Quizbowl literature

Quizbowl literature

James Baldwin

James Baldwin

• (1924–1987) grew up in Harlem, which he portrayed in his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. That novel is about the teenage John Grimes and his fanatically religious stepfather Gabriel. In the novel Giovanni’s Room, an American named David has an affair with the title Italian bartender. His novel If Beale Street Could Talk, about the love between Tish and a man named Fonny who has been falsely accused of rape, was made into a 2018 movie directed by Barry Jenkins. He also wrote several essays, including an examination of race and religion in The Fire Next Time. His essay collection Notes of a Native Son begins with “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” which is critical of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Native Son.

Ralph Ellison

(1919–1994) is best known for his novel Invisible Man, whose unnamed narrator earns a college scholarship by participating in a degrading Battle Royal; after being kicked out of college and working at the Liberty Paint company (known for its pure white paint), he joins a political group called the Brotherhood. At the climax of the novel, the narrator is nearly lynched by a Black nationalist named Ras the Destroyer during riots in Harlem. Ellison’s unfinished second novel was published posthumously in a long version called Three Days Before the Shooting… and a short version called Juneteenth

Lorraine Hansberry

(1930–1965) is best known for her play A Raisin in the Sun. That play is about the Younger family, who debate how to use $10,000 in life insurance money. Walter wants to invest the money in a liquor store, while his mother Mama wants to buy a house in the white neighborhood Clybourne Park. Mama’s daughter Beneatha wants to spend the money on medical school and, unlike the other members of the family, explores her African heritage. Other works include the play The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window and the autobiography To Be Young, Gifted and Black.

Langston Hughes

(1901–1967) was a leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance. His poems “I, Too” and “Let America Be America Again” address America’s racist history and the feelings of exclusion it causes. His poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” invokes world rivers like the Euphrates and the Congo and repeats the line “My soul has grown deep like the rivers,” while his poem “The Weary Blues” describes a blues performance on Lenox Avenue in Harlem. He also wrote the poem “Harlem,” which asks “What happens to a dream deferred?” and which inspired the title of Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.

Zora Neale Hurston

(1891–1960) set many of her works in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida. Her best-known novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is about Janie Crawford, whose sexual awakening is compared to the blossoming of a pear tree. Janie successively marries Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, and Tea Cake; when Tea Cake attacks her after being bitten by a rabid dog during a hurricane, she shoots him. Hurston was also a prominent anthropologist, collecting African-American folklore in books like Mules and Men. Her work was relatively unknown until 1975, when Alice Walker published the article “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston.”

Toni Morrison

• (1931–2019) was the first Black woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature and won a Pulitzer for her novel Beloved. Beloved is about Sethe, a slave who escaped from Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky to 124 Bluestone Road in Cincinnati. Sethe is haunted by the ghost of Beloved, a daughter she killed to prevent her from being returned to slavery. Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, is about Pecola Breedlove, a Black foster child who considers herself ugly and wishes she had blue eyes. Morrison’s other acclaimed novels include Song of Solomon, about the life of Macon Dead III, who is nicknamed “Milkman” because he is breastfed by his mother for a long time.

Alice Walker

(1944–) won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer for her novel The Color Purple, whose protagonist, Celie, is repeatedly raped by her father, producing the children Olivia and Adam, both of whom are immediately taken away by her father. Celie deals with her trauma by writing letters to God. Celie marries Mister, who also abuses her; she has an affair with Shug Avery, a blues singer who is also Mister’s mistress. Walker’s short story “Everyday Use” is about the cultural differences between Dee and Maggie, the two daughters of a Southern woman known as Mama.

Phillis Wheatley

(1753–1784) was born in Africa and brought to the United States as a slave in 1761; .She was freed in the 1770s shortly after the release of her collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Her poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America” says that “mercy” brought her from her “Pagan land” and taught her “benighted soul” about God and Christian redemption. She praised George Washington in her poem “To His Excellency General Washington.”

Richard Wright

(1908–1960) wrote the 1940 bestseller Native Son. The protagonist of that novel, Bigger Thomas, gets a job as a chauffeur for Mary Dalton, but he suffocates her with a pillow for fear of being discovered in bed with her. Bigger later rapes and murders his girlfriend Bessie, and is ultimately sentenced to death for the murders. The memoir Black Boy describes his youth in the Jim Crow South and his move to Chicago, where he joins and then becomes disillusioned with the Communist Party. He also wrote Uncle Tom’s Children, a collection of novellas including “Big Boy Leaves Home” and “Fire and Cloud.”

Our Town

(Thornton Wilder, 1938). A sentimental story that takes place in the village of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire just after the turn of the 20th century, it is divided into three acts: “Daily Life” (Professor Willard and Editor Webb gossip on the everyday lives of town residents); “Love and Marriage” (Emily Webb and George Gibbs fall in love and marry); and “Death” (Emily dies while giving birth, and her spirit converses about the meaning of life with other dead people in the cemetery). A Stage Manager talks to the audience and serves as a narrator throughout the drama, which is performed on a bare stage.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night

(Eugene O’Neill, 1956). O’Neill wrote it fifteen years earlier and presented the manuscript to his third wife with instructions that it not be produced until 25 years after his death. Actually produced three years after he died, it centers on Edmund and the rest of the Tyrone family, but is really an autobiographical account of the dysfunction of O’Neill’s own family, set on one day in August 1912. The father is a miserly actor, while the mother is a morphine addict, and the brother is a drunk; they argue and cut each other down throughout the play.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

• (Edward Albee, 1962). Martha sings the title to George when she is mad at him in Act I. In fact, Albee got the title from graffiti he saw on a men’s room wall. In the drama, George is a professor who married Martha, the college president’s daughter, but the two dislike each other. Martha invites another couple, the instructor Nick and his wife Honey, for drinks after a party for her father. All four of them get drunk, and they end up bickering over their flawed marriages: Besides George and Martha’s problems, Honey is barren, and Nick married her for her money.

A Streetcar Named Desire

• (Tennessee Williams, 1947). Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski represent Williams’s two visions of the South: declining “old romantic” vs. the harsh modern era. Blanche is a Southern belle who lost the family estate, and is forced to move into her sister Stella’s New Orleans apartment. Stella’s husband Stanley is rough around the edges, but sees through Blanche’s artifice; he ruins Blanche’s chance to marry his friend Mitch by revealing to Mitch that Blanche was a prostitute. Then, after Blanche confronts Stanley, he rapes her, driving her into insanity. The drama was developed into a movie, marking the breakthrough performance of method actor Marlon Brando.

A Raisin in the Sun

Her father’s 1940 court fight against racist housing laws provided the basis for the play about the Younger family, who attempt to move into an all-white Chicago suburb but are confronted by discrimination. The first play by an African-American woman to be performed on Broadway, it also tore down the racial stereotyping found in other works of the time. The title comes from the Langston Hughes poem "Harlem" (often called “A Dream Deferred”).

The Crucible

• (Arthur Miller, 1953). Miller chose the 1692 Salem witch trials as his setting, but the work is really an allegorical protest against the McCarthy anti-Communist “witch-hunts” of the early 1950s. In the story, Elizabeth Proctor fires the servant Abigail Williams after she finds out Abigail had an affair with her husband. In response, Abigail accuses Elizabeth of witchcraft. She stands trial and is acquitted, but then another girl accuses her husband, John, and as he refuses to turn in others, he is killed, along with the old comic figure, Giles Corey. Also notable: Judge Hathorne is a direct ancestor of the author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Death of a Salesman

(Arthur Miller, 1949). This play questions American values of success. Willy Loman is a failed salesman whose firm fires him after 34 years. Despite his own failures, he desperately wants his sons Biff and Happy to succeed. Told in a series of flashbacks, the story points to Biff’s moment of hopelessness, when the former high school star catches his father Willy cheating on his mother, Linda. Eventually, Willy can no longer live with his perceived shortcomings, and commits suicide in an attempt to leave Biff with insurance money.

Mourning Becomes Electra

(Eugene O’Neill, 1931). This play is really a trilogy, consisting of “Homecoming,” “The Hunted,” and “The Haunted.” Though it is set in post-Civil War New England, O’Neill used Aeschylus’s tragedy The Oresteia as the basis for the plot. Lavinia Mannon desires revenge against her mother, Christine, who with the help of her lover Adam Brant has poisoned Lavinia’s father Ezra; Lavinia persuades her brother Orin to kill Brant. A distressed Christine commits suicide, and, after Orin and Lavinia flee to the South Seas, Orin cannot stand the guilt and kills himself as well, leaving Lavinia in the house alone.

The Glass Menagerie

• (Tennessee Williams, 1944). Partly based on Williams’ own family, the drama is narrated by Tom Wingfield, who supports his mother Amanda and his crippled sister Laura (who takes refuge from reality in her glass animals). At Amanda’s insistence, Tom brings his friend Jim O’Connor to the house as a “gentleman caller” for Laura. While O’Connor is there, the horn on Laura’s glass unicorn breaks, bringing her into reality, until O’Connor tells the family that he is already engaged. Laura returns to her fantasy world, while Tom abandons the family after fighting with Amanda.

The Iceman Cometh

(Eugene O’Neill, 1939). A portrait of drunkenness and hopeless dreams. Regular patrons of the End of the Line Café anticipate the annual arrival of Theodore “Hickey” Hickman, but in 1912 he returns to them sober. After the patrons reveal their “pipe dreams,” Hickey implores them to give up those dreams and lead productive lives. The “Iceman” is supposed to represent the “death” found in reality.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

• (Tennessee Williams, 1955). Centers on a fight between two sons, Gooper and Brick, over the estate of their father “Big Daddy” Pollitt, who is dying of cancer. After his friend Skipper dies, ex-football star Brick turns to alcohol and will not have sex with his wife Maggie (“the cat”). Yet Maggie announces to Big Daddy that she is pregnant in an attempt to force a reconciliation with—and win the inheritance for—Brick.

The Little Foxes

(Lillian Hellman, 1939). Set on a plantation in 1900, Hellman attempts to show that by this time any notion of antebellum Southern gentility has been destroyed by modern capitalism and industrialism. Three Hubbard siblings (Regina and her two brothers) scheme to earn vast riches at the expense of other family members, such as Regina’s husband Horace and their daughter Alexandra. The title is taken from the Old Testament Song of Solomon: “the little foxes that spoil the vines.”

Gwendolyn Brooks

(1917–2000) became the first African-American person to win a Pulitzer in 1950 for her poetry collection Annie Allen. Many of her works reflect her experiences in Bronzeville, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side that became a center of African-American life during the Great Migration. Her best-known poem, “We Real Cool,” is set at the Golden Shovel and consists of three-word sentences starting with “We,” such as “We / Lurk late” and “We / Jazz June.” Though primarily a poet, Brooks also wrote the novel Maud Martha.

Mary Shelley

(1797–1851, United Kingdom). The author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, She was a product of both the Enlightenment and Romantic eras. Her 1818 novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus helped to lay the groundwork for modern science fiction by contrasting Enlightenment ideas of progress with a Romantic conception of nature as an untameable force. The idea for Frankenstein came to her while she was taking part in a friendly writing competition at Lord Byron’s villa on Lake Geneva. Inspired by Luigi Galvani’s experiments in “animal electricity,” She wrote about the Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein, who reanimates dead tissue and creates a “monster.” This attempt to control nature fails, as the monster murders Frankenstein’s brother William, friend Henry Clerval, and wife Elizabeth before fleeing to the Arctic. Frankenstein pursues his creation, and tells his story to the explorer Robert Walton before dying. She presented an even bleaker scenario in her 1826 novel The Last Man, which describes Lionel Verney’s efforts to survive a 21st-century plague that devastates human civilization.

Jules Verne

(1828–1905, France). He offered a brighter vision of technological progress in his novels of adventure, many of which doubled as works of popular science. In his 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Lidenbrock explains contemporary theories of geology and paleontology as he leads an expedition that travels beneath the Earth’s crust from Iceland to the Italian volcano Stromboli. he later wrote the 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, whose narrator Pierre Aronnax offers extensive commentary on marine biology while accompanying the mysterious Captain Nemo on a voyage in the submarine Nautilus. In a more realistic vein, he considered the possibilities presented by new forms of transportation in the 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, which describes a trip taken by the Englishman Phileas Fogg and his French valet Jean Passepartout. During his travels, which are undertaken to win a bet with members of the Reform Club, Fogg falls in love with an Indian woman named Aouda, and is pursued by the Scotland Yard detective Fix, who mistakenly believes that Fogg is a bank robber. Fogg ultimately wins his bet to return to the Reform Club within 80 days of his departure, with the help of an extra day gained by traveling eastward.

Herbert George Wells

(1866–1946, United Kingdom).He used speculative fiction to explore the social issues of his day from a left-wing perspective. In the 1895 novella The Time Machine, he wrote about a “Time Traveller” who visits the year AD 802,701, and learns that humanity has diverged into two different species—the surface-dwelling Eloi, who are gentle and beautiful but intellectually limited, and the subterranean Morlocks, who resemble apes but are strong and clever enough to use the Eloi as livestock. The Time Traveller speculates that the Eloi are descended from aristocrats who were once served by the ancestors of the Morlocks. After writing about time travel, he helped to establish another of science fiction’s key themes by depicting an alien invasion in the 1897 novel The War of the Worlds. The anonymous narrator of The War of the Worlds observes a Martian spaceship that lands in Surrey, and flees the “Tripods” and “Black Smoke” that the Martians use as weapons in the conquest of Earth. The invaders easily overcome human resistance, but eventually perish from lack of immunity to Earth microbes. He also wrote several novels about researchers who use science to pursue unethical goals. In the 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, the shipwrecked Edward Prendick discovers that the title vivisectionist performs painful experiments to transform animals into human-like “Beast Folk.” A year later he published The Invisible Man, which centers on a student of physics named Griffin who plans to use his invisibility to enact a “reign of terror.” However, Griffin’s invisibility makes it difficult for him to exist in society (he must cover himself with clothes and thick bandages if he wishes to be seen), and he is eventually killed by an angry crowd.

Aldous Huxley

(1894–1963, United Kingdom). He belonged to a prominent family of British intellectuals that included the Victorian evolutionist Although He depicted his own social milieu in novels such as Crome Yellow and Point Counter Point, he is best known for writing about a dystopian “World State” in the 1932 novel Brave New World. Extrapolating from Henry Ford’s model of industrial production and contemporary advances in biochemistry, He imagined a world in which the fictional “Bokanovsky’s Process” is used to create human clones, which are then modified to posses different intellectual abilities, and sorted into social castes named after the Greek letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Inhabitants of the World State enjoy a prosperous existence, immersive entertainment known as Feelies, and the drug soma, but lack family connections and spiritual fulfillment. The shallow pleasures of the World State are contrasted with the ideals of John the Savage, a young man who grew up on a New Mexico reservation. John is initially delighted to meet the World State residents Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne, and excitedly quotes the “Brave New World” speech from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. However, John soon grows disgusted with “civilization.” After the World Controller Mustapha Mond forbids John from living on an isolated island with the aspiring writer Helmholtz Watson, John unsuccessfully tries to retreat from society, and eventually hangs himself.

George Orwell

• (1903–1950, United Kingdom). He(the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair) condemned the totalitarian government of Joseph Stalin in the fantasy Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He speculative fiction was part of a wide-ranging body of work that also included attacks on British colonialism (the essay “Shooting an Elephant” and the novel Burmese Days), first-hand accounts of war (Homage to Catalonia) and poverty (Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier), and works of cultural criticism (the essay “Politics and the English Language”). After taking part in the Spanish Civil War and growing alarmed at the authoritarian nature of Russian communism, He wrote the 1945 novel Animal Farm as an allegory of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Animal Farm describes barnyard animals who revolt against their owner, and try to create a more equitable society under the leadership of the pig Snowball, who develops principles of “Animalism” such as “Four legs good, two legs bad.” However, Snowball is soon ousted by his fellow pig Napoleon, who exploits the other animals, sends the horse Boxer to be slaughtered, and degrades the principles of Animalism to “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Four years later, He imagined a future Britain subsumed into Oceania, a superpower under the harsh rule of “Big Brother”, in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston Smith and his lover Julia try to rebel against Big Brother, but are tortured into compliance in the Ministry of Love. Nineteen Eighty-Four also described the distortion of the English language for political purposes (“Newspeak”), and introduced many words and phrases that are still used with reference to oppressive governments (thoughtcrime, doublethink, memory hole, “we’ve always been at war with Eastasia,” “war is peace,” “Big Brother is watching you”).

Isaac Asimov

(1920–1992, United States). Along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he was one of genre science fiction’s “Big Three” writers. During the 1930s’ and 1940s’ “Golden Age” of science fiction pulp magazines, Asimov worked closely with Astounding Science Fiction editor John W. Campbell Jr. to create stories such as “Nightfall,” which describes a rare moment of darkness on a planet with multiple suns, and “Robbie,” the first of his many works about robots with positronic brains. (The word “robot” was introduced by the Czech author Karel Čapek in the 1920 play R.U.R., which depicts the worldwide uprising of “Rossum’s Universal Robots”). Before Asimov, most stories about artificial life had followed the template established by Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which a scientist who tries to usurp God’s power to create life is ultimately destroyed by his own creation. Asimov challenged this trope by creating the “Three Laws of Robotics,” which robots in his stories are obligated to follow:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.By using these laws in dozens of stories (some of which were collected in the book I, Robot), Asimov helped to promote a conception of robots as useful machines rather than inhuman monsters. Asimov is also known for his Foundation series, which was inspired by Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Foundation series begins when the “psychohistorian” Hari Seldon realizes that the Galactic Empire will soon fall, and creates the title organization to limit the length of the ensuing Dark Age. Asimov eventually linked together his Robot and Foundation series into a far-reaching “history of the future,” which also includes Asimov’s novels The Caves of Steel, Pebble in the Sky, and The Stars, Like Dust.

Ray Bradbury

• (1920–2012, United States). His science fiction and fantasy stories often contain nostalgic elements related to his Midwestern childhood. The Illinois community Green Town is the setting of his novels Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes, both of which center on boys beginning to enter adulthood. Similarly, small towns on Earth and Mars are the setting of many stories in his 1950 collection The Martian Chronicles, which is made up of loosely connected works about the expeditions of human astronauts, the displacement of indigenous Martians as human settlers arrive, and a nuclear war that destroys most life on Earth. He also wrote about Mars in several stories that appear in his collection The Illustrated Man, whose title character has tattoos that foretell the future. Another theme that recurs in his works is censorship and the importance of literature. This theme is expressed most strongly in his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, which depicts a dystopian future in which “firemen” burn books. The protagonist of Fahrenheit 451 is Guy Montag, a fireman whose wife Mildred is deeply depressed and addicted to television programs that she watches on large “parlor walls.” Montag begins to question his profession after meeting the free-spirited Clarisse McClellan, and secretly preserves books to read, leading to a rebuke from Fire Captain Beatty. Montag is eventually pursued by a robotic attack dog called the “Mechanical Hound,” but escapes to join a community of rebels who memorize classic works of literature.

Kurt Vonnegut

• (1922–2007, United States). His fiction provides a darkly humorous response to the absurdities and violence of the twentieth century. During World War II, he was a prisoner of war in Germany, and lived through the Allied firebombing of Dresden. That experience was the basis for his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, in which the soldier Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck in time,” and perceives his life in a non-linear fashion. Billy travels between the present, past, and future as he is captured by the German army, witnesses the destruction of Dresden, becomes a prosperous optometrist in the town of Ilium, is kidnapped by aliens and placed in a zoo along with the actress Montana Wildhack, and is eventually assassinated. Slaughterhouse-Five contains a number of elements that recur in other of his novels, including the veteran Eliot Rosewater, aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, the unsuccessful science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, and members of the wealthy Rumfoord family. He also wrote the novel Cat’s Cradle, which describes a substance called “ice-nine” that instantly turns liquid water into a solid. Ice-nine was created by the atomic scientist Felix Hoenikker, whose life is researched by the novel’s narrator, John. Another thread in Cat’s Cradle concerns the “bittersweet lies” of the prophet Bokonon, who lives on the Caribbean island San Lorenzo. Bokonon comments on human stupidity after an accident that occurs during the funeral of the San Lorenzan dictator Papa Monzano causes ice-nine to fall into the ocean, destroying almost all life on Earth.

Margaret Atwood

• (1939–present, Canada). One of Canada’s most prominent authors of literary fiction, He has written multiple works that combine speculative elements with psychological realism. In 1985 He published The Handmaid’s Tale, which portrays a dystopian near-future in which the United States has been replaced by the patriarchal Republic of Gilead. The Handmaid’s Tale is narrated by Offred, whose role as a “handmaid” is to bear children for “the Commander” and his wife, Serena Joy. Offred flees her oppressive existence with the help of Nick, a chauffeur who claims to be a member of the underground Mayday resistance movement. In an epilogue set in the year 2195, the archivist Professor Pieixoto discusses Offred’s unknown fate. He later wrote a trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic world where corporations have created bioengineered diseases and people (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam). In addition to her speculative works, He has also written historical fiction (Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin, the latter of which contains a character who is a science fiction author), novels about the relationships between female friends (Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride), and a retelling of Homer’s Odyssey from a female point of view (The Penelopiad).

Douglas Adams

(1952–2001, United Kingdom). He wrote comic science fiction and fantasy novels that poked fun at genre tropes and the quirks of British culture. After working on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, He created the BBC radio series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which premiered in 1978. The radio series became the basis of a series of novels (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe, and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; Mostly Harmless; and the authorized sequel And Another Thing…, which was written by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer after He died). The Hitchhiker’s series focuses on Arthur Dent, an ordinary Englishman who becomes one of the last humans in the universe after Earth is destroyed by the alien Vogons. Arthur and his friend Ford Prefect travel on a starship named the Heart of Gold, along with the “paranoid android” Marvin, the two-headed galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the human scientist Trillian. Arthur eventually discovers that “answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything” is 42 (although the question itself remains unknown). Characters in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series sometimes consult the title reference work, which offers the advice “Don’t Panic,” encourages hitchhikers to carry towels at all times, and provides the recipe for a drink called the “Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.” Besides the Hitchhiker’s series, He also co-authored two books offering comic definitions of British place names (The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff), and wrote a pair of novels about the supernatural adventures of the private investigator Dirk Gently (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul).

The Frogs

(Aristophanes, c. 405 BC) This comedy centers on the god Dionysus, who journeys to the underworld with his much smarter slave, Xanthias. Dionysus is unhappy with the low quality of contemporary theater, and plans to bring the playwright Euripides back from the dead. As the ferryman Charon rows Dionysus to the underworld (Xanthias is forced to walk), a chorus of the title creatures appears and repeatedly chants the phrase “Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax.” Dionysus and Xanthias then have a series of misadventures, during which they alternately claim to be Heracles. Finally, the two find Euripides arguing with the playwright Aeschylus as to which is the better author. After the dramatists “weigh” their verses on a scale, and offer advice on how to save the city of Athens, Dionysus judges that it is Aeschylus who sh

The Birds

• (Aristophanes, c. 414 BC) At the start of this comedy, two Athenians named Peisthetaerus and Euelpides seek out Tereus, a human king who was transformed into a bird called a hoopoe (some translations refer to Tereus as “Epops,” the Greek word for “hoopoe”). Peisthetaerus convinces Tereus and his fellow birds to build a city in the sky, which would allow the birds to demand sacrifices from humans, and to blockade the Olympian gods. Peisthetaerus and Euelpides eat a root that gives them wings, and aid the birds in the construction of the city Nephelokokkygia, or “Cloudcuckooland.” Peisthetaerus also drives away objectionable visitors, such as a poet, an oracle-monger, and a dealer in decrees. After the messenger goddess Iris is found in the city, the residents of Cloudcuckooland demand concessions from the Olympians. On the advice of Prometheus, Peisthetaerus demands that Zeus give up his mistress Basileia, or Sovereignty, from whom “all things come.” Peisthetaerus marries Basileia, and is crowned king.

The Clouds

• (Aristophanes, c. 423 BC) This comedy lampoons Athenian philosophers, especially Socrates and his Sophist followers, whose insubstantial, obfuscating arguments are inspired by the title goddesses. The protagonist, Strepsiades, fears that his horse-obsessed son, Pheidippides, is spending too much money. Consequently, Strepsiades wants Pheidippides to enroll in the Phrontisterion, or “Thinkery” of Socrates to learn specious arguments that can be used to avoid paying debts. Pheidippides refuses, so Strepsiades enrolls in the Thinkery himself. There, Strepsiades learns about new discoveries, such as a technique to measure how far a flea can jump. Eventually Pheidippides is also pressured into studying at the Thinkery, where he and Strepsiades are instructed by the beings Just and Unjust Discourse. Strepsiades believes that the education will enable Pheidippides to foil all creditors, but Pheidippides instead uses his new-found debating skills to justify beating up his father. In response, Strepsiades leads a mob to destroy the Thinkery.

Lysistrata

(Aristophanes, c. 411 BC) The title character of this comedy is an Athenian woman who decides to end the Peloponnesian War, which was still ongoing when the play premiered in 411 BC. At the beginning of the play, Lysistrata assembles a secret “Council of Women,” whose members represent many different regions of Greece. Once the women have gathered, Lysistrata reveals her proposal: all Greek women should abstain from having sex until the men agree to stop fighting. Although Lysistrata’s plan draws protests from her bawdy neighbor Calonice, and from the amorous wife Myrrhine, the Spartan Lampito reluctantly supports the idea, and helps to convince the other women. As Athenian women capture the Acropolis, the female representatives from other regions return home to enlist their compatriots in the plan. The ensuing events include conflicts between a chorus of old women and a chorus of old men, and a personal plea to Myrrhine from her husband, Cinesias. Both genders suffer from sexual deprivation, but the women of Greece remain united. With the aid of a beautiful girl called Diallage, or Reconciliation, Lysistrata convinces the frenzied men to agree to an equitable peace.

Oedipus Rex

This tragedy tells the story of Oedipus, a man who became king of Thebes by defeating a monster called the sphinx. After a mysterious plague devastates Thebes, Oedipus sends his brother-in-law Creon to ask the Oracle at Delphi about the cause of the affliction. The Oracle attributes the plague to the fact that the murderer of Laius, the previous king of Thebes, has never been caught and punished. Oedipus then seeks information from the prophet Teiresias, who is provoked into revealing that Oedipus himself was the killer. Oedipus initially rejects this claim, but begins to have doubts after talking with his wife Jocasta, who was once married to Laius. Jocasta recalls a prophecy that Laius would be killed by his own son, but she claims that this prophecy did not come true, because Laius was murdered by highwaymen. This leads Oedipus to recall killing a man who resembled Laius, and a prophecy which had claimed that Oedipus would kill his own father, and marry his own mother. A shepherd from Mount Cithaeron reveals the awful truth: in response to the prophecy about their son, Laius and Jocasta had tried to expose the infant Oedipus in the wilderness. However, the shepherd had taken pity on the child, and sent him away to be raised in another area. Not knowing his true heritage, Oedipus eventually left home to avoid harming the people whom he believed to be his parents, but unknowingly fulfilled the prophecy by killing Laius and marrying Jocasta. Upon learning this, Jocasta commits suicide, and Oedipus blinds himself with Jocasta’s brooches. Creon assumes control of Thebes as Oedipus begs to be exiled along with his daughters, Ismene and Antigone.

Antigone

(Sophocles, c. 441 BC) Along with Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone is one of the three surviving “Theban plays” by Sophocles that center on the family of Oedipus. The tragedy takes place in the immediate aftermath of a battle in which Oedipus’s two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, killed each other while struggling to control Thebes. The current ruler of the city, Creon, has declared that Eteocles will be given an honorable funeral, but Polyneices will be treated as a rebel and left unburied. Oedipus’s daughter Antigone disobeys Creon’s order, and buries her brother Polyneices against the advice of her frightened sister, Ismene. Despite the intervention of Creon’s son Haemon, who is betrothed to Antigone, Creon sentences Antigone to be entombed alive. Soon after she is imprisoned, Antigone hangs herself. Haemon then commits suicide out of grief, and Creon’s wife Eurydice kills herself when she learns that Haemon is dead. The once-proud Creon blames himself for the loss of his wife and son, and prays for death.

Seven Against Thebes

(Aeschylus, c. 467 BC) This early Greek tragedy tells the story of Oedipus’s two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, who initially agreed to rule Thebes together before Eteocles seized the kingship for himself. Most of the play consists of a conversation between Eteocles, the chorus, and a spy who describes the seven captains who have arrived to besiege the seven gates of Thebes. After each man is described, Eteocles selects the warrior who will face that attacker. When the seventh attacker is revealed to be Polyneices, Eteocles sets off to confront his brother. At the conclusion of the play, it is announced that although Eteocles’s forces have turned back the invaders, the brothers have slain each other. Antigone, the sister of Eteocles and Polyneices, vows to defy the laws of Thebes by giving Polyneices a proper burial.

Medea

• (Euripides, c. 431 BC) This Euripides play retells the myth of Medea, a sorceress from Colchis who saved Jason and the Argonauts during their quest for the Golden Fleece. Set after the Argonauts’ quest, the play depicts Medea’s vengeance against Jason as he prepares to marry the Corinthian princess Glauce. Medea uses poisoned robes to kill Glauce and Glauce’s father Creon (a different character than the Creon who appears in Sophocles’s Theban plays). Not content with this, Medea seeks to hurt Jason further by killing the sons that she bore him. When Jason tries to confront Medea, she appears above the stage in a chariot pulled by dragons, and exchanges bitter words with her former lover before departing to seek refuge with King Aegeus of Athens. The play’s ending is a classic example of a deus ex machina, a literary device in which plot problems are suddenly resolved by an unexpected contrivance.

The Bacchae

(Euripides, c. 405 BC) At the start of this tragedy, the god Dionysus arrives in Thebes to seek vengeance against his aunt Agave, who has denied his immortality, and her son Pentheus, who as King of Thebes bans the worship of Dionysus. The god first drives the women of the city mad, causing them to act as wild Maenads. He then convinces Pentheus to disguise himself in animal skins, and spy on the maddened women. However, the demented Agave mistakes Pentheus for a mountain lion, and dismembers her own son. The climax of the play occurs when Agave presents the head of Pentheus to her horrified father, Cadmus. As Agave realizes what she has done, Dionysus chastises her for her lack of respect, and foretells how Cadmus will spend his final days.

Oresteia

(Aeschylus, c. 458 BC) Originally a four-play cycle, only three works (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides) survive; a “satyr play” entitled Proteus has been lost. Agamemnon, the first play in the trilogy, describes the murder of Agamemnon and his concubine Cassandra by Agamemnon’s adulterous wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. The Libation Bearers continues the story, describing how Agamemnon’s children, Orestes and Electra, avenge their father by murdering Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. However, the Furies relentlessly pursue Orestes for his matricide, leading to the events of The Eumenides. In this third play, Orestes appeals to Athena, who organizes a trial for him (with Apollo as a defense counsel). Ultimately, when Apollo argues that the man is more important than the woman in a marriage, Orestes is acquitted, and the Furies are renamed the Eumenides, or “The Kindly Ones.” The cycle has been retold numerous times in modern literature, notably by Eugene O’Neill in Mourning Becomes Electra and by Jean-Paul Sartre in The Flies.

Abraham

• (originally known as Abram) is the first patriarch in the Book of Genesis. Abraham, who was originally from Ur of the Chaldeans, is promised the land of Canaan, which he enters with his wife Sarah and his nephew Lot. To test Abraham’s faithfulness, the Lord orders him to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah; Abraham complies, but at the last second, he is stopped by an angel and given a ram to sacrifice instead. Abraham then makes a covenant with the Lord, who promises that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore. In Islamic tradition, Abraham (known as Ibrahim) is instead told to sacrifice his son Ishmael, whose mother is the concubine Hagar. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are collectively known as Abrahamic religions due to Abraham’s central role in the scriptures of all three.

Jacob

He is the third and final patriarch in the Book of Genesis, the son of Isaac and Rebekah. In Isaac’s old age, he intends to bless Jacob’s elder twin brother Esau, but Jacob wears goatskins to impersonate his sibling and receives the blessing instead. While traveling to his uncle Laban to escape Esau’s wrath, he has a vision of angels moving up and down a ladder to heaven. After working for seven years, he is given Laban’s daughter Leah in marriage, but works another seven years to marry Laban’s daughter Rachel instead. His name is changed to Israel after he spends a night wrestling with an angel; the angel defeats him by striking his hip socket, which is why Jewish law forbids eating the sciatic muscle. Jacob’s sons become the heads of the Twelve Tribes of Israel; his son Joseph receives a coat of many colors, is sold into slavery by his brothers, and becomes vizier for the pharaoh of Egypt.

Moses

He leads the Israelites during the Exodus, freeing them from their captivity in Egypt. He is abandoned in a basket as a child and is raised by the pharaoh’s daughter. After killing an Egyptian overseer, he flees to the land of Midian, where the Lord appears to him in a burning bush. Moses and his brother Aaron go before the pharaoh to request he release the Israelites from bondage. When the pharaoh refuses, the Lord afflicts Egypt with Ten Plagues, the last of which causes the death of every first-born male child. The Israelites avoid this by painting their doorposts with lamb’s blood, a ritual that leads to the establishment of the holiday of Passover. Moses then leads the Israelites out of Egypt by parting the Red Sea, after which they spend 40 years wandering in the desert. Moses receives the tablets of the Ten Commandments from the Lord on Mount Sinai, but smashes them in anger when he sees the people worshipping a golden calf. Moses dies before entering the Promised Land and is succeeded by Joshua as the leader of the Israelites. Since the books of the Jewish Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) are attributed to Moses, the rules set forth in the Torah are known as the Mosaic Law.

Samson

• is the last of twelve namesake leaders of Israel in the Book of Judges. He possesses superhuman strength as he never cuts his hair. After falling in love with a Philistine woman and preparing to marry her, Samson tells the groomsmen a riddle involving honey in the carcass of a lion; the groomsmen force his betrothed to tell them the answer. Samson’s betrothed is eventually married to another man, causing an enraged Samson to burn the Philistines’ crops and slay 1,000 men with the jawbone of a donkey. Samson’s downfall comes when he falls in love with Delilah, who seduces him for the secret of his strength, then cuts his hair while he is asleep. He is captured and blinded by the Philistines, who display him in the Temple of Dagon. However, he regains his strength and collapses the temple, killing himself and everyone else inside.

Samuel

is a prophet and the namesake of the two books that follow Ruth and precede 1 Kings. Samuel’s mother, Hannah, prays to the Lord for a child, and promises that should she conceive a son she will dedicate him to the service of the Lord. Shortly thereafter, Hannah becomes pregnant with Samuel. When Samuel is a young boy, the Lord calls to him during the night, though he mistakes the voice for that of the head priest Eli, whose downfall he subsequently foretells. As an adult, Samuel leads Israel to a major victory over the Philistines at Mizpah, erecting the stone Ebenezer on the site. At the Israelites’ request, he anoints Saul as the first king of Israel; Saul eventually loses his favor by sparing King Agag of the Amalekites in battle. After Samuel’s death, Saul calls upon the Witch of Endor to summon up Samuel’s ghost; Samuel’s spirit predicts a crushing defeat for Israel at the hands of the Philistines.

David

• is a son of Jesse of Bethlehem. David succeeded Saul as King of Israel and is traditionally held to be a direct ancestor of Jesus. David first takes command of Israel’s army after he uses a simple sling to slay the massive Philistine champion Goliath, an event depicted in sculpture by Michelangelo and Donatello, among others. Though Saul becomes jealous of David and tries to kill him, David escapes with the help of Saul’s son Jonathan, with whom he shares a deep relationship that some modern scholars have interpreted as romantic. As king, David captures the city of Jerusalem and installs the Ark of the Covenant there. He falls in love with the married woman Bathsheba and sends her husband Uriah the Hittite to be killed in battle; this earns him a strong rebuke from the prophet Nathan. David’s children include Absalom, who leads a rebellion against him. David is recognized as the traditional author of the Psalms.

Solomon

• is a son of David who succeeds his father as king. As a young man, Solomon is visited by the Lord, who asks what Solomon desires; Solomon’s reply of “wisdom” pleased the Lord, who granted the request. In the best-known episode illustrating Solomon’s wisdom, he orders that a child be cut in half to determine its true mother. Under Solomon’s rule, Israel built the First Temple of Jerusalem, also known as the Temple of Solomon, whose innermost chamber housed the Ark of the Covenant. Solomon amassed great wealth and had 700 wives. In a short episode that inspired numerous artists, Solomon was visited by the Queen of Sheba. Traditionally, Solomon is considered the author of the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs), as well as the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon.

Elijah the Tishbite

• is a powerful prophet during the reign of King Ahab and his pagan wife Jezebel. Elijah denounces Ahab’s worship of Baal and predicts a three-year drought, after which he flees into the wilderness and is fed by ravens. During this time, Elijah stays with a widow in the town of Zarephath and performs miracles such as multiplying her flour supply and raising her son from the dead. At the end of the drought, Elijah challenges the priests of Baal to a dramatic contest on Mount Carmel where he summons fire from heaven to ignite a burnt offering. Elijah’s mission is carried on by his student Elisha, who asks for a “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit as Elijah bodily ascends to Heaven, carried up on a chariot of fire. Elijah also appears briefly in the New Testament, when both he and Moses converse with Jesus during the Transfiguration. In Jewish tradition, Elijah will appear to herald the coming of the Messiah.

Daniel

• is a Jew who is brought to the court of Nebuchadnezzar II during the Jewish captivity in Babylon. Daniel interprets dreams for the king, including one in which an enormous statue represents four successive kingdoms that will supplant Babylon, and another predicting that Nebuchadnezzar will suffer from seven years of madness. In one episode, Nebuchadnezzar casts Daniel’s friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into a furnace, but all three emerge unscathed. Daniel also serves the later ruler Belshazzar and interprets a mysterious hand that writes on the wall during a feast, predicting Belshazzar’s downfall—which comes that night. In the best-known episode from Daniel’s life, Darius the Mede casts Daniel into a lion’s den after Daniel disobeys an order not to worship the god of Israel; after Daniel emerges unharmed, Darius has those who accused Daniel thrown into the lion’s den instead, where they are killed.

Jonah

• is a minor prophet sent by God to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. Jonah is reluctant to do so and instead boards a ship to Tarshish, but God sends a massive storm to disrupt his journey. Jonah is cast overboard by the crew and swallowed by a large fish, which spits him onto the shore after three days. Jonah eventually continues on to Nineveh and convinces its inhabitants to repent by donning sackcloth and ashes. Indignant that God spared the city from destruction, Jonah sits outside the city, where God causes a gourd to grow over him and provide him shade. A worm then devours the gourd, exposing him to the heat of the Sun; God uses Jonah’s suffering to show Jonah that he should have pity on the people of Nineveh. The Book of Jonah is traditionally read in the afternoon on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

The Pickwick Papers

• (1837) The London gentleman Samuel Pickwick, the president of his namesake “club,” sets out with fellow members Nathaniel Winkle, Tracy Tupman, and Augustus Snodgrass on a series of coach journeys to sites in provincial England. While on their travels, the Pickwickians foil the attempt of Alfred Jingle to elope with Rachael Wardle of Dingley Dell. Pickwick also befriends and employs the Cockney valet Sam Weller, who is known for grotesquely humorous sayings such as “out with it, as the father said to his child, when he swallowed a farthing.”

Oliver Twist

(1838) The orphan Oliver is brought up in a workhouse, where he horrifies the beadle Mr. Bumble by asking for more food. Oliver is then apprenticed to the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry. After fighting with the bully Noah Claypole, Oliver runs away to London. On the road he meets the pickpocket Jack Dawkins, known as the “Artful Dodger,” who leads him to the den of the criminal Fagin. A kindly gentleman named Mr. Brownlow temporarily rescues Oliver, but he is returned to Fagin by the cruel Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. During an attempt to rob a house, Oliver is shot. He is tended by an occupant of the house named Rose Maylie, who eventually learns that Oliver is being plotted against by his villainous half-brother, Monks. The novel ends happily, as Oliver’s chief enemies die or emigrate, and he is left in the care of Mr. Brownlow and Rose, who is revealed to be his aunt.

Nicholas Nickleby

• (1839) After his father dies, Nicholas Nickleby is sent to work at Dotheboys Hall by his cruel uncle Ralph. With the help of the disabled Smike, Nicholas beats the foul schoolmaster Wackford Squeers, and escapes to London. Nicholas’s sister Kate works with the milliner Madame Mantalini, but must confront the attentions of the foppish Mr. Mantalini and Sir Mulberry Hawk. Nicholas finds employment in Portsmouth with the theater manager Vincent Crummles, then returns to London and works for the Cheeryble brothers. Smike dies, and Ralph commits suicide after learning that Smike was his son. Nicholas marries a woman named Madeline Bray, and Kate weds the Cheerybles’ nephew, Frank.

The Old Curiosity Shop

• (1841) Thirteen-year-old Nell Trent goes to live with her grandfather, a gambling addict who owns a London shop filled with mysterious and horrible objects. His gambling causes him to lose the shop to the evil dwarfish moneylender Daniel Quilp. Nell’s older brother Frederick plots to marry her off to Dick Swiveller to get a share of a supposed treasure trove, but Dick eventually marries a servant girl nicknamed “the Marchioness” instead. A major subplot concerns Quilp’s efforts to frame a boy named Kit Nubbles for theft. At the end of the novel, Quilp drowns, and Nell dies shortly before her grandfather also passes away.

A Christmas Carol

• (1843) The cold-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley. Marley’s ghost, who wears heavy chains made of cash boxes and other symbols of greed, tells Scrooge to expect the arrival of three spirits. During a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past, Scrooge is shown a holiday party given by his former employer Mr. Fezziwig, and is taken back to the moment when his fiancée Belle left him on account of his avarice. The Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to the homes of his nephew Fred and his clerk Bob Cratchit, whose son Tiny Tim is near death. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge the grave of an unloved man—Scrooge himself. Scrooge has a change of heart, celebrates Christmas, and becomes a benefactor to the Cratchit family, preventing Tiny Tim from dying.

David Copperfield

• (1850) Dickens’s favorite of his own books, and the most autobiographical. After David’s father dies, his mother marries the cruel Mr. Murdstone. David is sent to a school where he is tormented by the headmaster Creakle, but finds comfort in his friendships with Tommy Traddles and James Steerforth. While working in London, David befriends the optimistic but indebted Mr. Micawber. Eventually, David escapes his grim warehouse job by walking to Dover. There, he finds his great-aunt Betsey Trotwood, who arranges for David to be educated by the lawyer Mr. Wickfield. David keeps in touch with his old nurse Clara Peggotty, whose relative “Little Em’ly” is seduced and abandoned by David’s former friend Steerforth. Youthful infatuation causes David to wed the flighty Dora Spenlow, who eventually dies. After helping to extricate Mr. Wickfield from the schemes of the “humble” clerk Uriah Heep, David marries Mr. Wickfield’s daughter Agnes. Throughout the story, David progresses in the literary world, ultimately becoming a successful novelist.

Bleak House

(1853) This novel revolves around the Chancery case Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which has dragged on for many years as family members fight over an inheritance. The title home (which is actually pleasant, rather than bleak) is owned by John Jarndyce, who cares for his young relatives Richard Carstone and Ada Clare. Ada has a companion named Esther Summerson, who narrates much of the novel, and is Dickens’s only female narrator. Esther suffers a severe illness after caring for a sick boy named Jo, and learns that she is the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock. The lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn discovers Lady Dedlock’s secret but is murdered by the maid Hortense, a crime that is investigated by Inspector Bucket. Lady Dedlock dies after fleeing home and the Chancery suit ends, as the disputed inheritance has been totally consumed by court costs. Other memorable characters in the novel include the merchant Krook, who dies of spontaneous human combustion; Mrs. Jellyby, who busies herself with charitable causes but neglects her own family, and Horace Skimpole, whose blithe irresponsibility burdens others.

Hard Times

(1854) Thomas Gradgrind is a fact-obsessed utilitarian from Coketown, in the north of England. He superintends a school whose students include an ambitious boy named Bitzer, and Sissy Jupe, a young member of Mr. Sleary’s traveling circus. Mr. Gradgrind arranges for his daughter Louisa to marry Josiah Bounderby, an unpleasant older banker who employs Mr. Grandgrind’s son, Tom. The politician James Harthouse tries to seduce Louisa, who returns home to her father and causes him to see the error of his ways. Tom Gradgrind steals from Mr. Bounderby, unsuccessfully tries to frame a worker named Stephen Blackpool, and flees to America.

A Tale of Two Cities

(1859) Paris and London are the title cities of this novel, which famously begins “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” At the start of the novel, the French doctor Alexandre Manette is released after 18 years in the Bastille, where he was imprisoned to prevent him from revealing the crimes of the Evrémonde family. Dr. Manette relocates to England with the help of his daughter Lucie and the Tellson’s Bank employee Jarvis Lorry. Lucie marries Charles Darnay, a Frenchman who bears a striking resemblance to the English lawyer Sidney Carton. Darnay is also a member of the Evrémonde family. After returning to Paris during the French Revolution, Darnay is arrested as the result of a vendetta against the Evrémondes waged by the Defarges, a proletarian couple who encode information about their enemies into Madame Defarge’s knitting. Carton expresses his love for Lucie by taking Darnay’s place in jail, and goes to the guillotine thinking “it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.” Lucie and Darnay escape with the help of the governess Miss Pross, who shoots Madame Defarge.

Great Expectations

(1861) The narrator Philip Pirrip, who is nicknamed “Pip,” is brought up by his sister and her kind husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery. While visiting a churchyard, Pip meets the escaped convict Abel Magwitch, and renders him aid. Later, Pip is hired to “play” with a girl named Estella at Satis House, whose owner Miss Havisham was spurned on her wedding day and has worn a wedding dress ever since. When the lawyer Mr. Jaggers reveals that a mysterious benefactor will fund Pip’s education, Pip assumes that Miss Havisham is making him a “gentleman” so that he can marry Estella. Instead, Estella marries the wealthy Bentley Drummle, who mistreats her. Pip discovers that his benefactor was actually the convict Magwitch, and tries to help Magwitch flee England with the help of Pip’s friends Startop and Herbert Pocket. However, the escape is foiled by Compeyson, the man who jilted Miss Havisham. Pip’s great expectations are dashed, but he becomes a better person, and is finally reunited with the widowed Estella. Dickens modified the novel’s conclusion at the suggestion of the author Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who objected to an ending in which Estella weds another man.