| A | B |
|---|
| War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy (1869) | Characters: the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins and the Drubetskoy. Deals with the entanglements of their personal lives with the history of 1805–1813, principally Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. |
| Crime and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866) | This focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Raskolnikov argues that with the pawnbroker's money he can perform good deeds to counterbalance the crime, while ridding the world of a worthless parasite. He also commits this murder to test his own hypothesis that some people are naturally capable of, and even have the right to do, such things. |
| Absalom, Absalom!: William Faulkner (1936) | Characters: Thomas Supten. It is a story about three families of the American South, taking place before, during, and after the Civil War, with the focus of the story on the life of Thomas Sutpen |
| Slaughterhouse Five: Kurt Vonnegut (1969) | the story of Billy Pilgrim, a decidedly non-heroic man who has become "unstuck in time." He travels back and forth in time, visiting his birth, death, all the moments in between repeatedly and out of order. The novel is framed by Chapters One and Ten, in which Vonnegut himself talks about the difficulties of writing the novel and the effects of Dresden on his own life. |
| Sense and Sensibility: Jane Austen (1811) | Characters: Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. The novel follows the young ladies to their new home, a meager cottage on a distant relative's property, where they experience love, romance and heartbreak. The philosophical resolution of the novel is ambiguous: the reader must decide whether sense and sensibility have truly merged. |
| Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen (1813) | Characters: Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman, living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London |
| Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronte (1847) | It has the form of a Bildungsroman, a story about a child's maturation, focusing on the emotions and experiences that accompany growth to adulthood. The novel also contains much social criticism, with a strong sense of morality at its core, and finally has the brooding and moody quality and Byronic character typical of Gothic fiction |
| The 3 Musketeers: Alexandre Dumas (1844) | Characters: Athos, Porthos, Aramis, D'Artagnan. Set in the 17th century, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard. D'Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of the title; those are his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, inseparable friends who live by the motto "all for one, one for all". |
| Don Quixotes Miguel Cervantes (1605-1615) | the protagonist of the novel, is a retired country gentleman nearing fifty years of age, living in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and housekeeper. While mostly a rational man of sound reason, reading Romances in excess, or books of chivalry, has had a profound effect on Don Quixote, leading to the distortion of his perception and the wavering of his mental faculties. In essence, he believes every word of these books of chivalry to be true, though for the most part, the content of these books is clearly false. |
| Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison(1952) | Trublood( a character he meets that impregnates his own daughter and gives a $100 bill) Invisible Man is narrated in the first person by the protagonist, an unnamed African American man who considers himself socially invisible. The story is told from the narrator's present, looking back into his past. Thus, the narrator has hindsight in how his story is told, as he is already aware of the outcome. The novel traces the journey of its unnamed narrator from south to north, from innocence to experience. Tt\he novel explores the tropes and traps of American history and literature, of mechanistic modernity, of sight, insight, and subjectivity |
| The Satanic Verses: Salman Rushdie (1988) | Characters: Gibreel Farishta: a Bollywood superstar who specializes in playing Hiindu Saladin Chamcha: an emigrant who has broken with his Indian identity and works as a voiceover artist in England. Just before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jetliner explodes above the English Channel. Through the falling debris, two figures, Gibreel Farishta, the biggest star in India, and Saladin Chamcha, an expatriate returning from his first visit to Bombay in fifteen years, plummet from the sky, washing up on the snow-covered sands of an English beach, and proceed through a series of metamorphoses, dreams, and revelations. The Satanic Verses consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism, interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. |
| Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie(1981) | Characters: Saleem Sinai: protagonist, born, identity at birth. As a result, he is raised by a prosperous family in Bombay, while his counterpart and future rival, Shiva, is raised in poverty.The basic story is deceptively simple. It’s about a boy Saleem Sinai who is born in India on the stroke of midnight when India achieved independence. This accident of birth gives him (and other children born during that magical midnight hour), unique, special gifts. Saleem’s gift is his “nose” that allowed him at first to go into people’s heads and know what they are thinking. He is also able to telepathically communicate with the other midnight children forming a kind of “ham” radio link of sorts with the rest of the children. Now after an eventful life, he is breaking into pieces, literally falling apart, and he wants to narrate his story to his lover before he dies |
| Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray (1847): A novel without a hero | a story of two heroines---one humble, the other a scheming social climber---who meet in boarding school and embark on markedly different lives. Amid the swirl of London's posh ballrooms and affairs of love and war, their fortunes rise and fall. Through it all, Thackeray lampoons the shallow values of his society, reserving the most pointed barbs for the upper crust. What results is a prescient look at the dogged pursuit of wealth and status---and the need for humility. |
| Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë- pseudonym Ellis Bell (1847) | The title of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors of the story. The narrative centres on the all-encompassing, passionate but doomed love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them. |
| Beloved Toni Morrison (1987) | Set in 1873 just after the American Civil War (1861–1865), the main character, Sethe, kills her daughter and tries to kill her other three children when a posse arrives in Ohio to return them to Sweet Home, the plantation in Kentucky from which Sethe had recently fled. The daughter, Beloved, returns years later to haunt the house in which she was killed, Sethe's home at 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati. The story opens with an introduction to the ghost: "124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom." |
| Robinson Crusoe: Daniel Defoe (1719) | the main characters parents want him to stay in his home town of York but he has other ideas. He wants to become a sailor and travel the world. He leaves home and sails to Brazil where he makes his fortune. On his way from Brazil to Africa, he is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and he spends twenty-seven years alone there before he finally manages to return to England. |
| Great Expectations: Charles Dickens(1861) | Tells the story of Pip, an English orphan who rises to wealth, deserts his true friends, and becomes humbled by his own arrogance. It also introduces one of the more colorful characters in literature: Miss Havisham. |
| Catch-22: Joseph Heller(1961) | the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his skin from the horrible chances of war. His efforts are perfectly understandable because as he furiously scrambles, thousands of people he hasn't even met are trying to kill him. His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from which the book takes its title. Takes place in a place call pinaosa. |
| Catcher in the Rye: J.D Salinger | The story of teenager Holden Caulfield's turbulent last few days before his Christmas vacation. During these days, Holden leaves Pencey Prep, a boys' school he's been kicked out of, and takes off for a few nights alone in New York City. Holden tells the story as a monologue, from some sort of a mental facility where he's recovering from the stress of the experiences he retells. |
| A Brave New World : Aldous Huxley | Plot: The director of the Hatchery and Henry Foster are giving a group of boys a tour of the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre. The group learns about the Bokanovsky and the Podsnap Processes that allows the Hatchery to produce thousands of identical human embryos. As the story progress Lenina and Henry are discouraged because they have a long-term monogamous relationship. Lenina and Bernard go on a vacation to the Savage Reserve. There Lenina falls in love with another man, John. Bernard and Helmholtz are sent to separate island but John is allowed to continue living as he did to continue with Bernard’s experiment. John doesn’t want to stay so he seeks out a place where he can cleanse himself and live in solitude and finds a lighthouse. As part of his cleansing, he makes a whip and whips himself repeatedly with it. A few workers happened to see him doing so and the next day, John is swarmed with reporters. The next day more reporters come but this time Lenina is among them. She tried to seduce him but John whips her. That night, John commits suicide by hanging himself in the lighthouse and is discovered by a reporter the next morning. |
| A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams | Plot: Stella Kowaski and Stanley Kowalski receive news from Stella’s older sister, Blanche, about the family mansion, Bella Reve, has been lost. Blanche soon develops a relationship with Mitch. Blanche soon learns about Stella is being physically abused by Stanley. Stanley hears about Blanche talking bad things about him, and Stanley devotes himself to destroying Blanche’s reputation. Stanley learns about Blanche’s amorous past, which cost Blanche to lose her job in Laurel. Stanley tells Mitch about Blanche’s past, and he loses interest in marrying her. On Blanche’s birthday Mitch breaks off the relationship with her, and Stanley gives her a ticket back to Laurel. Stella confronts Stanley of her cruelness, and soon goes to labor. Stanley returns home while Stella is still in labor. Blanche continues to antagonize Stanley, until Stanley finally rapes her. Blanche goes through a mental breakdown, and tries to tell Stella about Stanley’s assault. Stella does not believe her, soon doctors take Blanche to a mental asylum. |
| The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain | Plot: Tom Sawyer lives with his aunt Polly in St. Petersburg, Mississippi. On his way to school Tom meets Huck, the son of the town drunk. Soon Tom meets Joe in the woods, and together they play Robin Hood. At midnight Tom and Huck are playing at the grave yard. There they notice Dr. Robinson, Injun Joe, and Muff Potter stealing body parts from graves. Soon Dr. Robinson, Injun Joe, and Muff Potter argue, Muff Potter is knocked out, and Injun Joe kills Dr. Robinson. When Muff regains consciousness, Injun Joe tells him that he, not Injun Joe, murdered Dr. Robinson. Tom and Huck runaway scared away from the gravesite. Tom, Huck, and Joe sail away to Jackson’s island, and pretend to be pirates |
| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain | Plot: Huck’s drunken father is after Huck’s $6000. Huck escapes about runaway to the woods where Huck meets a runaway slave Jim. While traveling the river Huck and Jim discover a house with a dead man in it, and they decide to loot it. Both find a wrecked ship, and get on it. There they get mixed up with murders. Soon they manage to get away, but get separated. Huck and Jim get reunited, and meet King and Duke who pretend to be long lost brothers of Peter Wilks in order to steal the rest of his money left behind in his will. Huck leaves both of them, in search of Jim, who got sold by King. Huck goes to Tom, and both go to rescue Jim. |
| A Tale of Two Cities ; Charles Dickens | Plot: Jarvis Lorry is meeting Lucie Manette to tell she is not an orphan, and Lorry will be traveling with her to Paris to meet her father. Five years later Charles Darnay is being tried in London for treason. Darnay meets Mr. Sydney Carton who looks similarly like him, and Darnay is acquitted. Darnay, Mr. Carton, and Mr. Stryver all fall in love with Lucie, but Lucie decides to marry Darnay. Darnay confesses to Dr. Manette that he is a French nobleman, and he is renouncing his title. Darnay uncle is murdered, and Darnay is next in line for the aristocratic title. Darnay tells no one but Dr. Manette. Darnay returns to France where he is arrested and thrown in jail. Soon Darnay is denounced by the Defarges based on documents stating that he raped a peasant girl, and murdered her brother. Darnay is sent to prison and sentenced to death. Carton goes to Paris to see Lucie, and hears about Darnay situation. Soon Carton overhears the Defarge’s plan to kill Lucie. Carton exchanges places with him in prison. The Defarges try to kill Lucie, but instead accidently kill Miss Pross. Darnay and Lucie make it safely back to London, and Carton dies by the guillotine in Darnay place. |
| The Hunchback of Norte-Dame: Victor Hugo | Plot: During the Feast of Fools Quasimodo, a deformed hunchback bell-ringer of Norte-Dame, is crowned as King of Fools. There is meets Esmeralda, a beautiful gypsy girl, who manages to capture the hearts of many including Quasimodo and his adoptive father, Claude Frollo (Archdeacon). Frollo commands Quasimodo to kidnap Esmeralda, but is stopped by Phoebus and his guard who end up saving Esmeralda. Then Quasimodo is sentenced to be flogged and be publicly exposed. Esmeralda sees him, and gives him water. Esmeralda is charged with the murder of Phoebus (after Frollo witnesses Esmeralda and Phoebus having sex), and is sentenced to death. Quasimodo saves her, and brings her to the church where she is protected by the Law of Sanctuary. Frollo ask the king to removed Esmeralda right to sanctuary, and she is taken to be hung. When Esmeralda is hung, Frollo laughs, and Quasimodo pushes him off the building of the Norte-Dame. After the hanging of Esmeralda, Quasimodo visits her corpse, where he dies besides her |
| The Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck | Plot: Tom Joad recently released from prison for murdering a man during a fight, and hitches a ride with a truck driver. On his way home Joad meets his former preacher, Jim Casy. When the two go to the Joad house, Tom finds out his family has been evicted, and must stay at Uncle John’s house. At Uncle John at family plan on leaving Oklahoma to go to California to look for work. There the Joad family is presented with work opportunity, but is an actual fraud in order to lower wages by having more than necessary workers. On their journey to California Grampa Joad dies, and they receive help by the Wilson family. On their way to California the Joad and Wilson family find a man that tell them that there is no work in California, and the flyers were a fraud. The Wilson and Joad families are separated. On the camp the Joads go to to search for work, Tom accidently knocks Jim unconscious due to a fight between the police and migrant workers. Jim takes the blame for the fight, and is sent to jail. The Joad family reach the Hooper Ranch, where they are safe. Soon Tom leaves his family, and massive flood hits the area near the Joad family. The Joads try to escape, but Rose of Sharon suddenly go into labor. The baby is born stillborn. The Joad family finds shelter in a barn where they find a starving man and his young son, where Rose decides to breastfeed the dying man to health. |
| Of Mice and Men: John Steinbeck | Plot: George Milton and Lennie Small (who has mild retardation) are looking for work. Lennie keeps forgetting what they are doing, and George constantly tells him they are looking for work. Lennie finds a dead mouse in his pocket (Lennie has affection towards soft animals, and often kills them because he is very strong). When they arrive at the ranch the boss is really angry because they are late, and George gets into a confrontation with the boss’s son. Soon two more workers, Slim and Carlson, come into the scene. Slim’s dog has puppies, and he gives one to Lennie. George and Lennie soon talk about having their own farm, and Candy (wife of their boss) wants in too. Soon Curley gets in a fight with Lennie, and Lennie breaks his arm badly. Lennie soon meets Crooks (cripple Negro stable buck), and soon Crooks wants a place in their farm. Crooks is dismissed by the group farm by Candy because he was a black farmer. Candy soon finds Lennie (who accidently killed his puppy), and offer Lennie to pet her hair. Candy gets frighten, and Lennie tries to silence her, but accidently breaks her neck. Lennie runs away, and the other ment try to find and kill him. George finds him the river, and shoots him in the head. The men appear, and they congratulate George by giving him a drink and comfort. |
| East of Eden: John Steinbeck | Plot: The first generation deals with the first Trask brothers Adam and Charles. Cyrus commits the “original sin” by loving his son Adam more than his other son Charles. Cyrus chooses Adam’s gift of a puppy, than Charles expensive knife, which causes Charles beats his brother. Cyrus leaves to go fight in the Civil War, leaving both his sons an inheritance of $100,000. Soon the story describes the most evil character Cathy Ames who murders her parents by setting their house on fire. She marries Adam, and at the same time is the mistress of Mr. Edwards (who runs a ring of prostitute) who ends up beating Adam. Cathy and Edwards have twin boys name Aron and Cal who are raised by Mr. Lee. Aron and Cal compete for their father’s affection. Cal knowing that Aron was more loved because he resembled his mother. Cal tries to appease his father by helping him pay his business lost by raising $150,000. Adam finds out that he is able to do this taking advantage of farmers. Aron finally discover the truth of his mother, and goes to join the Army in WWI. Cathy commits suicide after meeting Aron |
| Les Miserables: Victor Hugo | Plot: Jean Valjean is released from prison after serving 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. Jean thinks he sentence was over-exaggerated, and begins to form bitterness towards society. Jean starts by stealing silverware from bishop Monseigneur Myriel. Jean is caught, instead of Monseigneur Myriel turning him, he insisted that the silverware were gifts. Shown by the kindness of Monseigneur Myriel, Jean is determine to be an honest man. Javert, is a police officer who is knew Jean, is determined to send him back to jail. In the end Monsieur and Madame Thenardier, the owners of an inn in Montfermeil, are also pursuing Valjean for their own corrupt and dishonest ends |
| Our Town: By Thornton Wilder | Characters: Stage manager, Emily Webb, Frank Gibbs, Julia (Hersey) Gibbs, Charles Webb, Myrtle Webb. This three part play details the story of the life of two families, the Gibbs and Webbs, who live in the small town of Grovers Corners, New Hampshire and the love between Emily Webb and George Gibbs. |
| Candide: By Voltaire | Characters: Candide, Cunégonde, Pangloss, the old woman, Cacambo, Martin, The Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh. This Satire is about a young man who is living a sheltered life and falls in love with Lady Cunégonde, which he is thrown out of the Baron’s castle and finds out and experiences the hardships of the world. |
| Pygmalion: By George Bernard Shaw | Characters: Henry Higgins, Eliza Doolittle. This romantic comedy is about a professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins, making a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at the ambassador’s garden part by teaching her the veneer of gentility. |
| Billy Budd: By Herman Malville | Characters: Title Character, Captain Vere, John Claggart. This book is about a sailor on the HMS Bellipotent who is accused of planning munity against Captain Vere by John Claggart, the Master-at-arms. John is killed by him and the sailor is condemned to death by hanging, but Vere sees that he did not plan a munity and unfortunently cannot save him. |
| Madame Bovary: By Gustave Flaubert | Characters: Charles Bovary, Emma Rouault. This novel is about two people, Charles and Emma, living in northern France who fall in love for each other. Charles fall in love with Emma and eventually marries he after his original wife dies, but Emma has affections with other men during their marrage and ends with Emma killing herself and Charles dying of severe depression. |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude: By Gabriel García Márquez | Characters: Buendía Family. This book is about the seven generations of the Buendía family and how they founded the city of Macondo and all the fortunes and misfortunes of all the generations. |
| Faust: By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Characters: Heinrich Faust, Mephistopheles, Gretchen, Marthe, Valentin, Wagner. This book is about a man named Heinrich where Mephistopheles makes a bet with God that he can lure Heinrich away from his righteous path. Mephistopheles then becomes a sevant to Heinrich and his love, Gretchen, is convicted for the murder of Valentin, Gretchen’s borther, after she finds out that she is pregnant. |
| Pilgrim’s Progress: By John Bunyan | Characters: Christian. This two-part book is about a man named Christian who is seeking religious deliverance from his sins in order to leave the “city of destruction”, His hometown, to “Celestial City”, Heaven, and where his wife, Christina, and her kids follow the path that he has taken. |
| The Wasteland: By T. S. Eliot | This poem is a five-part poem that are called “The Burial of the Dead”, “A Game of Chess”, “The Fire Sermon”, “Death by Water”, and “What the Thunder Said”. |
| A Doll’s House By Henrik Ibsen | Characters: Nora, Torvald Helmer, Krogstad, Mrs. Linde, Dr. Rank, Children, Anne-Marie. |
| All The King’s Men Robert Penn Warren (The South, 1810-1939) | Characters: Jack Burden, Willie Stark. This is the story of the rise and fall of a political titan in the Deep South during the 1930s. Willie Stark rises from hardscrabble poverty to become governor of his state and its most powerful political figure; he blackmails and bullies his enemies into submission, and institutes a radical series of liberal reforms designed to tax the rich and ease the burden of the state's poor farmers. This is also the story of Jack Burden, the scion of one of the state's aristocratic dynasties, who turns his back on his genteel upbringing and becomes Willie Stark's right-hand man. |
| The Charge of the Light Brigade: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Crimea, 1854) | Characters: Soldiers. The poem tells the story of a brigade consisting of 600 soldiers who rode on horseback into the “valley of death” for half a league (about one and a half miles). They were obeying a command to charge the enemy forces that had been seizing their guns. |
| The Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio (14th Century Italy) | Characters: The Brigata. This allegory is a frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people (seven women and three men). They are known as Brigata and gather at the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella to escape Black Death. |
| The Importance of Being Earnest: Oscar Wilde | Characters: John Worthing, Algernon Moncrieff. For the young Victorian man, the double life is the good life. Jack and Algernon both have secret identities and activities. Up until now, they have both seamlessly gone from city life to country life, using their double identities to make things more convenient. Jack’s life is about to get a lot more difficult. When Lady Bracknell finds out Jack is an orphan, she sets up the challenge of the play for Jack: find a family – and a good one, or lose Gwendolen. In the meantime, Algernon prepares to come to Cecily as the man of her dreams, Ernest. |
| Finnegan’s Wake: James Joyce (Chapelizod, Dublin, Ireland) | Characters: Finnegan, Earwicker Family (Father HCE, mother ALP, and three children). The plot is divided into four books each containing a different number of chapters. Following an unspecified rumor about HCE, the book, in a nonlinear dream narrative, follows his wife's attempts to exonerate him with a letter, his sons' struggle to replace him, Shaun's rise to prominence, and a final monologue by ALP at the break of dawn. |
| The House of the Seven Gables: Nathaniel Hawthorne | Back in Puritan times, in the early days of Massachusetts, there was a rich, powerful man named Colonel Pyncheon. Colonel Pyncheon wants to build a house to leave to his descendants. He finds the perfect spot for his house right next to a lovely spring of fresh water. The one problem with this place is that it's already owned by a poor man named Matthew Maule |
| My Antonia: Willa Cather | Characters: Jim Burden, Antonia Shimerdas. This begins with a short fictional introduction told by a nameless narrator, who may or may not be the author herself. The narrator tells you about a friend of hers named Jim Burden, a lawyer for one of the transcontinental railroads. The narrator and Jim were friends when they were kids, and they both knew a rather remarkable Bohemian immigrant girl named Ántonia. (Bohemia is a region in what is now the Czech Republic.) The narrator, who is a writer, tells Jim that she wants to write about Ántonia, but feels that Jim, who knew the girl better, is more qualified to do it. |
| Fathers and Sons: Ivan Turgenev | Characters: Yevgany Vassilyich Bazarov, Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov. Arkady Nikolaevich returns to his father's farm at Maryino on the 20th of May 1859. His father, Nikolai, is ecstatic to see him, and happily takes in Bazarov, Arkady's new friend from school in Petersburg. Nikolai is a widower who has recently freed his serfs (members of the Russian peasant class, bound to a landowning lord), and he has been selling off his land to make ends meet. |
| The Cherry Orchard: Anton Chekhov | Characters: Lubov Andreyena Ranevskaya, Ermolai Lopakhin. The businessman Lopakhin and maid Dunyasha waiting for the owners of the Ranevskaya estate: the mistress of the house, Lubov Ranevskaya, her brother Gaev, and daughter Anya. They finally arrive, in the middle of the night, with an assortment of others: the governess Charlotta, the manservant Yasha, a friend named Simeon-Pischik, and other servants. Varya, Lubov's adopted daughter, is there too. |
| Kubla Khan (Poem): Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Characters: Kubla Khan, Genghis Khan. The poem's speaker starts by describing the setting of Emperor's palace, which he calls a "pleasure dome." He tells us about a river that runs across the land and then flows through some underground caves and into the sea. Toward the end, the poem becomes more personal and mysterious, as the speaker describes past visions he has had. This brings him to a final image of a terrifying figure with flashing eyes. |
| The Sound and the Fury: William Faulkner | Characters: The Compson Family. Title is taken from a soliloquoy from Macbeth. PLOT: The four parts of the novel relate many of the same episodes, each from a different point of view and therefore with emphasis on different themes and events. The general outline of the story is the decline of the Compson family, a once noble Southern family descended from U.S. Civil War hero General Compson. The family falls victim to those vices which Faulkner believed were responsible for the problems in the reconstructed South: racism, avarice, selfishness, and the psychological inability of individuals to become determinants Over the course of the thirty years or so related in the novel, the family falls into financial ruin, loses its religious faith and the respect of the town of Jefferson, and many of them die tragically. |
| Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Harriet Beecher Stowe | Characters: Title Character, Eliza, Eva. Simon Legree. Best selling novel of 19th century. Huge in anti-slavery movement. PLOT: Follows The Title character through his ordeal as he is sold to another slave owner. |
| The Canterbury Tales: Geoffrey Chaucer | PLOT: a collection of stories written in Middle English at the end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly written in verse although some are in prose) are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return |
| Paradise Lost: John Milton | Characters: Satan (Lucifer), Adam, Eve, God the Father, The Son of God. Beelzebub (Satan’s Lieutenant) PLOT: an epic poem in blank verse from the 17th century, this poem tells the story of the Fall of Man and the Temptation of Adam and Eve. In the poem Lucifer and the other rebel angels are cast from heaven into hell after leading an angelic rebellion against God. He takes the form of the serpent to tempt Adam and Eve into committing the original sin. |
| The Scarlet Letter: Nathaniel Hawthorne | Characters: Hester Prynne. Roger Chillingsworht, Arthur Dimmesdale. Pearl (the baby) PLOT: Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an adulterous affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. She is forced to wear a RED “A” as part of her shaming. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt. |
| Hamlet: Shakespeare | Characters: Title Character, Claudius, Gertrude, Horatio, Polonius, Ophelia, PLOT: Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatizes the revenge the title character exacts on his uncle Claudius for murdering his father the king, and then succeeding to the throne and taking as his wife Gertrude, the old king's widow and Prince Hamlet's mother. The play vividly portrays both true and feigned madness – from overwhelming grief to seething rage – and explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption. |
| Macbeth: Shakespeare | Characters, Title Character, Lady (Title Character’s last name), MacDuff, Duncan. Setting: Scotland. Plot: Scottish general receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, he murders King Duncan and takes the throne for himself. His reign is racked with guilt and paranoia, and he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion. The bloodbath swiftly takes the title character and his wife into realms of arrogance, madness, and death .A famous scene is his wife trying in vain to wash blood from her hands that isn’t actually there. |
| The Merchant of Venice: Shakespeare | Characters: Antonio, Shylock, Portia. PLOT: Jewish moneylender Shylock, gives Antonio ( amn he hates for various reasons) a no interest loan, however it is not satisfied he receives a “pound of flesh” form Antonio. Antonio ultimately fails in his quest to return the loan in time and Shylock demands his “pound of flesh” denying offers by others to pay twice the sum of the loan back. However Portia (a rich heiress) declares that his contract ONLY calls for a pound of flesh, not blood or anything else, so if those things were taken then Shylock would be violating the terms of the contract. This play is often criticized for being Anti-semitic, although jewish actors have played Shylock as a sympathetic figure. |
| Othello: Shakespeare | Characters: Title Character (A Moorish General). Desdemona (The Title Character’s Wife) Cassio (his lieutenant) and Iago. The work revolves around four central characters: Moorish general in the Venetian army; his wife, Desdemona; his lieutenant, Cassio; and his trusted ensign, Iago. Because of its varied and current themes of racism, love, jealousy, and betrayal. Title Character a highly esteemed general in the service of Venice. Iago is Title Character 's ambitious friend. Title Character promotes the Michael Cassio to the position of personal lieutenant and Iago is deadly jealous. Iago begins an evil and malicious campaign against the hero. Title Character elopes with Desdemona but Iago starts to plot against them. Title Character becomes jealous and suspicious of Desdemona. He confides in Iago that he plans to poison Desdemona. Plots and murders ensue and Title Character returns to the castle to kill his innocent wife. He eventually smothers her to death. Emilia tells Title Character the truth about the scheming Iago. Title Character wounds Iago, then kills himself. Iago kills Emilia. |
| As I lay Dying: William Faulkner | The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish to be buried in the town of Jefferson. As is the case in much of the author's work, the story is set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, which Faulkner referred to as "my apocryphal county," a fictional rendition of the writer's home of Lafayette County in that same state. The novel is known for its stream of consciousness writing technique, multiple narrators, and varying chapter lengths; in fact, the shortest chapter in the book consists of just five words, "My mother is a fish." |
| The Old Man and the Sea (1951): Ernest Hemingway | Characters: Santiago, Manolin, a Marlin. PLOT: Santiago is a fisherman who is on an unlucky streak of catching zero fish. He hooks a huge marlin and battles it for two days before he finally catches and kills the marlin , only to have sharks eat the carcass of the marlin as he attempts to bring it back to the port. A key element of dialogue between Santiago and Manolin focuses on American baseball and Joe Dimaggio in particular |
| A Farewell to Arms: Ernest Hemingway | CHARACTERS: Frederick Henry, Catherin Barkley PLOT: the novel is a story concerning the drama and passion of a doomed romance between WWI Soldier Frederick Henry and a British nurse, Catherine Barkley. Second, it also skillfully contrasts the meaning of personal tragedy against the impersonal destruction wrought by the First World War. The Author deftly captures the cynicism of soldiers, the futility of war, and the displacement of populations. Although this was the author’s bleakest novel, its publication cemented his stature as a modern American writer |
| Moby Dick: Melville | Characters: Ishmael, Ahab, Elijah, Queequeg. PLOT: Moby Dick is the story of the Crew of the Pequod, a whaling ship led by the maniacal Ahab, who seeks revenge on the “white whale” a giant sperm whale who had previously injured his leg. In the end The White Whale destroys the Pequod and all of its crew except Ishmael, who survives to tell the tale. Ahab is killed by his own harpoon line in the final battle scene. The story is loosely based on the story of the ESSEX, a Nantucket whaling ship that was destroyed by a large sperm whale. |
| The Red Badge of Courage: Steven Crane | Characters: Henry Fleming, Jim Conklin. Taking place during the American Civil War, the story is about a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. He sees a fellow soldier, Conklin die from his wounds. Overcome with shame, he longs for a wound, which serves as the title of the book, to counteract his cowardice. When his regiment once again faces the enemy, Henry acts as standard-bearer , carrying the flag and escaping any injury |
| Anna Karenina: Leo Tolstoy | Plot: the tragedy of married aristocrat and the title character, a socialite, and her affair with the affluent Count Vronsky. The story starts when she arrives in the midst of a family broken up by her brother's unbridled womanizing—something that prefigures her own later situation, though with less tolerance for her by others. A bachelor, Vronsky is willing to marry her if she would agree to leave her husband Karenin, a government official, but she is vulnerable to the pressures of Russian social norms, her own insecurities and Karenin's indecision. Although Vronsky eventually takes Anna to Europe where they can be together, they have trouble making friends. Back in Russia, she is shunned, becoming further isolated and anxious, while Vronsky pursues his social life. Despite Vronsky's reassurances she grows increasingly possessive and paranoid about his imagined infidelity, fears losing control and eventually takes her own life. |
| The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald | Characters: Nick Caraway (narrator), Daisy, Jay (nickname is the title to the story). PLOT: Set in the roaring 20’s the novel deals with a cast of characters, the Title Character being a mysterious bootlegger of great wealth. The story deals with several romantic interests and betrayals ultimately ending with the title character shot while relaxing in his swimming pool. Upon his death, the narrator discovers the title character’s true identity (born penniless in North Dakota) at his poorly attended funeral. |
| Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe | The novel depicts the life of Okonkwo, a leader and local wrestling champion in Umuofia—one of a fictional group of nine villages in Nigeria, inhabited by the Igbo ethnic group. In addition it focuses on his three wives, his children, and the influences of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on his traditional Igbo (archaically "Ibo") community during the late nineteenth century. |
| Ulysses: James Joyce (Irish) | PLOT: chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904 (the day of Joyce's first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle).[4] The title alludes to Odysseus, the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and establishes a series of parallels between characters and events in Homer's poem and this novel (e.g., the correspondence of Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, Molly Bloom to Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus). The author’s fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday. |
