The Power of Water!

   In all of my days on this Earth, I've never realized the symbolic meaning of rain until I was 13 years old. Now, I can clearly remember my enlightenment after watching a movie. It was as if I had breathed in the sweet air of realization. I thought I was a real big shot then, running to my mother to tell her what I had learned and explaining it to her in a way that she could understand. You know how parents will relish in their child's excitement even if it's for a very small reason? That's what my mother did and it was clear that she already knew the symbolic meaning from the get-go. In Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor, He covers two separate topics in to separate chapters; one being on the rain and the other on baptism. However, I thought that these two subjects fit together hand in hand.
   Rain, baptism, and water, clean. The connection between these things are the effect that they display throughout a novel or movie. What happens when you're submerged into clean water? You come out clean. Think about that metaphorically; The troubled man runs out into the pouring rain, he let's out his frustrations, the rain stops, him mind is free of pain.  Now instead of him going out into the rain, he's going to fall into a river, get knocked out, wake up on land with a free mind because he has lost his memory,so therefore he has no immediate reason to be a troubled man. Both of these chapters deal with the topic of being cleansed and reborn. But, there's more to them than just cleansing.
   Have you ever seen Shawshank Redemption? If you have, then you are probably familiar with the rain scene. Filthy from his time in prison and his own ghosts, Andy escapes and into the the rain, he is jubilant and freed. That moment in the rain symbolized 15 years of imprisonment and impurity, Andy is finally free. He has experienced a rebirth as well. If you think about it, he breaks through the sewer and into a mass of flooded water. Kind of sounds like baptism and rebirth to me. So not only has he been cleansed by the rain, he's escaping prison a brand new man. This changes everything!

  Baptisms, in novels are not always religiously linked, nor do they have to be. There are many stories that include the metaphorical/non-religious form of baptism. Just as long as it follows certain guidelines. The baptism must represent a rebirth, death, change of life, becoming a new person, escaping old life, etc.. Though, not all characters survive baptisms. Foster speaks of a child in Flannery O’Connor 's The River (1955), who witnesses a Sunday baptism going on and decides to do his own baptism by himself. However, the child does not make it and in Foster's words, the boy went to " join God on his own." This type of baptism sounds more like drowning, right? That's because is is drowning, In fact, drowning happens to be apart of the whole rebirth process. The character might die or not. If the character survives the drown, it represents, a new chapter in the characters life or in the story.

 The symbols of water and baptism have long been taken both metaphorically and literally. No doubt, that water has the power to wash away all the pain that needs to be healed. It's all too clear, once you know what to expect. There will always be a change going on in a movie and in literature, you just need to be able to identify the signs. If a story line included no form of metaphorical growth, would it be a good one? Would it be a story that I want to spend my time with and get lost in? I don't know, I've never heard of one, but if you have... Let me know!

Eating + at a dinner table + with people = communion

What happens when you share a meal with others?

Communion: "the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level."

or what I gathered from Thomas C. Foster is that something went down or somethings about to go down. Foster states that "whenever people eat or drink together, it's communion." Something that I had not previously realized.  Immediately I thought back to the books I've read and the films I've watched and yes, a communion did happen. Even though I wasn't aware of it at first, I did learn something new about the character(s). I did see a change in their relationships. And I did notice that the interaction had many outcomes.

Books and movies almost always has a scene where people are sharing a meal.  the whole scene, at times it seems a little unnecessary or extra, but after reading the Nice to Eat with You chapter, the meaning was made more transparent. Knowing that the meal is not as important than the interaction of those eating it is what clicked for me. The communion is what makes the whole description of the interaction worth it in literature. For example, in the hilarious movie, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby , Bobby is to say a prayer in order to bless him and his upcoming race. As soon as he begins with " Dear Lord baby Jesus...", you already know that this prayer is going to be a riot. His prayer is focused on rather stupid and shallow things such as his wife's beauty or the "always delicious Taco Bell". After the prayer we see a clear disturbance in the family, Everyone except Chip, the grandfather, seems to be disrespectful and misguided. You can see the tension that is given off between Chip and everyone else. This scene is on the surface a nice communion, but considering the actual dialog and relationships,this communion could also be considered a negative one.

The act of  communion in literature often serves as a kind of turning point in the novel. But, that turning point is not always a positive one. it is said that " a failed meal carries negative connotation. So when the teen-aged girl runs from the table in angst when her father tells her to break up with her boyfriend, that's a form of negative communion. Like "The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" talked about earlier in this post, there are two sided communions, however, you don't have to dig that deep to determine the meaning behind the communion. For example, misunderstanding is what you think of when you read the dinner scene of Vanity Fair by William Thackeray. Becky Sharp flirts by saying "all Indian food must be good", little did she know the Indian food curry with a chili was not her idea of "good". This is considered a negative communion, still has humour to it, but the reader is able to recognize the negative from the positive.

Once upon an Intertextual world

In literature, or at least the more modern forms of  literature there seems to either be,
A.) Some crazy " out of this world"  concept that you nor your uncles barber has ever heard of
B.) A simple story, has some relationships to other novels you've read before, but still has it's own little quirks, or...
C.) Okay, this author literally just took Romeo and Juliet and renamed the characters to Jomeo and Ruliet!!!
Believe it or not, but B and C are actually very common in the world of Lit.. Whether you realize it or not, or if you've just realized it now, the novel that you may or may not be reading right now, may or may not be influenced by another author's work. This phenomena is called "Intertextuality", which is the relationship between one story and another. Thomas C. Foster begins a short  5 chapter series in his  " How to Read Literature Like a Professor", that outlines the intertextuality and the main sources novels usually borrow from.
 Beginning in Chapter 5, "Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?", Foster reveals a secret that could ultimately increase the reader's novel experience all together. One that opens the gigantic heavy doors in our brain's frontal lobes. One that could even bring world peace! Okay, maybe not that great of a secret, but it's pretty darn great. According to Foster," there's no such thing as a wholly original work of literature." One story could have themes, elements, and/or characters borrowed from Fitzgerald to Nabokov. Why is this such a great secret?  Well, with this new knowledge, you, the reader, will discover a brand new way to enjoy your novel, not only will you be more engaged, but you will find yourself understanding and appreciating the story more and more. In fact, you might be able to catch the similarities early on, and predict how the story might carry on.
   Create a " Now Where Have I Seen Her Before?" game. You can set your own rules, but the main objective of the game is to find the connections to other novels. Look at the characters; who do they remind you of? What about the timeline of the story? Does it follow the same themes of, say, Shakespeare's Hamlet, or Sophocles' Oedipus Rex? Try to find these things, and I promise, once you discover these recurrences, it will deepen your understanding and enjoyment of all novels... Or, at least make it more bearable.

Let's get down to the specifics; What do the authors usually pull from.

While I can't give you anything fully accurate or specific, Foster sums it up clearly in the chapter titles, giving you options of where to look;" When is Doubt, it's from Shakespeare..." "...Or the Bible" or maybe " Hanseldee and Greteldum". hmm never mind " It's Greek to Me"!
You can read a well known novel like Herman Melville's Moby Dick and see both influences from Shakespeare's King Lear, Macbeth and from the Bible or if you've read Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen
Oyeyemi you would notice the fairytale inspiration. Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon? Greek mythology. But, what if you haven't read that many novels to draw comparisons from? Don't worry! Foster says,  " the worst thing that occurs is that we're still reading the same story as if the literary precursors weren't there."  So, no need to go binge read all the classic tales  before you proceed to read any thing else. you can simply just let the book unfold before you and enjoy it as is... Or you can binge read every classic novel written in the history of the earth. if so, udachi!!

http://ewubd.edu/~sonia/Melville%20paper.pdf