AP Blog Post The White Company

The White Company is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel following the coming of age of young Alleyne Edricson. Alleyne grew up with monks in an Abbey and, at the request of his father, was to be dismissed from the Abbey at the age of twenty for one year and was given the option of returning only after the one year had passed. The novel offers great examples for the ideas proposed in the first two chapters of How to Read Literature Like a Professor. After leaving the Abbey, Alleyne sets off toward his brother's house to stay with him for some time. On this journey Alleyne learns very much about himself and seems to realize how sheltered he has been. He also realizes that perhaps the outside world is not as terrible as it was made to sound in the Abbey. I wonder if this is what college will be like, or going out into the workplace in order to live on my own. Alleyne also shares a meal with an archer and a man recently discharged from the Abbey, with whom he will eventually embark upon a great journey. This meal, as is asserted in the second chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, symbolizes a certain communion among them. I have also noticed that each chapter almost feels like a short story, and each chapter even has an individual label such as "How the Three Comrades Journeyed Through the Woodlands." This sense has driven me to wish to read an entire chapter at a time, which is a more specific habit than I have noticed before. Many characters in the novel also speak French and it seems the characters who speak French are often ones who have been to war. There are also many religious allusions in the story, such as "dead as Pontius Pilot," which add to a sense of the importance of religion at the time.