but it doesn't exactly work like that. If a symbol means one thing its an allegory so it may stand for something other then it may seem. An example being Orwell's Animal farm the point is not the Revolutions fail, but those who come to power are corrupted and reject values. Symbols have a range of meanings. Caves where once lived in and pictures were drawn. Adela could have been helped by the canes on a deeper level of consciousness and what she feared most. Adele may be confronted by the hypocrisy of her life and the confrontation of truth of terrors she denied . As a reader we bring individual history, gender, race, class and faith influencing what we interpret and understand. In crane a river connects on a vertical axis that brings worth to both the North and South and that together they might stop movement East and West. Eliot brings forth a dying civilization , the river was slimy, dirty and corrupted of modern life and the collapse of western civilization. When a person thinks of symbols they think of images but it is not always objects but events and actions.
A slaves escape is like the Israeli's escape from Egyptian exodus. An example is when Sethe decides to kill her kids so none of them will have to know the life a slave has had face. The death of one child is one in sixty million slaves who died in captivity, marches, or passage to a new world. Violence is a personal/ intimate act between humans its symbolic even. Violence in literature is ,usually a metaphor, of more uncaring relationship with the world, lives, and death in the universe. A teenagers death is like a candle going out prematurely, it demand's human existence which is small and fragile. Readers can feel a sense or weight from where there is something hidden below the surface yet they cant reach it just yet. In Lawrence's noel, Gerald and Gudrun are in a capitalist social system with modern values. Banford's demise shows sexual tension and the gender roles of the people of that era. Even a fall off s jetliner is seen as a fall of innocence from experience while the other is a fail already of corrupt life into an existence as demons. So any violence can have a deeper meaning that might be harder to find.
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