8 Essential Chapters in How to Read Literature Like a Professor
What do Sir Gawain, ET, Luke Skywalker, Beloved, Harry Potter, Hansel and Gretel, and Alfred Hitchcock have in common?
Sadly, they are not all guests at the best dinner party ever. But they do all make appearances in Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, which has become a canonical text in AP English Literature classes since its publication in 2003.
In fact, Foster published a revised edition in 2014, largely due to the unexpected popularity of his book with high school teachers and students, a result he was not expecting when he published it.
We believe strongly in the importance of building our students’ cultural toolkits. Many of our students lack the background knowledge and cultural experience to easily recognize common symbols and allusions in British and American literature. We’re thrilled to see the canon growing more diverse, but our students are still at a disadvantage compared to peers who have grown up surrounded by the “classic” stories of Western literature.
Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor is a valuable resource for this endeavor. In 32 chapters, Foster walks students through common literary symbols found in literature and their meanings. He takes time, particularly in the revised edition, to explain what, exactly, a symbol is and offer suggestions to help students tackle moments in their reading when something seems important, but they’re just not sure why. And he does all this in a warm, conversational tone that invites reading.
But if you’ve tried to use Foster’s book with your students, you know it can be a really hard text for them to wrap their minds around. Even though the book presents straightforward takeaways, Foster explains them with literary examples most of our students haven’t read, which can make the text feel more daunting and overwhelming than it is.
Most resources we’ve found recommend having students come up with their own examples for each chapter. The text invites this kind of activity, it’s a great way to see if students understand and can apply the reading, and the personal examples make the content more likely to stick.
But in our experience, it’s really hard for students. It’s hard for us for some chapters. And as our students read less and less, the task becomes even harder.
We found that a straightforward, practical approach worked best in our classrooms. We wanted to provide students with the resource, but we also wanted to use it in a way that supplemented our instruction rather than becoming our key text.
A Simplified, Practical Strategy for Using How to Read Literature Like a Professor
Initially, we assigned students to read the entire book as summer reading, but we were far more successful when we switched to assigning 3–4 chapters a week for the first eight weeks of the school year. We grouped the chapters based on the texts we were reading in class.
In the beginning, we had students complete short-answer quizzes (well, initially we gave a multiple-choice exam, but the Internet ruined that). On each quiz, we asked students to provide an example from a chapter within the grouping that we thought was fairly accessible. Our more advanced students did okay, but many students struggled.
We had our best success when we stopped asking students to come up with examples and instead gave them four examples and asked them to identify which one did (or did not) fit with Foster’s description of the common symbol in the book.
There are teachers doing great and creative things with the book and students coming up with great examples on their own, but it didn’t work for us. This simple approach worked for our students and our purposes, so if you’re in the same position and looking for a quick and easy way to boost your students’ familiarity with common literary symbols, we hope these strategies help.
8 Essential Chapters from How to Read Literature Like a Professor
In his chapter on disease, Foster writes, “Not all diseases are created equal” (222). True, but not all common symbols are created equal either. Some of the common symbols Foster introduces us to are more common and more accessible to students than others. If you’re looking to narrow your focus, these are the chapters we’ve found most valuable with our students.
Chapter 1: Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not)
If you have a character who goes somewhere specific for a specific purpose, there’s a good chance that character has gone on a quest (yep, the King Arthur kind). Regardless of the stated reason for the character’s journey, however, Foster argues that “[the] real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge” (3).
So, a character who goes somewhere, does something, and gains self-knowledge along the way? That . . . sounds like most stories we know.
The literary world (which includes film and television) is chock full of quest stories, and our students get this one.
Chapter 2: Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion
Another easy one for students: “Whenever people eat or drink together, it’s communion” (8). As Foster points out, eating is actually a pretty personal act, and we tend to only do it with people we like and trust. So, when people share a meal, it signifies “sharing and peace,” and when a meal goes wrong, it usually signals a break in the relationship (8).
Once we sit down to think about this, the examples come pouring in. It’s hard to think of a meal scene in film, TV, or literature that doesn’t fit this definition (in one way or the other). The Friends episodes that take place at Thanksgiving are our favorite examples: chaos always ensues, and it always reflects the state of everyone’s relationships.
Chapter 9: It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow

Weather shows up quite a bit in literature, which makes sense. Weather plays an important role in our daily lives, and it carries so much symbolic potential (not to mention its mood-setting and plot-obstructing capabilities). Sun? Peace and happiness. Rain? Cleansing and restoration. Fog? Confusion. Snow? Stark and inhospitable or pure and insulating.
Very few students found it difficult to wrap their minds around the ideas in this chapter, and they had multiple opportunities to reference it throughout the year.
As a bonus, this chapter allows you to generalize the idea that water tends to represent cleansing, rebirth, or renewal, allowing you to skip the chapter on baptism (should you want to).
Chapter 10: Never Stand Next to the Hero
We never got to teach this chapter from the revised edition because our school primarily had copies of the original printing. But it is an immensely helpful resource on characterization.
The basic premise is straightforward, and our students likely would have been able to come up with lots of great examples: sidekicks and friends of the hero often die because death is a great motivator and authors don’t like to kill off their protagonists. But the power of the chapter really comes in Foster’s exploration of the idea that characters are literary constructs, not people. They, like everything else in the story, don’t exist for their own sake but as tools an author uses to accomplish a purpose.
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Chapter 14: Yes, She’s a Christ Figure, Too
There are several chapters that discuss the influence Judeo-Christian tradition has had on Western literature, but we think this chapter on Christ figures is the most valuable one for students. For one thing, it’s very straightforward and easy for students to understand (most have some idea of who Jesus Christ is, after all, even if they’re not particularly familiar with Judeo-Christian tradition)
More importantly, the use of Christ figures is so prevalent in popular culture. Your students have seen Christ figures, whether it’s Harry Potter sacrificing his own life before resurrecting to defeat Voldemort, Neo (“The One”) reviving to control the Matrix after Agent Smith kills him, or Tony Stark using the Infinity Stones to disintegrate Thanos, completing one of our favorite character arcs.
Like the quest chapter, this one will benefit your students, even if they never pick up another book.

Chapter 20: . . . So Does Season
If you teach poetry, don’t skip this chapter. If your students know that spring tends to symbolize childhood and renewal; summer usually represents passion and young adulthood; autumn is often associated with middle age, harvest, and reflection; and winter brings to mind old age and death, they have a massive foothold on any poetry unit, one that will pay dividends in your class and beyond.
Chapter 21: Marked for Greatness
Another straightforward one (are you sensing a pattern here?): characters with physical imperfections have been marked as different in some way.
Yes, it seems obvious, and, of course, in real life, a scar or physical difference says absolutely nothing about a person, but can you think of a book, movie, or TV show where a character is marked in some way and it doesn’t mean anything?
Foster reminds our students that when characters are marked out as different, it allows writers to “call attention to [them] and signify some psychology or thematic point” (208). If your students leave this book with nothing more than an understanding that every choice an author makes is purposeful, they’ve gained something valuable.
Chapter 22: He’s Blind for a Reason, You Know
While, perhaps, less common in students’ reading and viewing experience than some of the other symbols Foster discusses, the chapter on blindness is valuable for students’ cultural toolboxes. If they take any college literature course in which a blind character shows up, they’ll be expected to know that issues of figurative sight are at play.
Chapter 25: It’s My Symbol, and I’ll Cry If I Want To
Another new chapter in the revised edition, it’s pretty clear Foster added it as a response to emails he has received from students over the years. We’re glad he did.
Foster warns students that he has not provided them with an exhaustive database of every symbol they might encounter in a piece of literature. But he also provides them with suggestions, guidelines, and a boost of confidence to help them navigate those more personal and idiosyncratic symbols. (Plus, he quotes two John Donne poems, so we’re in!)
While he encourages students to own their interpretations, we’d be remiss if we didn’t express gratitude for his note that an interpretation is probably right only if a student has read carefully, not ignoring parts of the text or adding in ideas that aren’t there.
If you’re thinking about using Foster’s seminal text in your classroom, don’t reinvent the wheel! We have a unit for How to Read Literature Like a Professor that includes a study guide, quiz questions, chapter groupings, an escape room review activity, and a bookmark reminding students of the most important takeaways. Save yourself time while giving your students the cultural toolkit they need!