How to Read Literature Like a Keith

Read from Friday, May 13th to Monday, May 16th.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor, by Thomas Foster.  I read this book while on vacation in Asheville, North Carolina, and I wanted a quick, easy read after the adventure of Don Quixote.  This book offers some interesting insights on what it is that professors of literature look for in classic works, and how they are interpreted.  There are many short chapters on different themes, symbols, and other devices that authors use to add a deeper meaning to their stories.

Any trip that a character takes usually signifies a quest, and any meal that characters share signifies communion and a deeper connection.  Authors only reveal important details in their stories, so everything is important and serves to either advance the story or signify something.  Authors also borrow heavily from previous works.  It is not plagiarism, it is telling the same story in a different form.  For example, many modern novels take the form of Greek myths, stories from the Bible, Shakespeare, or even local Fairy Tales. Vampires represent evil men dominating virginal women, and the weather and seasons are also very important.  Many of the stuff is common sense, such as Spring is young, and Winter is old age.  Foster discusses violence in literature and what it means, political messages in popular literature, the symbols of flying, sex, the avoidance of sex, dunking in water (baptism, rebirth), physical deformities and blindness.  He teaches readers how to spot Christ figures, and whether the author means it literally or ironically.  Geography is important, as is the type of illness a character suffers from (heart disease is symbolic of love, and why consumption was such a perfect literary disease). 

At the end, Foster gives us a test story to analyze.  It is called "The Garden Party" and it is about a young, rich girl whose family throws a party, while the poor people nearby grieve over a man killed in a horse accident.  The young Laura goes to visit the house of mourning at the end, and she is very distraught.  Foster shows us how the story mirrors the journey of Persephone to Hades and her confrontation with mortality.  Overall, I enjoyed this read, and hopefully will be more perceptive in my future journeys into literature.  Foster uses many examples, some from books I have read, and some from new books that I am interested in finding out more about.  He does rely very heavily on Toni Morrison, D.H. Lawrence and some others, and I would've liked him to branch out more.  It seems very much like one of his semester lesson plans put into book form.  But still, I enjoyed it very much.  Three and a half out of five stars.

Don Quixote

Read from Friday, April 22nd to Thursday, May 12th.

Don Quixote, the famous work by Miguel de Cervantes.  This massive book, considered by many to be the first and quintessential novel, took me a long time to finish, by my standards.  I was in the process of switching jobs, so I never got going in the novel for awhile, in fact most of the book was read in the last week.  Although it took me awhile, that is nothing to detract from the novel, which I considered excellent.  From the simple travels of a deranged old man and his loving squire, Cervantes manages to encompass the stories of the entire age.

I will do my best to summarize, although there will be many parts left out.  Don Quixote de La Mancha is a semi-wealthy old man living on a small estate with a housekeeper and niece.  He is obsessed with novels about knights errant and the code of chivalry.  So much so that he is absorbed into the stories and he imagines himself as one of these knights.  He names his horse Rocinante, and imagines that his princess that he is fighting for is Dulcinea del Toboso, who is really a peasant woman he once had a crush on.  He sallies forth looking for adventures, and gets an innkeeper to officially knight him, although his first adventure doesn't go well and he is returned home.  This time though, Don Quixote resolves to do it right, so he recruits a local farmer, Sancho Panza, to be his squire.  Sancho is dumb but loyal and compassionate.  He believes Don Quixote is a knight and he will win an isle for Sancho to be governor.  Together, they sneak away from town on their quest.  They meet many people and have many adventures, some more successful than others.  Don Quixote fights the windmills; he releases a bunch of convicts, believing he is doing the honorable thing by setting people free; he steals a washbasin as a helmet; he thinks an inn is a castle. 

Don Quixote lives by the code of chivalry.  He tries to do right, defend people who can't defend themselves.  Even though his vision is clouded, he tries to do the right thing all of the time.  Don Quixote shapes the world around him to fit his fantasies.  If things do not go as expected, he believes he is under an enchantment from some wizard.  Other people quickly realize he is crazy, but no one can convince him otherwise.  Sancho often realizes that things aren't quite as his master says they are, but he is either dumb enough to be fooled, or he keeps his observations to himself. 

The priest and the barber are two friends of Don Quixote's from his hometown.  When he goes missing again, they set out to find him and bring him home.  They find Sancho at an inn, and Sancho brings them to where Don Quixote is doing penance in the Sierra Morena mountains (really he is screaming and running around naked).  They realize the only way to bring him home is to play by Don Quixote's rules.  In the mountains, they also find a woman named Dorothea, who has run away from a husband who married another, Duke Ferdinand.  Dorothea plays the role of Princess Micomiconda, who convinces Don Quixote to help rescue her kingdom from a giant.  They hope that she will lead him back home, where they can cure his madness.  Here the full story gets tricky:  At an inn Dorothea meets Duke Ferdinand, his wife Lucinda, her true love Cardenio, an escaped prisoner from Algeria and his new wife Zoraida.  Everyone has a story to tell, and eventually the relationships are straightened out and everyone is happy.  The priest and barber lock Don Quixote in a cage and tell him he is enchanted and can't escape.  Of course Don Quixote accepts this and they bring him home.  Thus ends Part 1.

Part 2 gets really meta.  Don Quixote, who is recovering at home, talks with a college student, Samson Carrasco, who tells him that the first part of the novel has been released and is widely popular in Spain.  He also says that there is a second, false version (which is actually true in real life).  There is hope that Don Quixote might be cured, but instead he and Sancho leave for another time on another adventure.  Upon setting out, they encounter another knight, The Knight of the Mirrors (Don Quixote is the Knight of the Sorrowful Face).  They trade stories, but he eventually insults Dulcinea and Don Quixote challenges him to a duel.  The condition is that is the Knight of the Mirrors wins, Don Quixote must return home for one year. Due to an unexpected distraction, Don Quixote wins, and he continues on.  It is then revealed that the Knight was Samson Carrasco, sent out to beat Don Quixote by the priest and barber so he would go home.

They travel to Toboso, hoping to find Dulcinea.  In part 1, Sancho said that he delivered a letter to her, but really he only made it to an inn where he met the priest.  In Part 2, Don Quixote wants Sancho to find her again, but instead of admitting he lied, Sancho says that Dulcinea is a peasant woman riding a donkey.  Don Quixote is mortified that she could be so ugly, but then he reasons that she must be under an enchantment.  They have other adventures, such as witnessing a rich wedding where a jilted lover pretends to kill himself in order to trick the woman into marrying him.  Don Quixote helps to make peace and avoid a large brawl.  He also hears a tale of a town making fun of a neighboring town for its 'braying' like a donkey.  Don Quixote orders some lions to be released from their cages and he wants to fight them, but they just stretch and go back to sleep, so he claims victory.  He travels deep into a cave and has a vision of former knights and Dulcinea under enchantment, and he and Sancho get into a boat and try to attack a fulling mill, thinking that there are other knights held captive in that fortress.  He sees a puppet show about knights and Don Quixote gets so worked up that he mutilates all the puppets, thinking they were real Moors. 

Finally, they meet a duke and duchess, who have heard about Don Quixote from reading the first part.  They take them back to their estate and decide to pull pranks on him and have fun.  They make all their servants treat him as an actual knight.  They create a play to trick him, and have someone playing Merlin say the only way for Dulcinea to be released from her enchantment is for Sancho to whip himself 3300 times.  They also have them ride a wooden horse to a magical kingdom to fight a giant, but they have to keep their eyes closed, so they can trick them.  Sancho is given a city to be governor by the duke, and he ends up making some wise decisions, but the town is attacked (all set up to amuse the duke and duchess), and Sancho resolves to relinquish his dreams of governing.  Finally, they leave, and travel to Barcelona, where they meet an honorable bandit, and a pirate ship off the coast.  However, Don Quixote is challenged to joust by the Knight of the White Moon, again disguised by Samson Carracho, and he easily defeats Don Quixote, who is forced by chivalric code to return home for a year.  Don Quixote is devastated, but he intends to keep his word and honor, so he returns home.  Soon after, he falls ill, and dies of a fever.  Before he dies, he returns to his normal sane self and gives up all the talk about knight errantry. 

The novel is surprisingly very funny.  It is full of both slapstick humor, and higher, situational comedy.  I found myself actually laughing out loud at many parts.  It critiques many things, mainly the class differences found in Spain at the time.  The shepherds and peasants are often the smartest and ones with the most honor, while the rich, like the duke and duchess, lack honor.  The main characters end up becoming very lovable, and their distinct traits definitely serve as a foil to each other by the end of the novel.  It makes you think as well.  The whole world wants them to stop acting like fools, but what is so foolish about trying to do good and believing in honor and charity?  Who is more foolish, Don Quixote or the duke and duchess for spending so much time and money on messing with them?  I found myself living in the world of Don Quixote, and talking and thinking like him.  Though at times the story can drag on and seem to repeat itself, there are so many wonderful adventures, characters, and life stories that it would be hard to take away any of them.  Highly recommended that you see for yourself the life of Don Quixote.  Four and a half out of five stars.