Anderson, T. - Prompt 2

In his book, "How to Read Literature Like a Professor", Thomas C. Foster's main idea as that it is incredibly important to have a bank of knowledge and references built up of other works of literature. He supports this in many ways: by referencing the idea that every trip is a quest, the frequent allusions to works like Shakespeare and the Bible, and the recurring themes that show up in many novels. All of these ideas, and all his others that he mentions in the book, contribute to the same point: that searching for and recognizing commonalities among literature makes a better reader and allows you to gain more from the story. The reason for this? "There's no such thing as a wholly original work of literature" (24).  By writing this, he is saying all stories build upon and are enriched by each other, which means a well-read person gains more from whatever they're reading at that moment because they have more of the story, the complete, one story. By understanding this, one's reading experience can improve greatly as they start to read deeper and search harder for the connections between texts. Admittedly, I am not an extremely well-read person, and I tend to read affectively, meaning passively and only experiencing the emotions and thoughts that are brought up by the text, without interacting too intensely with the literature I am reading. As a result, I rarely notice connections between texts without them being pointed out to me, however, I often find myself drawing connections between characters. For example, I notice a host of similarities between Katniss, the protagonist in "The Hunger Games" and Tris, the main character in "Divergent".