How To Read Literature Like a Professor: Prompt five

     According to Thomas Foster, "...weather is never just weather." (75). Weather is a very valuable tool not just for the writer but for the reader as well. It is used as a plot device to force characters to do one action opposed to another, it can be used to make the characters miserable or joyous and it also gives the story a democratic element because if it rains on one character it usually has to rain on the other (76). But equally as important, it acts as a symbol. With rain it can symbolize the cleansing of a person or even make them metaphorically dirtier than before with the mud. With snow it can mean death or sorrow. With fog it can mean confusion. Whatever the weather may be, there is a good chance it probably means something. If it Does not, then you can probably make an educated guess and it could very well be right. The advantage of knowing what the weather is and how it connects with the text is very beneficial because it can allow the reader to make predictions on what may happen next and simply help the reader to understand what is going on in the story much more clearly.

      I believe there was an example of this in Grapes of Wrath toward the end of the book. After the Joads had finished picking cotton, a great storm came and started flooding the camp in which they stayed. This weather proved to do exactly what foster said weather should do. It acted as a plot device to force the Joads to relocate to the barn where the story ended, it made the characters miserable, it did not just rain on the Joads but the surrounding families as well to give it the "democratic element" and it also was used as symbolism. As Foster said, Rain can be used to symbolize many different things from having it cleanse people to even staining them even more. The rain begins when Rose of Sharon seems to start giving birth and by that time they baby still signified a new hope for the family and a new beginning and the rain also by signified cleansing and rebirth. But as the story progresses and the rain get worse, the men make the decision to try and build wall out of mud to try and keep the rain from flooding. While digging the men can not help but get muddy or as Foster would say, "stained" and by that time the baby had also been born a still birth. So the rain and baby both signaled distress, misfortune and setback for the Joads. In Virginia Woolf's "A Death of The Moth" weather also acted as a symbol. She describes the weather as mid-September, with a much cooler feel than the summers months. The weather she is describing is the transitional period between the warm summer months and the cold bitter months that are about to begin. We associate the cold and winter months with death, depression, and other miserable thoughts. This weather is symbolizing that death is approaching and just like the weather is inevitable.