Chapter 5:

Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?

By: Cynthia Thai

9/21/11Period: 6

Looking at the Bigger Picture

• Ever since childhood everyone has been looking at patterns.

• For example, a morning routines or even a class schedule.

• Everything turns out to be alike in one way or another like how “there’s no such thing as a wholly original work of literature” (Foster 29).

Little Details• Literature always includes some type of plot

with a beginning, a type of action for the main character or characters, and an ending.

• If you look closely there are many associations to one author to another like their “novel [was] somehow plagiarized or less than original” (Foster 29).

• For example; Characters, scene, and other elements seem to appear in other work rather than just from its main story.

Ties of one author’s works to another

• In books, stories, and plots, the author usually draws in elements or components from “childhood experiences, past readings, every movie the writer/creator has ever seen”, and etc. into their writing (Foster 30).

• Foster uses a scene from Tim O’Brien’s Going After Caciato that shows the characters falling through a hole in the ground.

• This should remind you of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

Character similarities

Many other characters’ traits are used in books not just scenes included in other work than its original.

• For example, Foster begins to compare the love interest of the main character who leads the main characters to their destination in Tim O’Brien’s Going After Caciato , Sarkin Aung Wan to be “associated…with Sacajawea” (31).

What does this tool create?

• Combining references to other works or history makes the story from being “all on the surface…to [having] depth” (Foster 32).

• The depth makes the reader more curious in the literature because of all the connections to life and books have to each other.

• Having more depth in the novels or plot also separates novels apart for there is truly “only one story” (Foster 32).

How does it help in reading?

• Being able to identify the traits that are repetitively modeled in literature so that "your understanding of the novel deepens and becomes more complex”(Foster 36).

• Being able to picture certain characters or scene while reading the novel because you already have an idea of it in your mind from the references created.

How does Chapter 5 related to Great Expectation?

• Like any other novel Great Expectations can be related to other novels.

• In Great Expectations, Estella was cruel, mean, and incredibly beautiful person and changed to be kinder and came to have “friendly touch of [a] once sensible hand”(Dickens 449).

• Estella reminds me on of Isabelle from City of Bones because Isabelle is also incredibly beautiful, cold, and malevolent, and throughout the story she becomes to be more courteous and softhearted.

Related to everyday life?

• One of the many unoriginal parts of life is the trends as in fashion, work ethics, and even greetings and gestures.

• There are also role models that are put out for people to be shown as an image to follow, so that everyone can have similar values.

Work Cited

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Boston: Dana Estes & Co., 2005. Print.

Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: Harper- Collins Publisher, Inc., 2003. Print.