Responses to Course Material #1

          After reading Foster's How To Read Literature Like a Professor over the summer, I can now recognize the concepts he describes in each chapter in literature I'm reading now and have read previously. One of the chapters talks about the recurrence of a Christ figure found in literature, and recently after having read that, I watched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Now I can't understand why I didn't see it before: Aslan in the books represents Jesus. Both are the King, both go around healing people (or in Aslan's case, unfreezing statues of various species of animals), and the biggest one being that both die and are resurrected. Foster made me realize this, as well as other recurring symbols in literature, allowing me to look at what I have read and understand it better as well as in the future and understanding more references to classics, such as the numerous Shakespeare references that are made all throughout literature; when nothing works, Shakespeare does. Also, while doing the diagnostic test, what I learned about how to read poetry vs. how I had been reading before helped me immensely while writing and responding to forum posts in the summer work. Key details that seem as though they should be obvious were revealed to me, helping the light bulb flash on in my brain- the tone the speaker has, what the style can say about the topic, and other things to look for have been helping me to analyze poetry better. Now, according to the AP Lit Test: Essay Writing Basics, I'm not just being a tour guide of reading literature, but analyzing it and interpreting what they author is trying to say with that metaphor on line 12, or that great piece of diction used in line 23. These tools have become increasingly  useful as the year progresses and will be applied not only in AP Lit class but in my other classes as well.