Chapter 8 Hanseldee and Greteldum Nicolas Rodriguez Chapter 8 Hanseldee and Greteldum Nicolas Rodriguez 9/28/11 6th

A lot of writers use fairy tales as a common ground among readers, therefore, they create similar characters so that the readers already know a lot about them. “Shakespeare has been the gold standard for allusion for hundreds of years and still is”(Foster 58).

“What readers know varies so much more than it once did “What readers know varies so much more than it once did. So what can the writer use for parallels, analogies, plot structures, references, that most of his readers will know? Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island, The Narnia novels, The Wind in the Willows and The Cat in the Hat. We may not know Shylock, but we all know Sam I Am”(Foster 59). Not everyone has the same knowledge so we all don’t know the references some writers are making.

“Of all the fairy tales available to the writer, there’s one that has more drawing power than any other, at least in the late twentieth century: Hansel and Gretel. Every age has its own favorite stories, but the story of children lost and far from home has a universal appeal”(Foster 59). A lot of stories were based off of Hansel and Gretel, but were modified.

Sometimes writers use things from everyday life to resemble people like maybe the sense of being lost. “What feature of the plight of these young people most resonates you? It might be the sense of lostness”(Foster 61).

You can use as much allusion as you want because it can be the smallest reference that makes a story good. “So use as much or as little as you want. In fact, you may invoke the whole story simply by a single small reference”(Foster 62).

When your reading a novel you look for some familiarities between something you already know and something in the book. You also want to see different things than you usually do. “Here's what I think we do: we want strangeness in our stories, but we want familiarity ,to”(Foster 63).

In Great Expectations there is a reference to a fairy tale when Pip says “…she looked like the Witch of the place”(Dickens ). This symbolizes that Miss Havisham is like a witch in an old house like in a fairy tale.

This applies to everyday life because people make comparisons all the time. Whenever you get lost in school then your like Hansel and Gretel lost in the woods. Or whenever your mom is mean and you call her an old witch.

Works Cited Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: Bantam Dell, 1986. Print. Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: Harper-Colins Publishers, inc., 203. print