How to Read Literature Like a Professor: Introduction Summary & Analysis

The introduction begins in Foster’s college classroom, where he and the students are discussing Lorraine Hansbery’s play A Raisin in the Sun (1959). Students are often shocked when Foster suggests that the character of Mr. Lindner represents the devil, and that when the protagonist, Walter Lee Younger, considers Mr. Lindner’s offer to buy out Younger’s claim on his house, this is the narrative trope of making a “deal with the devil.” Foster explains that this trope stretches back throughout Western literary culture, for example in the many versions of the Faust legend. Unlike in Faust, however, A Raisin in the Sun portrays Younger as refusing to make the deal and sell his soul to the devil. Hansberry thus employs an archetypical storyline but adds her own twist.

When a professor suggests an interpretation of a work of literature that students feel is unreasonable, this is a “communication problem.” Although it might seem like the professor is inventing interpretations with no real evidence, in fact he or she is simply using the “language of reading.” This language is a method of talking about literature in an analytic manner, “a set of conventions and patterns, codes and rules.” The language of reading is arbitrary, but so is any language, and indeed any artistic convention deemed important within a particular culture.

The best way to understand this language of reading is simply through practice. When the average person reads, they are primarily interested in following the plot and letting the story affect them on an emotional level. When professors read, they may have an emotional response to the text, but their focus is on how the text works. This means they will be seeking out patterns, symbols, references, and other literary devices. While neither method of reading is right or wrong, reading like a professor will ultimately make engaging with literature a deeper, more satisfying experience.

There are three key elements of reading that separate professors of literature from the lay reader: memory, symbol, and pattern. Professors are constantly searching for “correspondences and corollaries” with other texts, and will assume elements of a text have symbolic meaning, rather than waiting for this to be proven beyond doubt. Pattern recognition, meanwhile, requires stepping back from the “foreground” of the text in order to analyze its structure and identify repetition, pace, archetype, and other devices at work.

Foster presents an example of the way that “the symbolic mind” can work not only when reading a work of literature but also in real life situations. Say you meet a man who hates his father and seems overly-attached to his mother; then you meet another man who exhibits the exact same qualities, and then another, and another. The symbolic imagination will allow you identify this man as a “type,” and employing the language of reading and your knowledge of literature may help you identify this type as related to the “Oedipus complex” (the subconscious sexual desire for one parent and hatred/jealousy of the other). Indeed, Sigmund Freud invented the Oedipus complex by “reading” his patients like a professor reads a work of literature––namely, by seeking out patterns, symbols, and correlations. With training and practice, everyone can perfect these skills and use them to come to their own conclusions about literature and life.