At a performing arts school such as
Booker T, the “norm” is to be as abnormal as possible. Standing out is such a priority for us young
artists that the ones that back down a little and stay out of the spotlight tend
to stick out the most. Artists pride themselves
on being original, unique, creative, the first.
As an artists myself, I was confused, and slightly angered by Foster’s
statement, “There’s no such thing as a wholly original work of literature.” By the end of the chapter, however, Foster
had me convinced and intrigued. It’s
like the theory that every face in your dreams is one that you have somehow
encountered in reality, even if just passing by on the street. After reading Chapter 5 of Thomas C. Foster’s
How to Read Literature Like a Professor,
I did a mental memory lane of all the books I’ve read for school, for pleasure,
tv shows I watched as a kid, Broadway musicals, and connecting them all to each
other. It all ended up being this sort
of web of what Foster called “intertextuality”.
What’s a
story without a little bit of love? Not
much. One of the most well known, and
most tragic love story of all time, is that of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Now, me and my teenage girly-ness, when I
think of Romeo and Juliet, I think of
Leonardo DiCaprio. And when I think of
Leonardo DiCaprio, I think of The Titanic. Obviously, good old Oscar-less Leo plays the
lead male role in both movies. This
connection was merely superficial, but the more I thought about it, the more
connections between the two stories I found.
In The Titanic, Rose is a
member of high society, being forced to marry a high-class man by his
parents. Juliet’s parents have it
planned for her to marry before she even turns 15. It’s love at first sight for both Rose and
Jack (R&J) and Romeo and Juliet (R&J…. hmmm… coincidence? I think
not!). Their feuding families forbid
Romeo and Juliet’s love, while social classes forbid Rose and Jack, since Jack
is far from high-class, he won the tickets.
Tragically, fate steps in for both of the star-crossed lovers. Romeo and Juliet both commit suicide because
neither of them wants to live in a world without the other, and Rose loses Jack
to the freezing see after the boat hits an iceberg that night.
 |
| Romeo & Juliet (1996) |
Foster says,
“If we don’t see the references, it means nothing.”. The first time watching the movie, I was not
thinking of Shakespeare, I was focused primarily on willing the boat to not
sink. However, now that I see these
ties, I can appreciate and understand the story a little better. The characters Rose and Jack become deeper
without saying anything simply because I recognized they shared initials with
the original star-crossed lovers. I can
spend a lot more time on Romeo and Juliet,
as I have recognized the same characters in West
Side Story, The Fault in Our Stars, The Notebook, Twilight, and basically
every good love story.
At the end
of the chapter, Foster begs the question “But we haven’t read
everything.”. He acknowledges this is
true and that young readers just need practice to understand all these little
connections in literature. While I
believe this is true, I also believe that a young reader could recognize a
reference, even if they are not exactly sure what it came from.
Recently, I
read a book titled The Girl Who Loved Tom
Gordon by Stephen King. The book was
a short and fairly direct narrative when it comes to King, about a 9 year old
girl named Trisha who wanders away from her bickering family on a hike, and
finds herself lost in the woods for the next few weeks on her own. The book is overflowing with symbolism,
metaphors, foreshadowing, and all sorts of literary goodness. While trying to escape the woods, the little
girl learns a lot about herself (self-knowledge? A quest?), the world around
her, and the subaudible, which is a sort of passive god her father believes
in. The second she realizes she is lost
her world flips. Everything is
unfamiliar and frightening, a sort of Alice
in Wonderland experience of falling down a rabbit hole. The only contact she has with her old world
is her Walkman, which gives her the play-by-play of her favorite team, The
Boston Red Sox, and her favorite player, Tom Gordon.
The longer
Trisha stays lost, the more she loses her sense of reality. She starts to believe Tom Gordon is with her,
and at one point she encounters the God of the Lost, an embodiment of the
subaudible, and a wasp-faced supernatural being that represents her fear. The whole hallucination reminds me of
Scrooge’s night with the three ghosts from A
Christmas Carol. While reading the
book, I interpreted the wasp-faced creature just as a symbol of her fear, but
after reading this chapter from How to
Read Literature Like a Professor, I thought it might have been an allusion
to some other literature, but it was nothing I could think of on my own. When I Googled it, one website said it was
from Lord of the Flies, but having
not read that I was not able to make the connection. Even without the direct bridge in my mind, I
enjoyed the book and the characters and plots it had to offer on its own.
Foster
mentions the “aha! factor”, “the delight we feel at recognizing a familiar
component from earlier experience.” This joy is the same we may get from
completing a challenging puzzle, or understanding a math theorem. The connection of literature to other
literature is exciting for readers. I
know I had fun making these connections, and continued having fun connecting The Suite Life of Zack and Cody to
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream
in the next chapter. And, while some
people may say it makes stories “predictable” or takes away the “creativity”, I
believe it is up to the writers still to create unique combinations or borrowed
characters and keep the readers guessing.
