Literature

American Literature

  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Features the billboard of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg overlooking the Valley of Ashes. Characters include Jordan Baker, a cynical golfer, and George Wilson, who murders the title character in a swimming pool. Key symbols include a green light at the end of a dock.

  • Moby-Dick by Herman Melville: Narrated by Ishmael ("Call me Ishmael"). Features the English sailor Bulkington and the cabin boy Pip, who goes insane after being left at sea. The crew of the Pequod includes the pagan harpooner Queequeg and the first mate Starbuck, all led by Captain Ahab in pursuit of a white whale.

  • The Crucible by Arthur Miller: A play set during the Salem witch trials but written as an allegory for McCarthyism. Features Abigail Williams, who drinks chicken blood to curse Elizabeth Proctor. The protagonist, John Proctor, chooses to hang rather than sign a false confession that would ruin his name.

  • Beloved by Toni Morrison: Dedicated to "Sixty Million and more." Features Sethe, a runaway slave living at 124 Bluestone Road, which is haunted by the ghost of her third child. Important characters include Denver, Paul D, and Stamp Paid.

  • The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Set in Puritan Boston. Arthur Dimmesdale delivers an election sermon before dying on a scaffold, revealing a self-inflicted mark on his chest. Roger Chillingworth acts as a malevolent physician to torture Dimmesdale, while Pearl is the daughter of Hester Prynne.

British Literature

  • Hamlet by William Shakespeare: Set in Elsinore Castle, Denmark. Features a play-within-a-play called The Murder of Gonzago (or The Mousetrap). Characters include the courtier Polonius, who is stabbed through an arras, his daughter Ophelia, who drowns, and the protagonist's loyal friend Horatio.

  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: Subtitled The Modern Prometheus. The frame narrative consists of Captain Robert Walton's letters to his sister Margaret Saville while exploring the Arctic. Features the murder of William by a creature, and the execution of the innocent servant Justine Moritz.

  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: Written under the pen name Currer Bell. Features Lowood School, where the protagonist's friend Helen Burns dies of typhus. The protagonist serves as a governess at Thornfield Hall, falls in love with Edward Rochester, and discovers his mad first wife, Bertha Mason, locked in the attic.

  • 1984 by George Orwell: Set in Airstrip One, Oceania. Features the Ministry of Truth, where Winston Smith alters historical records, and the Ministry of Love, which contains Room 101. Important concepts include Newspeak, Doublethink, the character Emmanuel Goldstein, and the telescreens of Big Brother.

  • Paradise Lost by John Milton: An epic poem in blank verse written to "justify the ways of God to men." It opens in media res with fallen angels awakening in Hell on a burning lake, where they build the capital city of Pandemonium. Features the archangel Michael showing Adam a vision of the future.

European & World Literature

  • Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: Regarded as the first modern novel. The protagonist loses his sanity from reading too many chivalric romances and renames himself. He rides the horse Rocinante and is accompanied by the squire Sancho Panza on his donkey, famously attacking windmills thinking they are giants.

  • The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: Centers on Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman who wakes up to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect (ungeziefer). His father injures him by throwing an apple that embeds in his back, and his sister Grete eventually decides the family must get rid of him.

  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez: Chronicles seven generations of the Buendía family in the fictional, isolated town of Macondo. It opens with Colonel Aureliano Buendía remembering the afternoon his father took him to discover ice. Key themes include magical realism and a child born with a pig’s tail.

  • Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Set in St. Petersburg. The former student Rodion Raskolnikov uses an axe to murder an old, unscrupulous pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna, and her sister. He is pursued by the investigator Porfiry Petrovich and convinced to confess by the holy prostitute Sonya Marmeladova.

  • The Odyssey by Homer: An ancient Greek epic poem. Features the loyal wife Penelope, who delays suitors by unweaving a shroud every night, and Telemachus, who seeks his missing father. The protagonist blinds the Cyclops Polyphemus, giving his name as "Nobody," and successfully evades the Sirens by plugging his crew's ears with beeswax.