Chapter 23 It’s Never Just Heart Disease… Maryam Cheta 6th Period 9/28/11

What is Heart Disease? In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, the author explains that when a character has heart disease, “it’s never just heart disease.” Thomas C. Foster, the author, explains that heart disease can affect a character both physically and emotionally. “ Aside from being the pump that keeps us alive, the heart is also, and has been since ancient times, the symbolic repository of emotion” (Foster 208).

Hearts <3 Examples of heart disease are bad love, loneliness, cruelty, pederasty, disloyalty, cowardice, lack of determination. Foster explains how love is important and how we use it in our everyday lives, for example, Valentine’s Day on February 14th, or just giving a card with hearts that say ‘I love you’ or giving someone a hug or a kiss; these are all expressions of love.“What shapes were your Valentine’s cards in when you were a kid? When we fall in love, we feel it with our hearts. When we lose a love, we feel heartbroken. When overwhelmed by strong emotion, we feel our hearts are full to bursting” (Foster 209).

The Good Soldier (1915) Ford Madox Ford is the author of The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion. In this novel, there are two couples that go to the spa every year. Florence is married to John Dowell and Leonora is married to Edward Ashburnham. Florence and Edward go to a spa for treatment of their heart ailments. Every time they go to the spa, Florence and Edward have an affair, and Leonora knows! John Dowell is really ignorant and clueless, but at the same time he is completely believable and therefore pathetic. “Florence and Edward are ill, of course. Heart trouble. What else?” (Foster 208).

The Iliad and the Odyssey The Iliad and the Odyssey are epics written by a poet named Homer. The characters in both epics describe other characters to have “a heart of iron,” or in other words, hard-heartedness. All of the great writers, such as Marvell and Shakespeare, use heart disease in their stories because we, as readers, can feel it. “The writer can use heart ailments as a kind of shorthand for the character, which is probably what happens most often, or he can use it as a social metaphor” (Foster 209).

The Wench is Dead (1989) The Wench is Dead (1989) by Colin Dexter is about a detective named Morse who was suffering loneliness. Morse had a lot of bad luck with women; several of them end up as corpses or culprits in his various adventures, while others just didn’t work out. This caused him to have a drinking problem which caused him many problems throughout his body, and he ended up dying of a heart attack. “The connection to an over fondness for drink is still there is that’s what some readers want to see, but now the ailment points not toward his behavior but toward the pain and suffering, the loneliness and regret, of his sad-sack love life, that may well be causing this behavior” (Foster 210).

Lord Jim Lord Jim is a novel written by Joseph Conrad. Jim’s courage failed him and the strength of his heart, both in terms of bravery and of forming serious attachments, weakened. He misjudges an enemy and his mistake causes the death of his best friend. Jim had promised the leader, Doramin, that if his plan results in somebody’s death, Jim will sacrifice his own life. Doramin shoots Jim in the place of the chest where a shot results in instant death, and of course we all know where that is. “The very next comment by Marlow, the narrator, is that Jim was “inscrutable at heart” (Foster 211).

How does it relate to Great Expectations? Chapter 23 of How to Read Literature Like A Professor relates to Great Expectations because they both talk about love. It’s Never Just Heart Disease talks about how it can affect the character both physically and emotionally. In Great Expectations, Pip is emotionally hurt because the beautiful but cold-hearted Estella doesn’t love him back. He is physically hurt by her when he was so frustrated that he “got rid of [his] injured feelings for the time, by kicking them into the brewery-wall, and twisting them out of [his] hair” (Dickens 65).

Chapter 23: It’s Never Just Heart Disease... Overall, this chapter talks about heart disease and how it affects the characters in a story. Everyday, people are falling in love or getting heartbroken. Others are suffering from loneliness, unrequited love, cruelty, disloyalty, and more. “If heart trouble shows up in a novel or a play, we start looking for its signification, and we usually don’t have to hunt too hard” (Foster 212).

WORKS CITED Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc., 2003. Print. Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Clayton: Prestwick House, 2005. Print.