How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

“It may seem at times as if the professor is either inventing interpretations out of thin air or else performing parlor tricks, a sort of analytical sleight of hand. Actually, neither of these is the case; rather, the professor, as the slightly more experienced reader, has acquired over the years the use of a certain ‘language of reading,’ something to which the students are only beginning to be introduced. What I’m talking about is a grammar of literature, a set of conventions and patterns, codes and rules, that we learn to employ in dealing with a piece of writing. Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different. It’s all more or less arbitrary, of course, just like language itself.” 

In the Introduction, Foster establishes that literature has a grammar just as languages do. The grammar contains rules for decoding a story, considering all the relevant elements for the deepest understanding of the work. Students learn these “grammar rules” just as they do the grammar rules for any language: from an experienced teacher who has already studied and learned them.

“The real reason for a quest never involves the stated reason. In fact, more often than not, the quester fails at the stated task. So why do they go and why do we care? They go because of the stated task, mistakenly believing that it is their real mission. We know, however, that their quest is educational. They don’t know enough about the only subject that really matters: themselves. The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge. That’s why questers are so often young, inexperienced, immature, sheltered.” 

Foster describes the format for the type of story known as a “quest.” It involves a trip of some sort, which can be long or short, actual or figurative. A challenge along the way causes the quester to grow and gain knowledge of him- or herself. This quest occurs frequently in literature, and Foster argues that once readers are aware of quests and know what to look for, they can readily identify it. The definition of a quest and its application is an example of a “grammar rule” to which Foster refers in the previous quotation.

“That’s what this figure really comes down to, whether in Elizabethan, Victorian, or more modern incarnations: exploitation in its many forms. Using other people to get what we want. Denying someone else’s right to live in the face of our overwhelming demands. Placing our desires, particularly our uglier ones, above the needs of another. That’s pretty much what the vampire does, after all. He wakes up in the morning—actually the evening, now that I think about it—and says something like, ‘In order to remain undead, I must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own.’ I’ve always supposed that Wall Street traders utter essentially the same sentence. My guess is that as long as people act toward their fellows in exploitative and selfish ways, the vampire will be with us.” 

This passage appears in the chapter on vampires, ghosts, and other monsters. Such beings have been used in literature as metaphors to represent someone or something exploitative. Power differentials always exist between people, countries, and other entities; the older, experienced one is generally always in a position to take advantage of a younger innocent.