​ Brave New World ( Huxley ) : genre : dystopian novel , themes : genetic engineering , predictions about future 1984 ( George Orwell ) : genre : dystopian novel ( Big Brother : central controller / government : Ministry of Plenty , Peace , Peace , Love , Truth : concepts of doublethink / blackwhite ) The Catcher in the Rye ( J . D . Salinger ) : themes : youth , innocence , growing up , characters : Holden Caulfield , Phoebe ) significance of title : to think of himself as a catcher / protector of Phoebe from the phoniness of the world , from falling off the cliff in the ryeTo Kill a Mockingbird ( Harper Lee ) : characters : Atticus , Scout , Jem , themes : about race , class , youth , growing up , main conflict : Atticus , a white attorney defends a black man for a crime he is accused for but has not committed , and the conflicts that evolve in Maycomb County due to this trial in courtLord of the Flies ( William Golding ) : characters : Ralph ( democratic ideals ) , Piggy ( intellectual one ) , Jack ( dictatorial ideals ) themes : power , societal organization plot : how the story unravels as plane crashes in an island middle of nowhere / ocean and teenage boys have to organize society amongst themselves in the absence of adults symbols : fire ( civilization ) , eyeglasses ( science , technology , education ) , cone ( seashell ) used to bring boys together : democratic ideals significance of title : at the end of the novel , we encounter a gory scene where the pig ’ s head is stuck on the top of a stick and there are flies hovering over the boar ’ s head / the head is supposed to symbolize the evil in human nature ( as members of the boys end up killing and hurting one another during the power struggle and competition for food and resources ) The Old Man and the Sea ( Ernest Hemingway ) : descriptions of catching fish in the sea ( lengthy descriptions of catching the fish seem to be realistic depictions of the rigor and reality of catching the fish in the sea , parallels to Moby Dick could be foundPride and Prejudice ( Jane Austen ) themes : class , marriage / marriage based on class , behavior , compatibility ( conflicts , misunderstandings , resolution ) Animal Farm ( George Orwell ) : social commentary / animal characters to represent various Russian leaders in the Russian RevolutionThe Metamorphosis ( Kafka ) psychological / symbolic plot : main character wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a huge insect / responses of the family members : father : financial burden of having to work extra hours , mother : maternal instinct and sympathy vs . appall and disgust of finding his own son turned in to a bug : younger sister : mainly disgustFrankenstein ( Mary Shelley ) Victor Frankenstein , a scientist creates a new creation mimicking features of a human being / but his own creation though externally resembling features of a human being , fails to integrate into human society , yearns human contact and sense of belonging , returns to his creator for revenge of having created him ( commentary about human cloning ? ) Number the Stars ( Lois Lowry ) : escape of jewish family during WWII . avoid being relocated to concentration camps . The title being reference to Old Testament reference of numbering the stars ( Jewish tradition ) Hatchet ( Gary Paulsen ) : stranded in wilderness with a hatchet ( plane crashing , survival story , making tools , fire , beginning of civilization ) similar to Lord of the Flies in main driving plotThe Giver ( Lois Lowry ) : dystopian ( lacking emotional concepts / depth ) can ’ t tell difference between what is inherently good and evil ( cannot have one without the other ) Dead Poets Society ( Robin Williams ) John Keating , the English teacher inspiring students of love for poetryThe Great Gatsby ( F . Scott Fitzgerald ) social commentary about the American Dream ; Jay Gatsby – collected great wealth to win Daisy only to discover her married to someone else . twist in ending . Of Mice and Men ( John Steinbeck ) Lennie and George : two migrant workers ; Lennie strong but mentally disabled ; need George to accompany himWhite Tiger ( Aravind Adiga ) issues of religion , caste , loyalty , corruption , poverty in IndiaA Small Place ( Jamaica Kincaid ) Nonfiction : experiences of growing up in Australia ; criticism of Antinguan government : tourism as an industry / British colonial legacyPerfume ( Patrick Suskind ) the story of a murderer : sense of smell : relationship to emotions / Grenouille : master of scents : commit murder to extract their scents : born in 18 th century France ( significance of the ending : people consuming Grenouille “ out of love ” ) The Odyssey ( Homer ) epic poems . Ancient Greek literature ; ten year journey of Odyssey , king of Ithaca after the fall of Troy ( Illiad : fight between king Agamemnon and warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of Trojan war ) The Republic ( Plato ) Socratic dialogue , written by Plato , around 375 B . C concerning justice ( justice = power of the stronger ? ) characteristics of the just city ( the order of society / state , a just city drawn parallel to a just man : law / conscience ) work of philosophy political theoryThe Stranger ( Albert Camus ) Mersault : citizen of France dismissed in North , yet hardly partakes in Mediterranean Africa : lack of emotions in mother ’ s funeralDeath and the Maiden ( Ariel Dorfman ) Schubert ’ s String Quartet : subtitled Death and the Maiden , played by the sadistic doctor during the act of murder : kills an Arab man and sentence to death . 1 st personal narrative before and after the death : aftereffects of psychology / damage of people in a country emerging from totalitarian dictatorship ( end of the play / unclear of who is innocent ) Roberto ’ s guilt / Paulina ’ s paranoiaHamlet ( Shakespeare ) set in Denmark : Prince Hamlet and his revenge against his uncle , Claudius who has murdered Hamlet ’ s father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet ’ s mother ( Freudian interpretation of Oedipus complex ) ( famous line “ to be or not to be ” that is the question ) King Lear ( Shakespeare ) take of a king who bequeaths his power tale of a king who bequeaths his power and to two of his three daughters after they declare their love for him in an obsequious manner . His daughter gets nothing because she will not flatter as her sisters have : later in the plot : tragedy falls on both of them / when disrespected by both of the daughters who now have his wealth , reconciled to his third daughterThe Handmaid ’ s Tale ( Margaret Atwood ) dystopian novel : themes of subjugated women in a patriarchal society – attempt to gain individuality and independenceMacbeth ( Shakespeare ) : tragedy / damaging physical + psychological effects of political ambition at its extreme ( seeking power for its own sake ) Macbeth ( gets prophecy from two of the witches that he will become King of Scotland , consumed by ambition / spurred on by his wife , Lady Macbeth , commits murders . takes Scottish throne for himself . wrecked with guilt and paranoia , commits additional murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion ) bloodbath + civil war drive Mabeth and Lady Macbeth to death + madness ( the famous : life nothing but sound and fury , a tale told by an idiot ) inspired Faulker to write Sound and the FurySound and the Fury ( William Faulkner ) stream of consciousness , four sections / perspectives : From Benjy ’ s perspective / Quentin / Jason / omniscient point of view / the notion of time highlighted throughout the book ( clock / watch , passing of time ) loud cry of Benjy signifying the pulsation of the universe ( mentally disadvantaged , yet providing significant perspective to the perception of reality and of the world in Faulkner ’ s narratives ) The Perks of Being a Wallflower ( Stephen Chbosky ) young adult coming of age ( Asking poignant questions ) The Hitchhiker ’ s Guide to the Galaxy ( Douglas Adams ) Walden ( Henry David Thoreau ) reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings ( independence , social experiment , self - reliance ) Othello ( Shakespeare ) tragedy , tragic hero : Othello a Middle Eastern general in the army ; Iago , the antagonist , themes : racism , love , jealousy , betrayal , revenge , repentance ( manipulates his action to perform wicked deeds ) Iago : highlights the excessive time Cassio and Othello ’ s wife , Desdemona are spending tougher ( Othello , filled with rage murder one he loves ) A Doll ’ s House ( Henrik Ibsen ) : fate of a married woman / lack of opportunities for self - fulfillment in a male - dominated world / Nora and Torvald ( their relationship dynamics / significance of the title ) genre as a play , set : emblematic representation / resemblance of the Doll ’ s House itself ) The Idiot ( Dostoevsky ) : ironic reference to the protagonist Myshkin , a young man whose goodness / open - hearted simplicity and guilelessness led many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight ( Russian church / Christianity / atheism / conversion : to confront Christian faith with everything that negated itCrime and Punishment ( Dostoevsky ) Raskolnikov , the main character of the novel ends up murdering his house lord , the landlady when he encounters her giving a hard time to one of the people living in the building who is struggling to pay his rent ; enraged with a sense of justice , he ends up committing the murder which ends up haunting him through his conscience ; the book deals with not just legal but moral repercussions of crime and punishment / relationship with Sonya ( conscience , legal system ) id / ego / superego ( Freudian concept ) superego : the conscience / legal systemLove in the Time of Cholera : ( Gabriel Garcia Marquez ) theme : love as an emotional and physical disease : depiction of cholera as both as a disease and passion ; two men contrasted as having too much / too little passion – what is more ( lack or plethora of emotion ) conducive contributive to love and happinessThe Road ( Cormac McCarthy ) : post apocalyptic novel : journey of a father and his young son . across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that destroyed most of civilization over several monthsSailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea ( Yukio Mishima ) Ryuji , Fusako , Noboru , Japanese concepts of glory and honor ( heroic death / the sea ) Paper 2 : “ glory is bitter stuff ” Post WWII Western influenceWide Sargasso Sea ( Jean Rhys ) : feminist and anti - colonial response to Charlotte Bronte novel Jane Eyre – describing background to Mr . Rochester ’ s marriage from the point of view of his mad wife Antionette ( Creole heiress ) ( hidden / locked up in the dungeon : inspired from the scene / character in Jane Eyre ) Jane Eyre ( Charlotte Bronte ) : Mr . Rochester and Jane : Jane ’ s moral and spiritual development through 1 st person narrative ( psychological identity ) first historian of the private consciousness . topics of class , sexuality , religion , femininitySeason of Migration to the North ( Tayeb Salih ) : postcolonial Arabic novel by the Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih : impact of British colonialism and European modernity on wisdom of ancestors / rural African societies and Sudanese culture and identity ( counter - narrative to Heart of Darkness ) Heart of Darkness ( Joseph Conrad ) voyage up the Congo River : into Congo Free State in the Heart of Africa . Marlow ( narrator ) narrates the story ( themes : imperialism , racism ) his obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz ( has native wife , complete assimilation ) repeated phrase : “ fascination of abomination ” Kurtz ’ s last words : “ The Horror , The Horror ” ( narrative significance ) Moby Dick ( Herman Melville ) : themes on class , social status , good and evil , existence of God , race , references of Shakespeare , philosophers and the Bible ) Ishamael ’ s narrative of the obsessive , monomaniacal quest of Ahab , captain of the whaling ship Pequod , for revenge on Moby Dick – the giant white sperm wheel that bit off Ahab ’ s leg at the knee in the ship ’ s previous voyageBeloved ( Toni Morrison ) inspired by true story ( Margaret Garner , the African American who escaped slavery – killed her child rather than have them taken back into slavery ) Sethe – likewise killed her children , the ghost of which comes to haunt her / the house ( relationship with Paul D . process o healing ( romanticism of pain of finding beauty in African American blues / Christian tradition ) ( scene of sitting on the steps – foundation of working class of America ) consoling Sethe ( definition of manhood redefined ) The Crucible ( Arthur Miller ) dramatized / fictionalized story of “ Salem Witch Trials in MA ” allegory for McCarthyism = when the US government persecuted people accused of being communists / witch huntingWaiting for Godot ( Samuel Beckett ) : two characters what for the arrival of someone named Godot , who never arrives and while waiting – the characters engage in variety of conversations / controversy on whether Godot was intended by Beckett to represent GodPiano Tuner ( Daniel Mason ) protagonist commissioned to British War office to repair a grand piano , set in British India and Burma , piano slipped to him to bring union and peace amongst princes in BurmaNotes from Underground and the Double ( Dostoevsky ) : underground man ’ s diary , emblematic of political climate in Russian during the time . the Double : the human will in search for total freedom challenging ideologies of nihilism and rational egoismGreat Expectations ( Charles Dickens ) wealth , money , crime , social class , social alienation , imperialism , conscience , climbing up the ladder , gentility moral regeneration , Tale of Two Cities ( Charles Dickens ) before and during French Revolution ; conditions that led up to the Revolution : themes of resurrection , recalled to life , light and darkness ( Good and evil ) John Bunyan pilgrimage redeemed , progress / suffering by one sacrifices , source of wealth ( earned vs . efforts of others ) potential repercussions champion for the poorBrothers Karamazov ( Dostoevsky ) : ethical debacle of God , free will , morality , influence on Einstein , Heidegger , Virginia Wolf , McCarthy , MurukamiAnna Karenina ( Leo Tolstoy ) : Tolstory ’ s nonviolent resistance ( along with Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King ) spiritual awakening ( Christian / anarchism ) themes of hypocrisy , jealousy , faith , fidelity , family , marriage , society , progress , carnal desire and passion , ( agrarian connection to land ) no one may build their happiness on another ’ s pain recurring message through characters ’ conflictBud , not Buddy ( Christopher Paul Curtis ) Great Depression era , jazz , social issues like violence , racism . Bud ’ s journey to find his father : experience of many people during the Great Depression as they had to move around looking for work and new homesHoles ( Louis Sachar ) Camp Green Lake , labor , serving in the camp for the crime of stealing shoes of a famous baseball player ( juvenile Camp ) Maus I , II ( Art Spiegelman ) graphic novel by American cartoonist , interviewing his own father ( Vladek ) about his own experiences as a Polish Jew , and Holocaust survivor : postmodernist techniques : Jews as mice , Germans as cats , and Poles as pigs , memoir , biography , history , fiction , autobiography , mix of genres ( Auschwitz , Nazi concentraion camps ) minimalist drawing style ( innovation in its pacing , structure , page layouts / self - reflective of the process of writing , interviewing , researching for the novelAnne Franke ( The Diary of a Young Girl ) Eat , Pray Love ( Elizabeth Gilbert ) Pleasure of nourishment by eating in Italy , the power of prayer in India , the inner peace and balance of true love in IndonesiaThe Bluest Eye ( Toni Morrison ) : Pecola , black girlhood , white lifestyle / standards , internalized racism , religion , media and culture , shame , breakage and separation ( extended essay for extended discussion ) About a Boy ( Nick Hornby ) Marcus ( schoolboy ) Fiona ( suicidal mother ) Will Freeman ; the budding love relationship between Fiona and Will , and the transformations Marcus goes through with aging and also between their growing relationshipThe Ego and the Id ( Sigmund Freud ) Id ( natural drive , instinct ) Ego ( balance between Id and superego ) Superego ( conscience ) gatekeepers of society , parents , teachers , police , lawAdvertisements ​