How to Read Lit Like a Professor

575 Words3 Pages
In the book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, by Tomas C. Foster, Foster uses the short story “The Garden Party”, by Katherine Mansfield to test the reader and to allow the reader to use the ideas in his books to understand the hidden meaning in the short story. Foster used this specific story because it covers majority of the chapters that he presents in the novel, such as “intertextuality”, weather, death, acts of communion and other ideas. In the short story by Katherine Mansfield, the characters are arranging a garden party within the upper class but tragic events thwart the efforts to have a pleasant act of communion between the characters. Throughout the first section of the story, the weather is perfect “Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud.” (245). As the story progressed, the tone of the story changes from a happy party to a dark and gloomy tone after the death of one of the workers. Laura, one of the characters that were assisting in the planning of the party, describes the street where the deceased man lived as she takes a trip to deliver the news to the family. Laura describes the street as she makes her observations around the lower class neighborhood. “A broad road ran between. True, they were far too near. They were the greatest possible eyesore, and they had no right to be in that neighborhood at all. They were little mean dwellings painted a chocolate brown. In the garden patches there was nothing but cabbage stalks, sick hens and tomato cans. The very smoke came out of their chimneys were poverty-stricken. Little rags and shreds of smoke, so unlike the great silver plumes that uncurled from the Sheridans’ chimneys … It was disgusting and sordid. They came out with a shudder. But still one must go everywhere; one must see everything. So through they went.” (256). Foster summarizes the events that happened during Laura’s trip to the deceased
Open Document