Social Media and Communion, or Pass Me The Bread, Facebook

Chapter 2 of How To Read Literature Like a Professor deals with meals and sharing those meals with loved/trusted ones, and how sometimes in literature those can be either just meals or they could be literally anything but that.

I think it's interesting to see how these acts of communion have evolved in this day and age, considering that we often see pictures from different meals: say, an album of birthday dinner photographs on Facebook. Foster makes it very clear that communion is a precise, particular act; a play that requires just the right actors and actresses. Yet nearly every time we log onto social media, we see a picture, a status, an update on a meal someone somewhere just had, often with a family member or a trusted friend. This could, of course, just be an extension of shared experiences - rather than keeping it between those who first hand experience it, online others can experience a frozen snapshot in time, now made data.

As Foster says, it's no different in literature. The extension of the communion can be an extension of sharing. After all, food alone is not enough to make a story worthwhile. There are countless stories in which during a meal somebody makes a big confession that sparks a dramatic response, either a furious argument or an outpouring of tears or both. Plenty of meal scenes in literature precede some serious event - graduation, heading off to war, moving out of the house. Death can even happen during a meal - someone has slipped poison into the emperor's drink, or perhaps someone suffers a fatal heart attack and dies within minutes. Only then do meals become turning points - war has begun, someone's life has just started/ended, or some scandalous information has come to light - otherwise, it's just another uneventful night, just with meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

I'm personally interested in seeing how social media will change acts of communion in literature - for better or for worse. It's already invaded it - John Green's The Fault in Our Stars prominently features text messaging at the beginning of the book, and that book is only two years old. The Hunger Games, even if it's set in a new world, uses television as manipulative, one-way social media. Ender's Game, also set in a different world, uses technology that mirrors boys and video games that then becomes, in a way, social media. In essence, whether in text messages, status updates, or blog posts, social media is an act of communion. This very blog post can serve as an act of communion, since I've written this for you to read, as you are now.

Though communion has traditionally occurred in the form of real life bread and butter, it's very possible for it to happen online. Both acts of communion have the same message: "I'm with you, I share this moment with you, I feel a bond of community with you." as better said by Foster.