Where have I seen her before?

Literary Tools

These ideas are inspired by How To Read Literature Like A Professor.
I am going to try and cover a different tool each day.

4. Where Have I Seen Her Before?

   1. No such thing as a completely original work of literature

   2. Awareness of similarity leads us forward into new meanings

   3. Familiarity brings multiple layers of meaning to a story....

I am going to save Shakespeare's characters and Bible character's for different posts. There are so many from those works they needed they each needed their own chapters. So, the next most common inspiration for authors are fairy tales and Aesop's Fables. Think about Heidi and Beauty and The Beast, could not Grandfather be The Beast and isn't Heidi, Belle..... Both stories are about innocence melting hardened hearts. A lot of coming of age novels can relate back to Pinocchio. Tom Sawyer, for example, has quite a few parallels to Pinocchio's story. One of the strangest connection I had a student make was between Hansel and Gretel and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Ford and Trillian are lost in a world they know very little about, all the while searching for clues to get back to a home they are not sure exists.