Cards Of Darkness

My group and I are all women. Strong and powerful women. By a long boat ride, we arrived on a barren island with only one resource. Our boss, a very do-as-I-say type of man, says our purpose is to extract natural resources from the island to make profit. He said if we do not extract more natural resources than what we arrived with on the island, that we might as well never come back because we will have been considered failures. To be looked at as more powerful, we decided to disguise ourselves as men. We have 12 months on this island and we must gain profit, according to our boss, the only way to be successful from this expedition is to make more "dough" as he would say.
Upon arriving at the island, my group decided to establish dominance over the natives right away. The natives were required to hunt and gather resources for us. However, this dominance we established over the locals caused some hostility between us. Now, my group and I are not heartless people. We decided that the next month we would not press for resources, but to actually sacrifice one our resources to the natives in order to get on their good side. The girls and I decided that we liked this way of life on the island and that the only time we were going to press for resources was when we experienced bad weather. Little did we know what the cards had in store for us.
For the next 5 months, we experienced storms like nothing we have ever seen. We kept pressing the locals for resources cause we were in a time of trouble and didn't even think about how that made the natives feel. We experienced major hostility with the natives. We didn't like them and they certainly didn't like us. After our 5 month weather disaster, the girls and I decided that the next month we would sacrifice one of our resources to try to get the natives back on our good side. Unfortunately, one of my group members wasn't so forgiving. She demanded we kept on pushing for resources from the natives while my other group member and I disagreed. But we couldn't say no to her due to her unforgivable wrath of hatred towards us. So, we continued to press for the next three months. By this time, we had ran out of resources. Our hostility cards way out numbered the resources deck.
In the end, we ended up having to break even. We didn't gain any profit from this expedition nor did we have negative resources. We simply ended up with 0 extra resources. Good thing though actually because one of my group members, remember the power hungry one, was scalped by one of the local natives out of anger. The other one ended up marrying one of the natives, kind of like Pocahontas, so she didn't wish to return to our homeland. So, I am the only one to live and tell the story of this long, tremendous journey to this unknown island. I obviously didn't come back to my job because I didn't know what my boss would've done so I'll just assume that he thinks I was killed in action on the island.

Chapter 1: Comp blog

In the first chapter of this book, Foster lays out the details for a quest. In most literature, modern or classic, "every trip is a quest."m A book called "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett is not usually seen as a quest,  but it does detail a journey. The book can be broken into the conventions that Foster recognizes, every trip/journey follows a pattern and that pattern is a quest. The first component is the hero, the central character of the story that makes a difference for other characters. This character was Skeeter, who was not content with her life, living at home with her mom, trying to marry a "good southern gentleman", as been customary in her family. The second and third convention is when she is presented with writing a book about African American maids in the deep south during the Civil Rights Movement. The fourth being the challenges Skeeter faces form friends and family, even the law. And the last component that seals this book as a quest, is when Skeeter acquires self-knowledge and becomes a publisher in New York. Skeeter chose to publish her book with the author as anonymous due to the personal encounters she faced and talked about in her book. But when her enemies and fiancee find out that it is, in fact, Skeeter that wrote the book, they were furious. Her fiancee left her. It's this transformation that shows a wonderful illustration of Foster's definition of a conventional quest.

http://kh3018.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-read-literature-like-professor.html#!

Chapter 2: Compositional Blog

http://parkrose.orvsd.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=11108In Chapter two of How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster makes his audience see things a little differently.In this chapter he talks about the act of eating as a group in a book. While in most books we read we usually see characters bonding, talking about past troubles or future plans or a purpose of some other sort. The author states that when people eat together it is saying "I'm with you, i like you, we form a community together." This chapter also displays to the audience how one person feels about the other. It shows whether you like or dislike a person. The author talks about how the description of food is not only to inform you of what's being eaten but rather help you to genuinely fell the realism of the moment. There are also universal truths in this chapter. The meal or communion the author talks about indicates life and mortality. I compare the theme of this chapter to an excerpt from To Kill A Mockingbird:
"There's some folks who don't eat like us," she whispered fiercely, "but you ain't called on to contradict 'em at the table when they don't. That boy's yo' comp'ny and if he wants to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear?" "He ain't company, Cal, he's just a Cunningham-" "Hush your mouth! Don't matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house's yo' comp'ny, and don't you let me catch you remarkin' on their ways like you was so high and mighty!
Yo' folks might be better'n the Cunninghams but it don't count for nothin' the way you're disgrace 'em- if you can't act fit to eat at the table you can jusr set here and eat in the kitchen!" (Chapter 3)
I related this excerpt from To Kill A Mockingbird to Chapter 2 because they both show distinction between social classes.Meal scenes in books can reveal things such as character roles, relationships and growth.