In How to Read Literature like a Professor by
Thomas C. Foster, the author discusses the importance of meals in literature
and what they mean. He points out that meals can be difficult to make interesting
in a piece of literature simply because not a lot happens at a meal that can be
portrayed in an interesting way. So when there is a meal, it almost always
holds some importance, whether something big is revealed, or it foreshadows the
outcome of events later in the story. The outcome of the meal is often a good
indicator as to the outcome as a major part of the story. One such example is
in Charles Dickens’ Oliver, the very
beginning of the novel is a large mess hall with orphans eating a small bowl of
gruel that wouldn’t sustain a horsefly. One of the young boys, Oliver,
volunteers, or more is volunteered to go ask the head of the orphanage for more
food with the very iconic phrase, “please sir, may I have some more?” This one
meal is the event that actually starts the story and propels it into motion because
when Oliver asks for more food, the head kicks him to the streets and Oliver
becomes homeless. On a deeper level the meal foreshadows how poorly Oliver’s
life in the book will be. On the opposite spectrum, a meal with a good outcome
or positive meaning can foreshadow a story having a meaningful ending or even
happy. In To Kill A Mockingbird there
is a man named Atticus who is defending an African American man against a rape
charge in court and many people turn against him for it. However the African
American community brings Atticus a great deal of food and gives him a feast
for what he is trying to do for the African American man that he is defending,
Tom. The dinner is a rather happy occasion because of all the delicious food
and chatter; however it has a bit of a sad undertone because it is made clear
that the food Atticus is receiving is almost all the people have. The meal
symbolizes how much the things Atticus was doing meant to the people, but the
sad undertone foreshadows Atticus losing the trial. However the novel does have
a bittersweet ending, much like the dinner. There is another dinner in the book
where a young bullied boy is invited over to dinner with the girl who bullied
him. Both the dinner with Atticus and the dinner with the young girl serve
another purpose that Foster says dinners can do, break down social barriers. In
the first the barrier between races for the time was broken for a short period
of time and in the second a rivalry between two kids was ended. The point is
that meals in a novel are usually meaningful and should not be overlooked, because
they often hold a message for the story as a whole!
Oliver really did need a bit more food just for the record!
Here are some iconic meals in literature
More on meals in literature
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