All American Lit
The Chambered Nautilus (Oliver Wendell Holmes, American)
"A clearer note is born than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn"
Self-Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson, American)
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"
A Raisin in the Sun
"All God's Children got wings"
Renascence in A Few Figs From Thistles (Edna St. Vincent Millay, American)
"All I could see from where I stood / Was three long mountains and a wood"
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower (William Carlos Williams, American)
"All women are not Helen, / I know that, / but have Helen in their hearts"
A Streetcar Named Desire
"Always depended on the kindness of strangers."
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Wallace Stevens, American)
"Among twenty snowy mountains / The only moving thing" was eye of title avian
Thanatopsis (William Cullen Bryant, American)
"Approach thy grave / like one who...lies down to pleasant dreams"
Song of Myself (Walt Whitman, American)
"Barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world"
The Brewing of Soma (John Greenleaf Whittier, American)
"Behold! the drink of the gods"
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
"Bergin and water."
Our Town
"Blessed Be The Ties That Bind."
The Chambered Nautilus (Oliver Wendell Holmes, American)
"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul"
Moby Dick (Herman Melville, American)
"Call me Ishmael"
The Emperor of Ice Cream (Wallace Stevens, American)
"Call the roller of big cigars"
Gerontion (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"Came Christ the tiger"
The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver in A Few Figs From Thistles (Edna St. Vincent Millay, American)
"Clothes of a king's son, just my size"
The Emperor of Ice Cream (Wallace Stevens, American)
"Cold" and "dumb" woman who once "embroidered fantails" on the sheet that now covers her face
The Lottery (Shirley Jackson, American)
"Corn [will] be heavy soon" if this event is held in June according to Old Man Warner
A Raisin in the Sun
"DAMN MY EGGS!"
Because I could not stop for Death (Emily Dickinson, American)
"Dews grew quivering and chill"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"Do I dare / disturb the universe?"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"Do I dare to eat a peach?"
Our Town
"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?"
Daddy (Sylvia Plath, American)
"Every woman adores a fascist"
Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson, American)
"Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified"
The Wild Honeysuckle (Philip Freneau, American)
"Fair flow, that dost so comely grow"
The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin, American)
Inspired TaNehisi Coates's Between the World and Me
All The King's Men (Robert Penn Warren, American)
Inspired by Huey Long
The Song of Hiawatha (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Inspired by Ojibwe Indian legend
Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy, American)
Inspired by author's socialist indeology
The Road not Taken (Robert Frost, American)
Inspired by friendship w Edward Thomas; inspired latter to enlist in WWI
An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Inspired by real life case of Chester Gillette
The Song of Hiawatha (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Inspired by research of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Instructions that it not be produced until 25 years after his death
Gerontion (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Intended to be preface to The Waste Land
The Naked and the Dead (Norman Mailer, American)
Intentionally leads Lieutenant Hearn into ambush
To a Waterfowl (William Cullen Bryant, American)
"Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?"
Wild Nights! Wild Nights! (Emily Dickinson, American)
"Futile the winds to a heart in port, done with the compass, done with the chart"
Richard Cory (Edward Arlington Robinson, American)
"Gentleman from sole to crown" who later "[puts] a bullet through his head"
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
"Get the Guest", "Bringing Up Baby", and "Hump the Hostess"
Billy Budd, Sailor (Herman Melville, American)
"God bless Captain Vere!"
The Crucible
"God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat,"
Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy, American)
"Great Trust" has replaced all private monopolies
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving, American)
"Hessian trooper" killed during "nameless battle during the Revolutionary War" is Headless Horseman
Thanatopsis (William Cullen Bryant, American)
"Hills rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun"
Because I could not stop for Death (Emily Dickinson, American)
"Horses' heads/Were pointed toward eternity"
Buffalo Bill's (e.e. cummings, American)
"How do you like your blue-eyed boy / Mister Death"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"I am Lazarus, come from the dead, back to tell you all"
The Adventures of Augie March (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
"I am an American, Chicago-born"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be"
Nature (Ralph Waldo Emerson, American)
"I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me"
Song of Myself (Walt Whitman, American)
"I celebrate myself, and sing myself"
The Crucible
"I have fought here three long years to bend these stiff-necked people to me."
The Crucible
"I have given you my soul; leave me my name!"
A Raisin in the Sun
"I live the answer!"
The Road not Taken (Robert Frost, American)
"I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas"
Catchphrase of Bartleby the Scrivener (Herman Melville, American)
"I would prefer not to"
"Hope" is the thing with the feathers (Emily Dickinson, American)
"I've heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea"
Daddy (Sylvia Plath, American)
"Ich, ich, ich, ich, / I could hardly speak"
Self-Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson, American)
"If I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil"
To My Dear and Loving Husband (Anne Bradstreet, American)
"If ever two were one, then surely we"
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (Anne Bradstreet, American)
"Ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain"
I taste a liquor never brewed (Emily Dickinson, American)
"Inebriate of air . . . and debauchee of dew"
Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau, American)
"It matters not how small the beginning may seem to be"
Peter Quince at the Clavier (Wallace Stevens, American)
"Just as my fingers on these keys make music, so the self-same sounds on my spirit make a music too"
Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare in A Few Figs From Thistles (Edna St. Vincent Millay, American)
"Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace" in favor of title figure
The Emperor of Ice Cream (Wallace Stevens, American)
"Let the wenches dawdle in such dress"
A Psalm of Life (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
"Life is real! Life is earnest!"
Annabel Lee (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
"Lived with no other thought / than to love and be loved"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"Mermaids singing, each to each"
Our Town
"Mind of God" contains the vastness of the universe
The Road not Taken (Robert Frost, American)
"Morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black"
Young Goodman Brown (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
"No hopeful verse" (Bible verse) carved upon protagonist's tombstone
The Wild Honeysuckle (Philip Freneau, American)
"No roving foot shall crush thee here, No busy hand provoke a tear"
I taste a liquor never brewed (Emily Dickinson, American)
"Not all the vats upon the Rhine/ Yield such an alcohol"
The Death of the Hired Man (Robert Frost, American)
"Nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope"
Song of Myself (Walt Whitman, American)
"Observing a spear of summer grass"
A Raisin in the Sun
"Ocomogosiay!"
Acquainted with the Night (Robert Frost, American)
"One luminary clock against the sky / Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right"
Thanatopsis (William Cullen Bryant, American)
"Patriarchs of the infant world"
To His Excellency General Washington (Phillis Wheatley, American)
"Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side / Thy every action let the Goddess guide"
anyone lived in a pretty how town (e.e. cummings, American)
"Reaped their sowing and went their came/sun moon stars rain"
The Indian Burying Ground (Philip Freneau, American)
"Reason's self shall bow the knee to shadows and delusions"
The Cantos (Ezra Pound, American)
"Rock-Drill", "Pisan", "The Fifth Decad" are portions of poem
Wild Nights! Wild Nights! (Emily Dickinson, American)
"Rowing in Eden, ah the sea"
The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"Shape without form, shade without colour" and "gesture without motion"
Barbara Frietchie (John Greenleaf Whittier, American)
"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head / but spare your country's flag"
The Chambered Nautilus (Oliver Wendell Holmes, American)
"Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast"
I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died (Emily Dickinson, American)
"Signs away / What portion of me I / Could make assignable"
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
"Slim-hipped" character goes to vomit
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
"So happy for a time"
Gimpel the Fool (Isaac Singer, American)
"Spirit of Evil" convinces protagonist to bake urine into town's bread
Paul Revere's Ride (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
"Startle[s] the pigeons from their perch" as he climbs up wooden stairs to the belfry
Kaddish (Allen Ginsberg, American)
"Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets and eyes"
Birches (Robert Frost, American)
"Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away/You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen"
Skunk Hour (Robert Lowell, American)
"Summer millionaire, who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean catalogue"
The Emperor of Ice Cream (Wallace Stevens, American)
"Take from the dresser of deal" and "Bring flowers in last month's newspapers"
Thanatopsis (William Cullen Bryant, American)
"Take the wings / of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness / or lose thyself in the Oregon woods"
Jim Conklin in Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane, American)
"Tall soldiers"; friend of protagonist who dies after refusing help for gunshot wound
Uncle Remus Stories (Joel Chandler Harris, American)
"Tar Baby" dressed up as doll prompts character to punch it
Old Ironsides (Oliver Wendell Holmes, American)
"Tear her tattered ensign down!"
Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau, American)
"That government is best which governs least"
The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Bret Harte, American)
"The Innocent" accompanies singing w accordion
Annabel Lee (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
"The angels, not half so happy in Heaven/ Went envying her and me"
I Sing the Body Electric (Walt Whitman, American)
"The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them"
Song of Myself (Walt Whitman, American)
"The beautiful uncut hair of graves"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"The eternal Footman hold my coat"
The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"The eyes are not here" echoes line "Eyes I dare not meet in dreams"
The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"The eyes reappear / As the perpetual star / Multifoliate star / Of death's twilight kingdom"
To Helen (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
"The glory that was Greece / and the grandeur that was Rome"
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (Walt Whitman, American)
"The great star early droop'd in the western sky"
Old Ironsides (Oliver Wendell Holmes, American)
"The harpies of the shore shall pluck the eagle of the sea!"
The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"The hour when Lips that would kiss / Form prayers to broken stone"
To a Waterfowl (William Cullen Bryant, American)
"The plashy brink of weedy lake, or marge of river wide"
The Indian Burying Ground (Philip Freneau, American)
"The posture that we give the dead points out the soul's eternal sleep"
The Raven (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
"The rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore"
Thanatopsis (William Cullen Bryant, American)
"The sluggish clod, which the rude swain / Turns with his share"
The Wild Honeysuckle (Philip Freneau, American)
"The space between is but an hour, The frail duration of a flower"
Verses Upon the Burning of our House (Anne Bradstreet, American)
"The world no longer let me love; My hope and Treasure lies above"
Daddy (Sylvia Plath, American)
"There's a stake in [fat] black heart" of poem's subject
This is Just to Say (William Carlos Williams, American)
"They were delicious / so sweet / and so cold"
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
"This is the forest primeval"
The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but with a whimper"
Four Quartets (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future"
Thanatopsis (William Cullen Bryant, American)
"To him who in the love of Nature holds / Communion with her visible forms"
The British Prison-Ship (Philip Freneau, American)
"Traitors, lost to every sense of shame"
The Wild Honeysuckle (Philip Freneau, American)
"Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power" leave "no vestige" of poem's title object
A Streetcar Named Desire
"Varsouviana"
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (Anne Bradstreet, American)
"Wakened was with thundering noise / And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice"
The Raven (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
"What thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore"
Sunflower Sutra (Allen Ginsberg, American)
"When did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?"
Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare in A Few Figs From Thistles (Edna St. Vincent Millay, American)
"When first the shaft into his vision shone / Of light anatomized!"
To a Waterfowl (William Cullen Bryant, American)
"Will soon find a summer home and rest / And scream among thy fellows"
anyone lived in a pretty how town (e.e. cummings, American)
"With up so floating many bells down"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"Women come and go, talking of Michelangelo"
Daddy (Sylvia Plath, American)
"[A] ghastly statue with one gray toe" and a "cleft in your chin instead of your foot"
Madame Sorostris in The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
"had a bad cold"; "wicked pack of cards"
The Color Purple (Alice Walker, American)
"it pisses God off if you walk by" title thing "in a field somewhere and don't notice it"
The Crucible
"more weight!"
A Raisin in the Sun
"murder in her eyes"
A Raisin in the Sun
"mutilating " hair
The Crucible
"preach nothin' but golden candlesticks"
Death of a Salesman
"we're free,"
A Raisin in the Sun
"what one person can do for another, fix him up - sew up the problem."
A Raisin in the Sun
$10,000 life insurance payment to buy a house in a white neighborhood
Death of a Salesman
$70 commission barely covers family expenses
The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin, American)
1963 book titled for titular racial catastrophe
Duke and Dauphin in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, American)
2 conmen taken aboard raft
J.B. (Archibald Macleish, American)
3 Comforters Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildad rejected by protagonist
Our Town
A Stage Manager talks to the audience and serves as a narrator throughout the drama, which is performed on a bare stage
A Raisin in the Sun
A son asks for fifty cents/given 50 cents by his father for school
Mourning Becomes Electra
A work about the Mannons that is a retelling of the Orestia
The Country of Pointed Firs (Sarah Orne Jewett, American)
Abby Martin convinced she is twin of Queen Victoria
Alice and Cora in in The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Abducted by Magua
A Raisin in the Sun
About the Younger family, who attempt to move into an all-white Chicago suburb but are confronted by discrimination
East of Eden (John Steinbeck, American)
Abra Bacon dates Aron; practices marriage w him under willow tree
Cathy Ames in East of Eden (John Steinbeck, American)
Abused by pimp Mr. Edwards; shoots her husband in shoulder and runs away
Lenny in Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck, American)
Accidentally kills Curley's wife by breaking her neck while petting her hair
A Raisin in the Sun
Act 1 of a 2011 sequel to this play depicts a couple selling their house in 1959 after their son Kenneth commits suicide.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, American)
Act II Walpurgisnacht: main characters play games like "Get the Guests" and "Hump the Hostess"
Mourning Becomes Electra
Adam Brant has an affair with Christine, who kills Ezra
The Color Purple (Alice Walker, American)
Adam undergoes circumcision and scarring ritual in solidarity w native African wife Tashi
The Brewing of Soma (John Greenleaf Whittier, American)
Adapted into hymn "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind"
The Little Foxes (Lillian Hellman, American)
Addie says her masters "eat the earth and all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts"
The Raven (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Air grows "denser, perfumed from an unseen censer / swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor"
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (F. Scott, Fitzgerald, American)
Airplane attack leads Percy and his parents to blow up title entity
Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Aka Natty Bumppo aka La Longue Carabine
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Albee
The Little Foxes (Lillian Hellman, American)
Alexandra's father dies trying to get medicine from upstairs
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Alice dies after running in the snow while hypnotized by laborer
Giles Goat-Boy (John Barth, American)
Allegory on Cold War
Emily Webb in Our Town (Thornton Wilder, American)
Allowed to relive one day of her life; chooses her 12th birthday
East of Eden (John Steinbeck, American)
Alludes to Biblical story of Cain and Abel
White Fang (Jack London, American)
Almost dies after fighting bulldog Cherokee
Edward Tudor in The Prince and the Pauper (Mark Twain, American)
Almost killed by hermit before returning to London w Miles Hendon
The Turn of the Screw (Henry James, American)
Ambiguity of narrator (unnamed governess) described by Edmund Wilson
Death of a Salesman
American cheese when he prefers Swiss
The Birthmark (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Aminadab helps Aylmer create fatal concoction; uses it to restore dying plant
Our Town
An actor playing the role of a "belligerent man" stands among the audience and asks questions
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, American)
Anabaptist interrogated as to whether he signed "Washington Irving" to documents
Ethan Frome (Edith Wharton, American)
Andrew Hale refuses to loan fifty dollars to this novel's protagonist
The Octopus (Frank Norris, American)
Annixter killed in duel w Delaney
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Anonymous "poet" frequently referenced is thought to be author's friend Ellery Channing
As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner, American)
Anse takes away Dewey Dell's money to buy "new teeth" after burying wife
The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Antagonist known as Le Renard Subtil
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, American)
Antislavery novel that caused outrage in the South after publication
A Worn Path (Eudora Welty, American)
Appears in collection A Curtain of Green
The Magic Barrel (Bernard Malamud, American)
Appears in short story collection of same name
The Naked and the Dead (Norman Mailer, American)
Argument btwn General Cummings and his subordinate Lieutenant Hearn
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Armful of snapdragons thrown like spears
East of Eden (John Steinbeck, American)
Aron enlists for World War I after discovering that mother Cathy Ames runs brothel in Salinas
Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck, American)
Arrested for Floyd Knowles's outspokenness; skull crushed by policeman during strike
The Ambassadors (Henry James, American)
Artist goes by name Little Bilham because of his diminutive size
Emily Webb in Our Town (Thornton Wilder, American)
Asks Stage Manager "Does anyone ever realize Life while they live it...?"
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Asks dead man abt "the corpse you planted last year in your garden"
Death of a Salesman
Asks for a new pair of stockings
We Wear the Mask (Paul Laurence Dunbar, American)
Asks: "Why should the world be over-wise, in counting all our tears and sighs?"
Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, American)
Associates Varsouviana w mental breakdown
Main Street (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Atheist handyman Miles Bjornstrom eventually marries Bea
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (Anne Bradstreet, American)
Attributed to "a gentlewoman in those parts"
Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote, American)
Author calls protagonist an "American geisha"
The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry, American)
Author claimed that protagonists would have put Queen of Sheba and King Solomon to shame
The Minister's Black Veil (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Author claims story was inspired by Joseph Moody
The Bells (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Author coined word "tintinnabulation" to describe title objects
Theodore Dreiser
Author of An American Tragedy
Toni Morrison
Author of Beloved
Jack London
Author of Call of the Wild
JD Salinger
Author of Catcher in the Rye
John Steinbeck
Author of East of Eden
John Steinbeck
Author of Grapes of Wrath
Ralph Ellison
Author of Invisible Man
Richard Wright
Author of Native Son
John Steinbeck
Author of Of Mice and Men
Theodore Dreiser
Author of Sister Carrie
Kate Chopin
Author of The Awakening
Zora Neale Hurston
Author of Their Eyes Were Watching God
Jack London
Author of White Fang
Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller, American)
Autobiographical novel: Fictionalizes author's struggles as expatriate writer in Paris during late 1920s
Black Boy (Richard Wright, American)
Autobiographical novel; opens w him accidentally burning down family's home in Mississippi
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou, American)
Autobiographical work that takes title from Paul Laurence Dunbar poem
Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Baby rescues protagonist from Italian jail after he punches member of Carabinieri
The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Bartender Rocky is a pimp; manages prostitutes Pearl and Margie
Old Bull Lee in On The Road (Jack Kerouac, American)
Based off William S. Burroughs
Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Based on author's on failing marriage w Zelda
The Fixer (Bernard Malamud, American)
Based on trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, American)
Beaten to death after refusing to tell Simon Legree where Cassy and Emmeline have run away to
The Call of the Wild (Jack London, American)
Becomes known as "Ghost Dog of the Northland"
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Begins "April is the cruelest month"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Begins "Let us go then, you and I"
The Open Boat (Stephen Crane, American)
Begins "None of them knew the color of the sky"
Grass (Carl Sandburg, American)
Begins "Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo"
Chicago (Carl Sandburg, American)
Begins "They tell me you are wicked," "And they tell me you are crooked," "And they tell me you are brutal"
A Psalm of Life (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Begins "tell me not in mournful numbers" that its subject "is but an empty dream"
Harrison Bergeron (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Begins "the year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal"
Circles (Ralph Waldo Emerson, American)
Begins by stating that eye and horizon are first two examples of title figure
White Fang (Jack London, American)
Begins w Bill and Henry being attacked while delivering Lord Alfred's coffin
Seascape (Edward Albee, American)
Begins w Charlie predicting airplane will crash into sand dune
J.B. (Archibald Macleish, American)
Begins w Mr. Zuss and Mr. Nickles acting out play
Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein, American)
Begins w destruction of Buenos Aires by asteroid, leading to Battle of Klendathu
The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (Edward Albee, American)
Begins w male lead being interviewed abt designing World City in Midwest and Pritzker Prize he just won
Delta Wedding (Eudora Welty, American)
Begins w nine year old Laura McRaven taking train from Jackson to see her cousin participate in title event
O Pioneers! (Willa Cather, American)
Begins w protagonist trying to coax little brother's kitten down from top of telegraph pole
George Wilson in The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Believes Gatsby was the one who ran over his wife Myrtle
Paul Riesling in Babbitt (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Best friend of protagonist; imprisoned for shooting wife Zilla
Old Ironsides (Oliver Wendell Holmes, American)
Better to "give her to the god of storms"
The Emperor of Ice Cream (Wallace Stevens, American)
Bids title man to fill "kitchen cups" with "concupiscent curds"
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers, American)
Biff Brannon owns cafe where Jake Blount and Mick Kelly meet protagonist
Death of a Salesman
Biff steals fountain pen
The Ransom of Red Chief (O. Henry, American)
Bill and Sam intend to make $2000 but end up losing $250
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, American)
Billy Bibbit commits suicide after sleeping w prostitute Candy Starr out of fear his mother will find out
The Great God Brown (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Billy Brown steals artist Dion's mask to get Margaret to fall in love w him instead
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Billy Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time" amidst the firebombing of Dresden
The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (Edward Albee, American)
Billy's father kisses him on the lips
Crooks in Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck, American)
Black man who gets nickname from his crooked back
Ras in Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, American)
Black nationalist formerly called "the Exhorter"
Brick Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams, American)
Blames his drinking on "mendacity"; compelled to drink until he hears a "click"
A Streetcar Named Desire
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.
A Streetcar Named Desire
Blind Mexican woman selling flowers for Day of the Dead.
The Lottery (Shirley Jackson, American)
Bobby and Harry Jones gathered large piles of stones in preparation for title event
The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Boer war veterans Lewis and Wetjoen wish to return to home country
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Bokononism practiced on fictional island of San Lorenzo
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Bokononists press bare feet together as religious ritual
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Book: Describes author's living for 2 yrs on land owned by Emerson near title body of water
White Fang (Jack London, American)
Bought and domesticated by Yukon gold-hunter Weedon Scott
Harold Wilson in The Death of the Hired Man (Robert Frost, American)
Boy who is now "teaching in his college" and "studied Latin like the violin"
Birches (Robert Frost, American)
Boy who lives too far from town to play baseball; instead bends branches by swinging amongst title trees
A Streetcar Named Desire
Brags that he weighs 207 pounds
Barbara Frietchie (John Greenleaf Whittier, American)
Bravest of "all in Frederick town"
Uncle Remus Stories (Joel Chandler Harris, American)
Brer Rabbit avoids schemes of Brer Bear
A Raisin in the Sun
Invest in a liquor store
The Maltese Malcon (Samuel Dashiell Hammett, American)
Brigid O'Shaughnessy exemplifies trope of the femme fatale
Brick Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams, American)
Broke ankle jumping hurdles at old high school track
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving, American)
Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane compete for Katrina van Tassel's hand in marriage
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Thornton Wilder, American)
Brother Juniper watches as Jaime, Uncle Pio, Esteban, Pepita, and Marquesa de Montemayor fall to their deaths
A Raisin in the Sun
Bruce Norris wrote a sequel to this play
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Calls London the "Unreal City"
The Brewing of Soma (John Greenleaf Whittier, American)
Calls for "milky sap" and "honey from the hollow oak"
Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Calls voting "a sort of gaming like checkers and backgammon"
Moby Dick (Herman Melville, American)
Cannibal Queequeg's coffin saves main character from drowning
Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Captain Blicero eventually sacrifices Gottfried and searches for 00000 rocket he created
Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane, American)
Captain calls 304th regiment "mule drivers" and "mud diggers"
A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor, American)
Car accident occurs when cat Pitty Sing jumps onto Bailey's face
On The Road (Jack Kerouac, American)
Carlo Marx and Dean Moriarty have philosophical discussions in Denver
Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck, American)
Carlson shoots Candy's aging sheepdog after Crooks wins game of horseshoes
Cash in As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner, American)
Carpenter; has cement poured on broken leg after disastrous attempt to ford river
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Centers on Edmund and the rest of the Tyrone family, set on one day in August 1912
The Skin of Our Teeth (Thornton Wilder, American)
Central family has pet dinosaur and mammoth; survives an ice age
The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, American)
Central family includes sister Caddy, Harvard student Quentin, racist Jason, disabled Benji
The Skin of Our Teeth (Thornton Wilder, American)
Central family served by maid Lily Sabina
For the Union Dead (Robert Lowell, American)
Central object "propped by a plank" and "sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat"
Ras in Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, American)
Changes named to "the Destroyer" during riot; stabbed by main character
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Chapter "Where I Lived and What I Lived For" describes author's residence
Vardaman in As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner, American)
Chapter consists just of him saying "my mother is a fish"
Cash in As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner, American)
Chapter consists of 13 reasons why he made coffin "on the bevel"
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison, American)
Chapters titled after passages from Dick and Jane
Our Town
Character admires heliotropes planted by her future mother-in-law
Long Day's Journey into Night (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Character becomes lover of Fat Violet to save her job
Desiree's Baby (Kate Chopin, American)
Character believed to have been abandoned at parents' doorstep by band of Texans
The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, American)
Character breaks into tears bc carriage turns the wrong way around Confederate monument
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (Mark Twain, American)
Character calls Parson Walker "the best exhorter"; owns dog named Andrew Jackson
Night of the Iguana (Tennessee Williams, American)
Character completes final poem shortly before dying of stroke; claims to be world's oldest poet
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, American)
Character contemplates adding 4th television wall
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison, American)
Character convinces protagonist to feed pedophile Soaphead Church's dog poisoned meat
A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, American)
Character covers lightbulb w Chinese lantern so others don't see her in unflattering light
Desiree's Baby (Kate Chopin, American)
Character discovers letter from mother praising God because he never learned about her heritage
Desiree's Baby (Kate Chopin, American)
Character discusses cutting of fingernails w turban-wearing Zandrine
O Pioneers! (Willa Cather, American)
Character flees to Mexico to escape relationship w Marie
Young Goodman Brown (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Character gives black, eerily serpentine staff to Goody Cloyse
A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, American)
Character gives protagonist bus ticket to Laurel as birthday present
The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry, American)
Character goes to Madame Sofronie's: requires her to curl her hair afterwards
The Luck of Roaring Camp (Bret Harte, American)
Character has finger "rastled" by baby, leading him to repeat phrase "The damned little cuss!"
East of Eden (John Steinbeck, American)
Character loses family fortune when delays cause lettuce in refrigerated train cars to spoil
The Optimist's Daughter (Eudora Welty, American)
Character nearly uses breadboard as a weapon
On The Road (Jack Kerouac, American)
Character of Carlo Marx represents Allen Ginsberg
The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Bret Harte, American)
Character performs rendition of Iliad while mispronouncing many of the names ("Ash-heels" instead of Achilles)
Angels in America (Tony Kushner, American)
Character pretends illness is liver cancer and cared for by drag queen Belize
A Hazard of New Fortunes (William Dean Howells, American)
Character rejected by charity worker Margaret Eaton
Our Town
Character relives her 12th birthday
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Character remembers being told "Marie, hold on tight" while sledding
The Open Boat (Stephen Crane, American)
Character remembers line "I never more shall see my own, my native land" from Norton's poem "Bingen on the Rhine"
The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, American)
Character remembers seeing mud on sister's underwear when she climbed tree to spy on grandmother's funeral
A White Heron (Sarah Orne Jewett, American)
Character reminisces abt son Dan who moved west to California
The Open Boat (Stephen Crane, American)
Character repeats phrase "Funny they don't see us"
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Wallace Stevens, American)
Character rides over Connecticut in glass coach
Young Goodman Brown (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Character says he helped protagonist's grandfather whip Quaker woman and father burn down Indian village
Ethan Frome (Edith Wharton, American)
Character steers into "big elm" in failed suicide attempt after wife Zeena tries to send Mattie Silver away
My Antonia (Willa Cather, American)
Character takes suggestion from Lena Lingard to visit protagonist
A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor, American)
Character tells story abt watermelon carved w initials "E.A.T."
Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson, American)
Character tries to sacrifice goat to God but attacked by grandson instead
The Prince and the Pauper (Mark Twain, American)
Character uses royal seal to crack open nuts
Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck, American)
Character wears glove full of Vaseline on left hand
John Proctor from The Crucible (Arthur Miller, American)
Character who cheated on his wife forgets 7th Commandment
Thomas Putnam from The Crucible (Arthur Miller, American)
Character who takes advantage of play's events to obtain land
Ship of Fools (Katherine Anne Porter, American)
Characters include Jenny Brown, twins Ric and Rac, Captain Thiele, and group of Nazis
The Color Purple (Alice Walker, American)
Characters make quilt out of curtains torn apart during fight btwn Sofia and Harpo
The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Bret Harte, American)
Characters sing refrain "I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord, and I'm bound to die in his army"
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, American)
Characters vote to go on fishing trip and watch world series
Moby Dick (Herman Melville, American)
Characters: Captain Ahab, first mate Starbuck, second mate Stubbs, Queequeg, Pip, Ishmael
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, American)
Charles Cheswick drowns himself in swimming pool
A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor, American)
Children June Star and John Wesley constantly abuse their parents and grandmother
Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck, American)
Christ figure killed by pickaxe-wielding man during labor strike
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, American)
Christlike title figure killed by Simon Legree at end of novel
Angels in America (Tony Kushner, American)
Chronicles AIDS epidemic in gay community during 1980s
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman (Wallace Stevens, American)
Claims "Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame"
Birches (Robert Frost, American)
Claims "one could do worse than be a swinger of" title trees
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, American)
Claims detective novels have "depressing way of minding its own business... and answering its own questions."
Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Claims single man's decision to cease holding slaves would lead to abolition of slavery
Roger Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Claims to have learned medicine during captivity w Indians
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison, American)
Claudia and Frieda plant marigold seeds in hope that unborn child will not die if they bloom
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Clifford freed from prison for murder of uncle; was framed by Jaffrey Pyncheon
O Pioneers! (Willa Cather, American)
Climactic action triggered by death from appendicitis of Amedée Chevalier
The Lottery (Shirley Jackson, American)
Clyde Dunbar unable to attend central event due to broken leg
The Gilded Age (Mark Twain, American)
Collaboration btwn Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
The Cantos (Ezra Pound, American)
Collection of 120 poems assembled across 4 decades
Tales of the Alhambra (Washington Irving, American)
Collection of essays and sketches inspired by author's trip to title Spanish palace in Granada
Four Quartets (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Collection of five-section poems each corresponding to classical element
The Devil's Dictionary (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Collection of satirical definitions
The Piazza Tales (Herman Melville, American)
Collection of stories containing Bartleby the Scrivener, Billy Budd
Pale Horse, Pale Rider (Katherine Anne Porter, American)
Collection of three short novels: "Old Mortality", "Noon Wine", and "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, American)
Colonel Cathcart continues to raise number of missions 256th Air Force Squadron must fly
Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote, American)
Combats depression she calls the "mean reds" by partaking in title activity
Skipper in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams, American)
Commits suicide after homosexual feelings are rebuffed by friend BIG DADDY POLLITT
Quentin in The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, American)
Commits suicide after learning of Caddy getting pregnant from Dalton Ames
Larry in All My Sons (Arthur Miller, American)
Committed suicide after finding out abt Joe's mistake
White Fang (Jack London, American)
Companion to Call of the Wild
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Compares "Yellow fog" to cat that rubs on the window-panes
Self-Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson, American)
Compares society to joint-stock company and argues that "who so would be a man, must be a nonconformist"
Tiresias in The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Complains abt his "wrinkled dugs'
Mending Wall (Robert Frost, American)
Compromise before creating title object involves "loaves" and "balls"
Patterns (Amy Lowell, American)
Concludes by asking "Christ! What are [the titular entities] for?"
Song of Myself (Walt Whitman, American)
Consists of 52 sections
Four Quartets (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Consists of Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, Little Gidding
Prairie Trilogy (Willa Cather, American)
Consists of O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Constantly blaring foghorn.
A Tramp Abroad (Mark Twain, American)
Contains "An Awful German Language"
The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Contains fictionalized account of Fort William Henry
Nature (Ralph Waldo Emerson, American)
Contains passage abt becoming "transparent eyeball" while immersed in title entity
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (Anne Bradstreet, American)
Contains quaternions "The Four Monarchies", "The Four Elements", "The Four Seasons", "The Four Ages of Man"
Beth in Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, American)
Contracts scarlet fever at young age, eventually leads to her death
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Wallace Stevens, American)
Contrasts "beauty of inflections" w "beauty of innuendos"
East of Eden (John Steinbeck, American)
Cook Lee discusses importance of Hebrew word "timshel" in Bible (means "thou mayest")
Desiree's Baby (Kate Chopin, American)
Corbeille, layette, and willow cradle thrown into bonfire at end of story
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Covers up drinking by adding water to a decanter of whiskey.
The Crucible
Cows wandering the highroads are to blame for the sorrow
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Crashed cars after swerving to avoid hitting a porcupine.
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Crimes punished with impalement on "the hook"
Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Criticizes arguments for expediency in tract by William Paley
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, American)
Critiques A. A. Milne's The Red House Mystery
Giles Corey in The Crucible (Arthur Miller, American)
Crushed to death after refusing to admit to witchcraft
Nicole Warren in Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Damaged by sexual abuse from father Devereux Warren
The Crucible
Dancing in the woods with the slave Tituba
As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner, American)
Darl sent to insane asylum for burning down Gillespie's barn in attempt to get rid of coffin
Homer Barron in A Rose for Emily (William Faulkner, American)
Dates title character; killed by arsenic poisoning and has body preserved
Eva St. Clare in Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, American)
Daughter of Augustine St. Clare; bonds w title character thru mutual deep Christian faith
Our Town
Dead as "matter-of-fact, without sentimentality, and, above all, without lugubriousness"
The Devil's Dictionary (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Defines lawyer as "one skilled in circumvention of the law"
Roman Fever (Edith Wharton, American)
Delphin Slade's widow reveals that she forged letter from Mrs. Ansley; caused them to fall ill at Colosseum
Sunday Morning (Wallace Stevens, American)
Depicts "a ring of men" who "chant in orgy... Their boisterous devotion to the sun"
Dancing in the Streets (Barbara Ehrenreich, American)
Described term "collective joy" at concerts
Howl (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Describes "angelheaded hipsters" throwing "potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism"
Little Gidding in Four Quartets (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Describes Battle of Britain; "The fire and rose are one"
Looking for Zora (Alice Walker, American)
Describes author's search for body of Zora Neale Hurston
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou, American)
Describes author's struggles w racial discrimination in Stamps, Arkansas
Nickel and Dimed (Barbara Ehrenreich, American)
Describes authors attempts to live on minimum-wage jobs
The Devil's Dictionary (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Describes conservatives as men "who [are] enamored of existing evils"
Portrait of a Lady (Henry James, American)
Describes failed marriage btwn Isabel Archer and Gilbert Osmond
"Hope" is the thing with the feathers (Emily Dickinson, American)
Describes feeling "that perches in the soul / and sings the tune without the words"
I Sing the Body Electric (Walt Whitman, American)
Describes female body: "the skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair"
The Negro Speaks of Rivers (Langston Hughes, American)
Describes hearing "the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln/went down to New Orleans"
Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Describes how author spent night in jail after not paying taxes for 6 years
Circles (Ralph Waldo Emerson, American)
Describes how we repeatedly produce broader generalizations to explain world
The Devil's Dictionary (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Describes liberals as men "who wish to replace [conservatives] with others"
Black Boy (Richard Wright, American)
Describes narrator's experiences w racial prejudice in Chicago
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (Walt Whitman, American)
Describes person as "a western orb sailing the heaven" and warbling hermit thrush
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving, American)
Describes school which thieves might access easily but not be able to escape
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Dictator Papa Monzano commits suicide w Ice-Nine: frozen body falls into sea
Eva St. Clare in Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, American)
Dies after experiencing vision of heaven
Miles in The Turn of the Screw (Henry James, American)
Dies in arms of narrator after seeing Peter Quint; cause is unclear
Snowden in Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, American)
Dies under parachute and whispers "I'm cold"
Clarence in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mark Twain, American)
Dispatches 500 warriors on bicycles to save protagonist after he goes undercover w king
Black Boy (Richard Wright, American)
Divided into the sections "Southern Night" and "The Horror and the Glory"
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams, American)
Dixie, Trixie, Buster, Sonny, and Polly are children of Mae and Gooper
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Doc Hardy's competency is challenged
The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Don Parritt confesses he turned mother into police out of hatred, jumps off fire escape at urging of Larry Slade
Cannery Row (John Steinbeck, American)
Dora Flood runs brothel called Bear Flag Restaurant
All The King's Men (Robert Penn Warren, American)
Dr. Adam Stanton shoots governor to death at Capitol building after learning of sister's affair
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Draws on author's own experiences in Spanish Civil War as reporter for North American Newspaper Alliance
Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, American)
Dreams abt marrying Shep Huntleigh
Lenny in Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck, American)
Dreams of owning rabbit farm; killed by George to protect him from angry mob
Quentin in The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, American)
Drowns himself in Charles River on June 2, 1910
Roberta Alden in An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Drowns in Big Bittern Lake after protagonist hits her in face w camera and capsizes their boat
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (Stephen Crane, American)
Drummer given shelter behind armor-plated bar in Weary Gentleman Saloon
The Day of the Locust (Nathaniel West, American)
Dwarf Abe Kusich works as bookie for Miguel's cockfights
Our Town (Thornton Wilder, American)
Each act includes singing of "Blessed Be the Tie That Binds"
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Economic curve developed by Alan Krueger named after novel; measures sticky income
Robert Lebrun
Edna meets and falls in love with him, but he goes back to Mexico
Alcee Arobin
Edna starts an affair with him
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Elderly Anselmo tasked w killing sentry
Meg in Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, American)
Eldest of title characters; marries tutor John Brooke after Civil War
A Streetcar Named Desire
Elia Kazan asserted that a "desire to preserve tradition" and an "attraction to what is going to destroy tradition" are common to both this play's protagonist and its author.
Where are you Going? Where Have You Been? (Joyce Carol Oates, American)
Ellie Oscar and Arnold Friend drive gold convertible
A Streetcar Named Desire
Elysian Fields to live with her sister, whose husband Stanley throws a radio out the window during Mitch's poker game.
O Pioneers! (Willa Cather, American)
Emil gives turquoise shirt studs to Marie at church carnival; kisses her during blackout
Bartleby the Scrivener (Herman Melville, American)
Employees Nippers and Turkey
Ethan Frome (Edith Wharton, American)
End of novel reveals Zeena has cared for title character and Mattie Silver after "accident" 24 yrs ago
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Ending rewritten 47 times
The Fish (Elizabeth Bishop, American)
Ends "everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!" before narrator lets go of title entity
Sunday Morning (Wallace Stevens, American)
Ends by describing pigeons sinking "downward to darkness, on extended wings"
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Robert Frost, American)
Ends by repeating "And miles to go before I sleep"
As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner, American)
Ends w Cash, Jewel, Vardaman, and Dewey Dell meeting father's new wife
Zoo Story (Edward Albee, American)
Ends w Jerry impaling himself on knife held by Peter; asks "Could i have planned all this?"
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Ends w bird saying "Poo-tee-weet"
Daddy (Sylvia Plath, American)
Ends w line "You bastard, I'm through"
For the Union Dead (Robert Lowell, American)
Ends w lines "a savage servility slides by on grease"
This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Ends w protagonist discovering death of friend monsignor Darcy
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Ends w protagonist dreaming of lions on beach
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, American)
Ends w protagonist fleeing to Sweden after being suggested to do so by Orr
The Call of the Wild (Jack London, American)
Ends w protagonist joining pack of timber wolves in the wild
The Maltese Malcon (Samuel Dashiell Hammett, American)
Ends w protagonist learning that title object is a fake
Gimpel the Fool (Isaac Singer, American)
Ends w protagonist leaving Frampol to become a beggar
The Color Purple (Alice Walker, American)
Ends w protagonist's sister arriving at 4th of July barbecue
The Open Boat (Stephen Crane, American)
Ends when Billie the Oiler dies, while other three are rescued
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Ends with "Shantih, Shantih, Shantih"
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Ends with discovery of deed to land in Maine behind Colonel's portrait
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Epic poem abt Acadian woman and her love for Gabriel Lajeunesse
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Epigraph from Dante's Divine Comedy
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Epigraph quotes Gertrude Stein's declaration that "you are all a lost generation"
The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Epigraph quotes Heart of Darkness: "Mistah Kurtz--he dead" and "Life is very long"
The Color Purple (Alice Walker, American)
Epistolary novel chronicling life of Celie in rural Georgia
Eliza Harris in in Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, American)
Escapes across frozen Ohio river by hopping on ice blocks
Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Essay abt resisting government
Circles (Ralph Waldo Emerson, American)
Essay named after title shape
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, American)
Essay: Criticizes failings of detective fiction
The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster (Norman Mailer, American)
Essay: Describes war btwn "the Hip and the Square"; dubs title figure "philosophical psychopath"
Notes of a Native Son (James Baldwin, American)
Essay: Title refers to Richard Wright's most famous novel
Angels in America (Tony Kushner, American)
Ethel Rosenberg haunts fictionalized version of Roy Cohn
Notes of a Native Son (James Baldwin, American)
Eulogizes author's dead father, who was a preacher
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers, American)
Exemplifies Southern Gothic genre
Miles in The Turn of the Screw (Henry James, American)
Expelled from school bc he "said things" to those he liked
Rip Van Winkle (Washington Irving, American)
Explains summer thunderstorms caused by Henry Hudson's crew of ghosts playing ninepins
The Great God Brown (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Expressionist play featuring use of large masks
The Red Wheelbarrow (William Carlos Williams, American)
Extremely short poem: "so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens"
Lenny in Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck, American)
Extremely strong but intellectually disabled; relies on George for leadership
Death of a Salesman
Fails summer school, needs help with 4th grade subjects
The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton, American)
Failure of Julius Beaufort's bank causes Mrs. Mingott to have stroke
Madame Sorostris in The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Famous clairvoyante: "The wisest woman in Europe"
The Awakening (Kate Chopin, American)
Farival twins play piano duet at night
Moby Dick (Herman Melville, American)
Father Mapple's sermon in New Bedford
The Optimist's Daughter (Eudora Welty, American)
Father dies during operation to fix detached retina; has his belongings desecrated by widow Fay
Duncan Heyward in The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Father of Alice and Cora Munro
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Fear that everyone will become the same through rearrangement of "chromozones."
Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Features Byron the sentient light bulb
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Felix Hoenikker creates fictional substance Ice-Nine
Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane, American)
Fictional battle in novel may be based on Chancellorsville
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Fifteen-year old boy who accidentally killed his mother with a shotgun
The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Fifth section begins "Here we go round the prickly pear"
The Call of the Wild (Jack London, American)
Fights and kills Spitz for lead sled dog position
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Final section "What the Thunder Said" quotes from Upanishads
The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Final section quotes fragments of Lord's Prayer
Tobacco Road (Erskine Caldwell, American)
Fire set by protagonist leads to his and Ada's death
The Octopus (Frank Norris, American)
First novel in planned Epic of Wheat trilogy
The Cantos (Ezra Pound, American)
First part of poem adapted from the Odyssey; begins "And then went down to the ship"
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Henry David Thoreau, American)
First section "Economy" sums up costs of building house
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
First section "The Burial of the Dead"
The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
First section "The Custom House" describes Surveyor Jonathan Pue finding title object
Howl (Allen Ginsberg, American)
First section opens mentioning friends who were "starving hysterical naked"
Meyer Wolsheim in The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Fixed 1919 World Series and wears molars for cufflinks
Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin, American)
Florence keeps Deborah's letter to blackmail her brother
Their Eyes were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, American)
Following Joe Stark's death, protagonist burns head rags and wears her hair in a long braid
White Fang (Jack London, American)
Forced to fight other dogs by Beauty Smith
Howard Wagner in Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, American)
Forces Willy to listen to recording of son reciting state capitals
Biff from Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, American)
Former football star; estranged from father but reconciles at end of play
Tod Clifton in Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, American)
Former leader of the Brotherhood; leaves to sell Sambo dolls and shot while resisting arrest
The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck, American)
Forms trilogy w Sons and A House Divided
Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, American)
Fountain pen stolen by Biff
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Wallace Stevens, American)
Fourth section notes that "a man and a woman and" title creature "are one"
Death of a Salesman
Frank's Chop House
Gerontion (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Fraulein von Kulp, Madame de Tornquist, Hakagawa and Mr. Silvero
The Road not Taken (Robert Frost, American)
Frequently misinterpreted; author intended it to be joke
Roger Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Frequently referred to as "The Leech"
Adele Ratignolle
Friend of Edna who begins worrying about her
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Friends with Helen Ferguson
The Crucible
Frightened by a yellow bird while in court
Mending Wall (Robert Frost, American)
Game involving title object orders players to "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
A Separate Peace (John Knowles, American)
Gene Forrester cripples Phineas by shaking tree branch to make him fall and break his leg
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, American)
George "kills" son by telling Martha he "swerved, to avoid a porcupine" before car accident
The Skin of Our Teeth (Thornton Wilder, American)
George Antrobus both develops the alphabet and invents the wheel
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, American)
George enters carrying snapdragons calling "Flores para los muertos" (reference to A Streetcar Named Desire)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
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 Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mark Twain, American)
Gets called "The Boss" after using explosives to cause rival magician's tower to crumble
The Crucible
Giles Corey crushed by rocks
The Children's Hour (Lillian Hellman, American)
Girl overhears conversation in which woman accused of being jealous of Dr. Joe Cardin
Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Gives birth to stillborn son and dies of hemorrhaging due to small pelvis
Joe Keller in All My Sons (Arthur Miller, American)
Goes offstage to get coat and shoots himself at end of play
Thea in The Adventures of Augie March (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Goes to Mexico to catch lizards w eagle Caligula
Leonce
Goes to NY to attend Edna's sister's wedding
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams, American)
Gooper and Mae's plans to inherit money of dying BIG DADDY ruined after title character lies abt getting pregnant
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Gothic novel abt Pyncheon family and title estate
A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor, American)
Grandmother calls Misfit "one of my babies...one of my own children"
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Group meets w force under El Sordo, who is later ambushed on hill by enemy bombers
Chambers in Pudd'nhead Wilson (Mark Twain, American)
Grows up believing himself to be Driscoll heir; becomes spoiled aristocrat
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Gun shoots out an umbrella
Billy Budd, Sailor (Herman Melville, American)
HMS Bellipotent
A Raisin in the Sun
Hansberry
Rip Van Winkle (Washington Irving, American)
Happily finds tyrannical wife dead after long slumber but dog Wolf still alive
Moby Dick (Herman Melville, American)
Harpooner worships idol Yojo
Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, American)
Has "always depended on the kindness of strangers"
Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Has incurable habit of dishonesty narrator finds attractive
Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Has title object imprinted on his chest; unable to bear sin and dies at end of novel
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Heavily edited by Ezra Pound
Clarence in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mark Twain, American)
Helps protagonist run Man-Factory to educate peasants
A Raisin in the Sun
Her father's 1940 court fight against racist housing laws provided the basis
The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Hester, Pearl, and Dimmesdale stand together on scaffold while meteor in "A" shape passes by
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Hitting "younger men... and children... women... birds."
Sheperdsons and Grangerfords in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, American)
Hold rifles btwn knees as minister preaches abt brotherly love
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Holgrave and Phoebe declare their love for each other at end of novel
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Holy book describes teams called "karass" in some of its "calypso" poems
The Day of the Locust (Nathaniel West, American)
Homer Simpson commits suicide after finding Faye Greener cheating on him w Miguel
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Hoosiers considered to be granfalloons (false karasses)
Ars Poetica (Archibald Macleish, American)
Horace-inspired poem that state "a poem should not mean / but be"
Pidgeon House
House into which Edna moves
Death of a Salesman
Howard Wagner about a non-traveling job
Eliza Harris in in Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, American)
Hunted by Tom Loker; reunites w husband George and escapes to Canada
Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, American)
Husband Allen Grey shoots himself after being caught w another man
Roger Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Husband of Hester; disguises himself to get revenge on Dimmesdale by tormenting him
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, American)
IBM machine promotes Major Major Major to Major
Willy from Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, American)
Idolizes Dave Singleman
The Chambered Nautilus (Oliver Wendell Holmes, American)
Image of "sunless crypt un-sealed"
The Song of Hiawatha (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Imitates Kalevala in use of trochaic tetrameter
Duke and Dauphin in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, American)
Impersonate as brothers of deceased Peter Wilks
A Streetcar Named Desire
In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, George parodies this play by saying "Flores por los muertos!"
The Crucible
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.
Spoon River Anthology (Edgar Lee Masters, American)
Includes fragmentary epic by Johnathan Swift Somers
Native Son (Richard Wright, American)
Jan Erlone hires Boris Max, who unsuccessfully tries to prevent death penalty for protagonist
Zoo Story (Edward Albee, American)
Jerry calls himself a "h-o-m-o-s-e-x-u-a-l"
Zoo Story (Edward Albee, American)
Jerry complains abt black drag-queen apartment-mate who wears kimono
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck, American)
Joad family work as strikebreakers on peach orchard; flee to cotton farm after Tom comitting murder
Main Street (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Jolly Seventeen Club puts on performance of The Girl of Kankakee
A Raisin in the Sun
Joseph Asagai courts Beneatha
Native Son (Richard Wright, American)
Journalist finds a skeleton and an earring in a furnace to uncover crime
The Devil and Daniel Webster (Stephen Vincent Benet, American)
Judge Hathorne and jury rule against Mr. Scratch
A Rose for Emily (William Faulkner, American)
Judge Stevens sends crew equipped w lime to secretly de-stench house in the night
The Devil and Daniel Webster (Stephen Vincent Benet, American)
Jury of dead men includes Simon Girty, King Philip, and Blackbeard
A Raisin in the Sun
Karl Lindner to Clybourne Park
Theodore Hickman in The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Killed his wife Evelyn "to give her peace" bc he kept cheating on her
A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor, American)
Killer says his name derives from inability to decide whether Jesus raised the dead or not
White Fang (Jack London, American)
Kills escaped convict Jim Hall after he tries to murder Judge Scott
Beloved (Toni Morrison, American)
Lady Jones despises her blond hair; Baby Suggs dies in opening pages
A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole, American)
Lana Lee runs "Night of Joy" club in French quarter of New Orleans
Kaddish (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Last section alternates between crows shrieking "caw caw caw" and narrator repeating "Lord Lord Lord"
The Conqueror Worm (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Later incorporated into author's short story "Ligeia"
The Cantos (Ezra Pound, American)
Later sections make extensive use of Chinese ideograms
Mourning Becomes Electra
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.
Robert Lebrun in The Awakening (Kate Chopin, American)
Leaves for Mexico "on business" after sensing doomed nature of relationship w protagonist
Robert Lebrun in The Awakening (Kate Chopin, American)
Leaves note stating "Goodbye -- because I love you"
The Little Foxes (Lillian Hellman, American)
Leo steals $88k Union Pacific bonds from Regina Gidden's husband Horace for Mr. Marshall
The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton, American)
Lily Bart loses social standing; dies poor and alone before Lawrence Selden can propose to her
Nature (Ralph Waldo Emerson, American)
Literally essay abt the environment
Their Eyes were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, American)
Logan Killicks and Tea Cake are husbands of Janie Crawford
Song of Myself (Walt Whitman, American)
Lonely woman joins "twenty-eight young men" bathing by the shore
Oil! (Upton Sinclair, American)
Loosely adapted into film There Will Be Blood
Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, American)
Loses ancestral home Belle Reeve to creditors; raped by Stanley Kowalski and sent to insane asylum
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, American)
Loses sense of time when listening to Louis Armstrong
Rosemary Hoyt in Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Loses virginity to psychiatrist who married one of his schizophrenic patients
Thea in The Adventures of Augie March (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Love interest of protagonist; falls out after he drives Stella home
Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Love interest of protagonist; plays golf
Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Love interest of protagonist; tries and fails to leave Tom
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Lover of Fat Violet to save her job
Spoon River Anthology (Edgar Lee Masters, American)
Lucinda Matlock asserts that "it takes life to love life"
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, American)
M&M Enterprises buys the entire world's supply of Egyptian cotton under Milo Minderbender
Larry in All My Sons (Arthur Miller, American)
MIA for 15 years; Apple tree dedicated to him
The Octopus (Frank Norris, American)
Magnus Derrick leads league of ranchers against title entity
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers, American)
Maid Portia is daughter of black doctor Benedict Copeland
Dilsey in The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, American)
Maid who takes care of Compson family throughout its decline
The Adventures of Augie March (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Main character eventually reunites w Stella and marries her
Main Street (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Main character finds herself increasingly dissatisfied with actions of Thanatopsis Club
Henderson the Rain King (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Main character has philosophical discussions w King Dahfu
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, American)
Main character hides underground to flee Ras the Destroyer
Clyde Griffiths
Main character in An American Tragedy
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, American)
Main character injured in explosion at Liberty Paints triggered by Brockway
The Natural (Bernard Malamud, American)
Main character leaves 33-yr old lover after discovering she is a grandmother and instead pursues Memo Paris
The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Bret Harte, American)
Main character writes suicide note on two of clubs; pins it to tree w bowie knife
The Enormous Radio (John Cheever, American)
Main characters discover Mr. Osborn has been abusing his wife; hear the Sweeneys' nurse singing
The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Bret Harte, American)
Main characters discover Uncle Billy stole their mules
Hills Like White Elephants (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Main characters enjoy alcoholic beverage Anis del Toro while waiting to get to Madrid
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, American)
Main characters reminisce abt charades-like game based on Pilgrim's Progress
The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Bret Harte, American)
Main characters stranded together w Mother Shipton and "The Duchess" in snow-storm
Beloved (Toni Morrison, American)
Main characters travel from Sweet Home to 124 Bluestone Road in Cincinnati
Beloved (Toni Morrison, American)
Man follows flowers northward to meet woman who lost her milk escaping slavery
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Man found dead in oak chair w blood on ruff after being cursed by Matthew Maule
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Man on horseback who asks for water turns out to be Union scout
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck, American)
Man starving in barn is breastfed by Rose of Sharon; earlier abandoned by husband Connie
Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson, American)
Many stories abt George Willard
Mourning Becomes Electra
Marie Brantome
O Pioneers! (Willa Cather, American)
Marie and Emil shot underneath white mulberry tree by Frank Shabata when he sees them embracing
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Married his wife because she had a hysterical pregnancy
Jo in Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, American)
Marries Professor Friedrich Bhaer after she turns down proposal from Laurie
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mark Twain, American)
Marries Sandy, who names their daughter after phrase "hello central"
The Crucible (Arthur Miller, American)
Marshall Herrick and Ezekiel Cheever
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, American)
Martha and George reveal son is imaginary "game" btwn them
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, American)
Martha initially believes Nick is math professor; revealed he actually teaches biology
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, American)
Martha responds to title question w phrase "I am"
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Martha sings the title to George
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, American)
Martha tries to seduce Nick despite marriage to George
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (Carson McCullers, American)
Marvin Macy recruits hunchbacked Cousin Lymon to help steal protagonist's money
The Crucible
Mary Warren gifts a poppet to Elizabeth with a needle in it
The Crucible (Arthur Miller, American)
Mary Warrens gifts poppet that has needle in it to Elizabeth Proctor
The Call of the Wild (Jack London, American)
Matthewson loses sixteen hundred dollars by betting against protagonist's strength
For the Union Dead (Robert Lowell, American)
Mentions "Puritan-pumpkin colored girders" and "yellow dinosaur steamshovels"
Spoon River Anthology (Edgar Lee Masters, American)
Mentions Abraham Lincoln's boyhood love Ann Rutledge
The Emperor of Ice Cream (Wallace Stevens, American)
Mentions the "horny feet" of a corpse that "protrude" from under a sheet
Our Town
Milkman Howie Newsome appears each morning
Death of a Salesman
Miller
The Crucible
Miller
The Crucible
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.
Long Day's Journey into Night (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Minor characters servant Cathleen and quack Doc Hardy
All My Sons (Arthur Miller, American)
Minor characters: Kate (Joe's husband), Chris (Joe's son)
The Awakening (Kate Chopin, American)
Minor characters: pianist Mademoiselle Reisz and mother Adele Ratignolle
The Devil and Tom Walker (Washington Irving, American)
Miser offered Captain Kidd's treasure by Old Scratch after kicking skull w tomahawk in it
The Color Purple (Alice Walker, American)
Missionaries Samuel and Corinne adopt Alphonso's children in Africa
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Modernist poem abt Fisher King
The Song of Hiawatha (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Mother Wenonah seduced by the West Wind Mudjekeewis
A Raisin in the Sun
Move to Nigeria to practice medicine
Why I Live at the P.O. (Eudora Welty, American)
Moves out of house due to family's preference for sister Stella-Rondo
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou, American)
Mr. Freeman author at age eight; makes her mute until Mrs. Bertha Flowers convinces her to talk
The Turn of the Screw (Henry James, American)
Mrs. Grose finds Flora by lake
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, American)
Muff Potter believes he is guilty of a murder committed by Injun Joe
The Cantos (Ezra Pound, American)
Name comes from Italian for songs
The Day of the Locust (Nathaniel West, American)
Name of Simpson's patriarch likely came from this novel
The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan, American)
Named for group of "aunties" who played Mah-jong w protagonist's mother
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison, American)
Narrated by Claudia MacTeer, whose family takes in Pecola after her home burns down
I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died (Emily Dickinson, American)
Narrator "could not see to see"
The Road not Taken (Robert Frost, American)
Narrator "sorry [he] could not travel both" of the "two roads diverged in a yellow wood"
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, American)
Narrator Chief Bromden smothers McMurphy after his lobotomy, then breaks window w control panel to escape
Notes of a Native Son (James Baldwin, American)
Narrator attends father's funeral on his 19th birthday
All The King's Men (Robert Penn Warren, American)
Narrator buys suicide note from Lily Mae Littlepaugh
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Narrator called and asked to retrieve pair of shoes for Ewing Klipspringer
All The King's Men (Robert Penn Warren, American)
Narrator counts unfinished historical study of ancestor Cass Mastern as part of "Great Sleep"
All The King's Men (Robert Penn Warren, American)
Narrator develops theory of the "Great Twitch" after picking up old hitchhiker out west
Naked Lunch (William S. Burroughs, American)
Narrator employed by Islam Incorporated and meets Dr. Benway
Bartleby the Scrivener (Herman Melville, American)
Narrator is Master of the Chancery
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Narrator lauds people who choose not to eat meat in chapter "Higher Laws"
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Narrator recounts grand battle btwn red and black ants in chapter "Brute Neighbors"
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath, American)
Narrator repeats phrase "I am, I am, I am"
Moxon's Master (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Narrator rescued by metal worker Haley after death of title character
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (Mark Twain, American)
Narrator seeks info on Leonidas at Angel's Camp
The Country of Pointed Firs (Sarah Orne Jewett, American)
Narrator stays w herbalist Almira Todd
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, American)
Narrator sticks chewed pieces of gum under his bed to be rechewed later
Notes of a Native Son (James Baldwin, American)
Narrator throws jug of water at waiter in fancy restaurant in "unquenchable rage"
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Narrator visited by illiterate Alec Therien, who lives an "animal life"
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Henry David Thoreau, American)
Narrator watches 100 men "of Hyperborean extraction" cut blocks of ice to send across the world
The Weary Blues (Langston Hughes, American)
Narrator works "by the pale dull pallor of an old gas light" in a place found "down on Lenox Avenue"
Mending Wall (Robert Frost, American)
Narrator worries "apple trees will...get across / and eat the cones under his pines"
Howl (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Narrator's peers release an "eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxaphone cry"
Richard Cory (Edward Arlington Robinson, American)
Narrators are residents of Tilbury Town
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, American)
Nick reveals Honey's "hysterical pregnancy" (fake pregnancy)
Larry Slade in The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Nicknamed "the Old Foolsopher"
Night of the Iguana (Tennessee Williams, American)
Nonno travels w granddaughter Hannah Jelkes to Costa Verde Hotel in Mexico run by Maxine Faulk
Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
North African Conte di Minghetti becomes irate when sister asked to clean out dirty bathwater
The Luck of Roaring Camp (Bret Harte, American)
North Fork River floods, killing Stumpy, Kentuck, and main character
A Streetcar Named Desire
Not clean enough to bring into the house with one's mother
Self-Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson, American)
Notes that people like Socrates, Pythagoras, and Jesus have been misunderstood
The Optimist's Daughter (Eudora Welty, American)
Novel abt Laurel McKelva Hand and Fay's interactions with residents of Mount Salus
Their Eyes were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, American)
Novel framed as conversation w protagonist's best friend Phoeby
East of Eden
Novel in which Adam forgives Caleb on his deathbed on request of the Chinese servant Lee
East of Eden
Novel in which Adam meets the "malformed soul" Cathy Ames, who had burned down her house with her parents in it, marries Adam and has his children, all the while cheating on him with his brother and finally shooting him, without killing him, and leaving him to head a brothel
East of Eden
Novel in which Aron's girlfriend Abra Bacon consoles Caleb and they fall in love
Invisible Man
Novel in which Battle Royal is used as an introductory chapter
Native Son
Novel in which Bigger Thomas, who lives with his mother and sister Vera, plans on robbing Blum's Deli with his friends Gus, GH and Jack
Sister Carrie
Novel in which Bob Ames introduces the main character to art
Call of the Wild
Novel in which Buck, a St Bernard Collie and Judge Miller's pet, is stolen by a gardener's assistant to pay off his debts
East of Eden
Novel in which Caleb shows Aron that their mother is a prostitute, after which he joins the army in WWI and dies
Sister Carrie
Novel in which Carrie Meeber goes to live with Sven and Minnie Hanson in Chicago
An American Tragedy
Novel in which Clyde Griffiths works as a bell hop in a Kansas City hotel
Of Mice and Men
Novel in which Curley is the boss' son who hates one of the main characters
Call of the Wild
Novel in which Dave is put down
The Awakening
Novel in which Edna commits suicide by walking into the Gulf of Mexico
Of Mice and Men
Novel in which George and Lenny are run out of Weed after Lenny touches a girl's red dress
Sister Carrie
Novel in which George gambles and loses his job
Of Mice and Men
Novel in which George kills Lenny in mercy after Lenny kills Curley's wife
Catcher in the Rye
Novel in which Holden Caulfield is expelled from Pency Prep after losing lacrosse gear and has the dorm-mates Ackley and Stradlater, with whom he has a fight after he talks abut Jane Gallagher
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Novel in which Janie Crawford narrates the story to Phoeby
Call of the Wild
Novel in which John Thornton adopts the main character, but is killed by Yeehat natives
Native Son
Novel in which Mary is cut up and put into the incinerator and the protagonist tries to frame Jan
Grapes of Wrath
Novel in which Muley Graves stays on the farm
Invisible Man
Novel in which Ras the Exhorter, a black-nationalist, starts a riot against The Brotherhood, in which the protagonist throws a spear at him and escapes into the sewers
Grapes of Wrath
Novel in which Rose of Sharon gives birth to a stillborn after Connie leaves her, and later breastfeeds a starving man
Beloved
Novel in which Sethe lives at 124 Bluestone Road and had a boyfriend named Paul D
An American Tragedy
Novel in which Uncle Samuel gets the main character a job in Lycurgus
The Awakening
Novel in which a bird with a broken wing flies into the gulf
Grapes of Wrath
Novel in which an auxiliary chapter describes a turtle crossing a road
Grapes of Wrath
Novel in which an auxiliary chapter describes truck drivers buying poor children lots of candy
Sister Carrie
Novel in which the "Wheelers," George and the main character, move to Canada after George's wife finds out about his affair
The Awakening
Novel in which the "lady in black" and "two lovers" appear on the shore
Call of the Wild
Novel in which the "man in the red sweater" sells the main character to Francois and Perrault
The Awakening
Novel in which the Farival twins play piano
Grapes of Wrath
Novel in which the Joad family, including Tom and Rose of Sharon, who is pregnant with Connie's child, are "Okies" who move west to find work in the Dust Bowl
The Awakening
Novel in which the central family goes on vacation at Grand Isle in the Gulf of Mexico
Grapes of Wrath
Novel in which the central family stays in Hoovervilles and meets Jim Casy, an ex-preacher who later leads a strike at the farms
Native Son
Novel in which the communist lawyer Boris Max tries to defend the protagonist, but he is still sentenced to death
An American Tragedy
Novel in which the main character drowns his girlfriend Roberta after accidentally knocking her out with a camera, after which he is convicted of murder with a death sentence
An American Tragedy
Novel in which the main character gets his girlfriend Roberta Alden pregnant, despite loving Sondra Finchley
Call of the Wild
Novel in which the main character is sold to Hal, Charles, and Mercedes, who later drown trying to cross a river with their sled
Call of the Wild
Novel in which the main character kills Spitz
Sister Carrie
Novel in which the main character looks back on life in a rocking chair
An American Tragedy
Novel in which the main character moves to Chicago after being in a stolen car which runs over a child
Sister Carrie
Novel in which the main character plays Laura in Under the Gaslight
An American Tragedy
Novel in which the main character tries to start a relationship with a rich woman
Catcher in the Rye
Novel in which the pimp Maurice escorts Sunny
Native Son
Novel in which the protagonist accidentally suffocates Mary after bringing her back home from a night of drinking with her communist boyfriend Jan
Catcher in the Rye
Novel in which the protagonist asks a cab driver where the ducks go in the winter
Catcher in the Rye
Novel in which the protagonist buys his sister Phoebe "Little Shirley Beans"
Catcher in the Rye
Novel in which the protagonist dances with three women in a hotel
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Novel in which the protagonist falls in love with Tea Cake (Vergible Woods), who is bitten by a rabid dog during a hurricane and causes the protagonist to have to kill him
Catcher in the Rye
Novel in which the protagonist has a brother named DB and another named Allie, who died and left him his baseball glove
Catcher in the Rye
Novel in which the protagonist has a date with Sally
Invisible Man
Novel in which the protagonist is accepted into the communist organization, The Brotherhood
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Novel in which the protagonist is acquitted of murder by an all-white jury
Native Son
Novel in which the protagonist is involved on a rooftop chase with vigilantes
Native Son
Novel in which the protagonist kills his girlfriend Bessie Mears
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Novel in which the protagonist kisses Johnny Taylor
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Novel in which the protagonist runs away to Eatonville, FL with Joe Starks, who begins abusing her and dies of kidney failure
Catcher in the Rye
Novel in which the protagonist stays with Mr Antollini, and thinks he is making an advance when he touches his head while Holden is sleeping
Catcher in the Rye
Novel in which the protagonist takes his sister to central park, where he watches her ride the carousel
Catcher in the Rye
Novel in which the protagonist talks about Romeo and Juliet with two nuns
Catcher in the Rye
Novel in which the protagonist used to play checkers with Jane Gallagher, who always kept her kings in the back row
Invisible Man
Novel in which the protagonist works at Lucius Brockway's Liberty Paints, where they make "optic white"
Native Son
Novel in which the protagonist works by driving for the Dalton family
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Novel in which the protagonist's mother Leafy abandons her and leaves her with her grandmother, who arranges a wedding with her and Logan Killicks, whom she does not love
Beloved
Novel in which the protagonist, in order to keep them out of slavery, attempted to kill her children Denver, Howard, Buglar, and another unnamed one, whom she calls "Beloved" after she is the only one she is successful in killing
Sister Carrie
Novel in which the title character becomes a theater girl
Sister Carrie
Novel in which the title character has affairs with Charles Drouet and George Hurstwood
Sister Carrie
Novel in which the title character leaves $20 given to her by George with a breakup letter
Beloved
Novel in which the title ghost shows up in human form at the protagonist's house
Invisible Man
Novel in which the unnamed black narrator is expelled from college after a bad tour for given to Mr Norton, a trustee, in which he sees a fight break out at Golden Day Saloon and Jim Trueblood's house
The Awakening
Novel in which they eat bonbons
Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin, American)
Novel takes place on protagonist's 14th birthday, when he experiences religious awakening
East of Eden
Novel which centers on the Trask Family, initially on Adam and Charles, then on Adam's children Aron and Caleb
East of Eden
Novel which ends with Adam saying "timshel" on his deathbed
The Awakening
Novel which opens with Madame Lebrun's parrot and mockingbird
East of Eden
Novel which takes place in Salinas Valley and parallels the story of Cain and Abel
My Antonia (Willa Cather, American)
Novel's narrator returns to Black Hawk to visit eldest Shimerda daughter after 20 years
The Maltese Malcon (Samuel Dashiell Hammett, American)
Novel: "Hard-boiled" detective Sam Spade pursues title statuette
House Made of Dawn (N. Scott Momaday, American)
Novel: Abel returns to Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico to find Native American resistance movement
White Fang (Jack London, American)
Novel: Abt animal 3/4 wolf and 1/4 dog
In Cold Blood (Truman Capote, American)
Novel: Accounts Perry Smith and Dick Hickock's murders of the Clutter family
The Prince and the Pauper (Mark Twain, American)
Novel: Adventures of Tom Canty and Edward Tudor after they switch places
The Dean's December (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Novel: Albert Corde travels to Bucharest, Romania w wife Minna
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Novel: Ambulance driver Frederic Henry meets nurse Catherine Barkley during WWI Italian campaign
Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin, American)
Novel: American expatriate David has affair w titular Italian man in Paris
Big Sur (Jack Kerouac, American)
Novel: Author's alter-ego Jack Duluoz suffers mental breakdown while staying in cabin at title location
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (Mark Twain, American)
Novel: Bet involving title amphibian Dan'l Webster
East of Eden (John Steinbeck, American)
Novel: Biblically-titled story abt Hamiltons and the Trasks
Banana Bottom (Claude McKay, American)
Novel: Bita Plant avoids marrying goat-violating Herald Newton Day
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, American)
Novel: Book-burning fireman Guy Montag develops new view on dystopian world
As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner, American)
Novel: Bundren family transports Addie's coffin to its resting place in Jefferson in Yoknapatawpha County
Main Street (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Novel: Carol Kennicott finds herself dissatisfied w husband Will and small town life
The Gilded Age (Mark Twain, American)
Novel: Centers on Hawkins family during economic boom after Civil War
The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton, American)
Novel: Centers on Newland Archer
Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Novel: Centers on car salesman Dwayne Hoover's obsession over Kilgore Trout's writings
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger, American)
Novel: Centers on coming-of-age of Holden Caulfield
The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, American)
Novel: Centers on declining Compson family
The Way to Rainy Mountain (N. Scott Momaday, American)
Novel: Charts title resettlement of author's tribe from Montana to Oklahoma
Little Men (Louisa May Alcott, American)
Novel: Dan, Demi, Nan, and Nat attend school run by Bhaer and wife
The Awakening (Kate Chopin, American)
Novel: Depicts Edna Pontellier's exploration of feminity; proto-feminist
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath, American)
Novel: Depicts Esther Greenwood's struggles w mental illness
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, American)
Novel: Depicts title friend of Tom Sawyer traveling down Mississippi on raft w escaped slave Jim
O Pioneers! (Willa Cather, American)
Novel: Describes Alexandra Bergson's Nebraska homestead
A Hazard of New Fortunes (William Dean Howells, American)
Novel: Describes Basil March's rise in newspaper industry of New York
A Separate Peace (John Knowles, American)
Novel: Describes Gene Forrester's life at Devon prep school
Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane, American)
Novel: Describes Henry Fleming's service in Civil War
Home to Harlem (Claude McKay, American)
Novel: Describes Jake Brown's return to NY after deserting the army
My Antonia (Willa Cather, American)
Novel: Describes Jim Burden's friendship w Bohemian woman in Black Hawk, Nebraska
The Natural (Bernard Malamud, American)
Novel: Describes New York Knights baseball player Roy Hobbs
Delta Wedding (Eudora Welty, American)
Novel: Describes Troy Flavin's marriage into Dabney Fairchild's family
God's Little Acre (Erskine Caldwell, American)
Novel: Describes Ty Ty's attempts to dig for gold on his property
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, American)
Novel: Describes adventures of Huckleberry Finn's friend
On The Road (Jack Kerouac, American)
Novel: Describes adventures of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty
The Rise of Silas Lapham (William Dean Howells, American)
Novel: Describes ascent of titular paint mogul
The Executioner's Song (Norman Mailer, American)
Novel: Describes death row inmate Gary Gilmore
An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Novel: Describes downfall of Clyde Griffiths as he rises from bellhop to factory supervisor
Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein, American)
Novel: Describes extraterrestrial adventures of protagonist Juan Rico
Naked Lunch (William S. Burroughs, American)
Novel: Describes junkie Bill Lee's adventures thru Tangier and Interzone
Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck, American)
Novel: Describes life of George and rabbit-loving but disabled Lenny
The Call of the Wild (Jack London, American)
Novel: Describes life of St. Bernard sled dog Buck
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (Gertrude Stein, American)
Novel: Describes life of author's lover
A Modern Instance (William Dean Howells, American)
Novel: Describes life of writer/editor Bartley Hubbard
A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole, American)
Novel: Describes misadventures of Ignatius J. Reilly in New Orleans
The Sea-Wolf (Jack London, American)
Novel: Describes nautical adventures of intellectual Humphrey van Weyden
Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin, American)
Novel: Describes religious experiences of John Grimes
Herzog (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Novel: Describes title Jewish man's midlife crisis involving second divorce and daughter Junie
Ethan Frome (Edith Wharton, American)
Novel: Describes title character's affair w Mattie Silver
Babbitt (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Novel: Describes title real estate salesman struggling not to fall into conformity
The Adventures of Augie March (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Novel: Describes titular character's growth from childhood to maturity in Chicago during Great Depression
This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Novel: Describes unhappy life of Princeton dropout Amory Blaine
The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler, American)
Novel: Detective Philip Marlowe finds that Carmen and Vivian Sternwood killed bootlegger Rusty Regan
Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, American)
Novel: Ends w Jimmy Herf leaving title island
The Wapshot Chronicle (John Cheever, American)
Novel: Family of Leander and his sons (Moses and Coverly) who live in fishing village of St. Botolphs
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Novel: Fictional substance Ice-Nine causes world's oceans to freeze
Jo's Boys (Louisa May Alcott, American)
Novel: Final book in Little Women series; subtitled "How They Turned Out"
Oil! (Upton Sinclair, American)
Novel: Focuses on Bunny, son of self-made tycoon, who begins to sympathize w socialists
The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck, American)
Novel: Follows Chinese peasant Wang Lung's ambitious acquisition of land
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck, American)
Novel: Follows Joad family on their way to California during Dust Bowl
The Electric Kool-Aid Test (Tom Wolfe, American)
Novel: Follows Ken Kesey and Merry Pranksters; go cross-country adventures and take LSD
The Song of the Lark (Willa Cather, American)
Novel: Follows Thea Kronberg as she attempts to perfect her opera career
Their Eyes were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, American)
Novel: Follows story of Jamie Crawford
Cannery Row (John Steinbeck, American)
Novel: Group of boys who try to throw party for marine biologist Doc on title street
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mark Twain, American)
Novel: Hank Morgan travels back in time to Camelot
The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Novel: Hawkeye's friend Chingachgook becomes title character
The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Novel: Hester Prynne ostracized by Puritan community for adultery
Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote, American)
Novel: Holly Golightly meets Brazilian diplomat Jose Ybarra-Jaeger while hosting party; gets engaged to him
Tobacco Road (Erskine Caldwell, American)
Novel: Jeeter Lester has deathly fear of rats
The Fixer (Bernard Malamud, American)
Novel: Jewish handyman Yakov Bok accused of ritually murdering Christian boy in cave
Other Voices, Other Rooms (Truman Capote, American)
Novel: Joel Knox travels to father's home in Skully's Landing and befriends Idabel Thompkins
Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy, American)
Novel: Julian West wakes up in socialist utopia in year 2000
The Jungle (Upton Sinclair, American)
Novel: Jurgis Rudkus moves to Chicago w family from Lithuania; faces terrible working conditions
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Novel: Lady Brett Ashley avoids WWI veteran Jake Barnes
The Ambassadors (Henry James, American)
Novel: Lambert Strether fails to bring Chad Newsome back to America from Paris
The Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe, American)
Novel: Larry Kramer prosecutes Wall Street trader Sherman McCoy for a hit and run of black youth Henry Lamb
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein, American)
Novel: Martin-raised human Valentine Michael Smith comes to Earth and learns he is heir to Lyle Drive fortune
Native Son (Richard Wright, American)
Novel: Mary Dalton smothered by Bigger Thomas
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, American)
Novel: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March are title girls
Sula (Toni Morrison, American)
Novel: Named for Nel's best friend
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Thornton Wilder, American)
Novel: Namesake rickety Peruvian structure collapses
All The King's Men (Robert Penn Warren, American)
Novel: Narrated by Jack Burden; details political rise and fall of Willie Stark
The Country of Pointed Firs (Sarah Orne Jewett, American)
Novel: Narrator listens to stories from elderly residents of fishing village Dunnet Landing
American Pastoral (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Novel: Nathan Zuckerman learns about life of Seymour "the Swede" Levov
The Human Stain (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Novel: Nathan Zuckerman's neighbor Coleman Silk resigns after calling 2 black students "spooks"
The Swimmer (John Cheever, American)
Novel: Neddy Merrill travels home thru suburbia only to find his home has been abandoned
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Novel: Nick Carraway narrates exploits of title West Egg neighbor
Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Novel: Novel abt deteriorating marriage of Nicole and Dick Diver
Ship of Fools (Katherine Anne Porter, American)
Novel: Numerous characters travel on ship Vera to spain
The Octopus (Frank Norris, American)
Novel: Pacific and Northwest railroad likened to title creature
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison, American)
Novel: Pecola Breedlove desires titular symbol of white girls' beauty
Moby Dick (Herman Melville, American)
Novel: Pequod's crew on mission to kill titular white sperm whale
The Naked and the Dead (Norman Mailer, American)
Novel: Platoon of soldiers fight Japanese on fictional island of Anopopei in WWII
The Sot-Weed Factor (John Barth, American)
Novel: Poet Ebenezer Booke is "Poet Laureate of Maryland"
The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Novel: Possible mail conspiracy investigated by Oedipa Maas
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Novel: Protagonist Robert attempts to blow up bridge during Spanish Civil War
Giles Goat-Boy (John Barth, American)
Novel: Protagonist raised by title animals and enters supercomputer WESAC
Henderson the Rain King (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Novel: Protagonist unsatisfied w material life; travels to Africa for spiritual fulfillment
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, American)
Novel: Randle McMurphy rebels against Nurse Ratched in mental institution
Gimpel the Fool (Isaac Singer, American)
Novel: Residents of Frampol frequently take advantage of gullible title baker
Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell, American)
Novel: Scarlett O'Hara marries Rhett Butler and manages Tara plantation
The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan, American)
Novel: Sixteen stories describe successive generations of Chinese family
Sometimes a Great Notion (Ken Kesey, American)
Novel: Stampers (family of Oregon loggers) decide to deliver lumber to mill occupied by strikers
The Financier (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Novel: Stock manager Frank Cowperwood works w Stener to make illegitimate money
The Long Goodbye (Raymond Chandler, American)
Novel: Terry Lennox flees to Mexico and receives plastic surgery
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Novel: Title Jewish character tells story of his youth to Dr. Spielvogel
A Rose for Emily (William Faulkner, American)
Novel: Title Southern woman kills and sleeps w lover's body
McTeague (Frank Norris, American)
Novel: Title character ends up handcuffed to Marcus's corpse in Death Valley
Jennie Gerhardt (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Novel: Title character falls in love w Lester Kane but forced to leave him by brother Robert Kane
Elmer Gantry (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Novel: Title character is hypocritical Methodist preacher
Billy Budd, Sailor (Herman Melville, American)
Novel: Title character kills master-at-arms John Claggart before being hanged
Pudd'nhead Wilson (Mark Twain, American)
Novel: Title character's fingerprint collection used to prove Tom Driscoll was switched w Chambers at birth
Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Novel: Titular girl from rural Wisconsin realizes her "American Dream"
Portrait of a Lady (Henry James, American)
Novel: Titular woman is Isabel Archer
The Day of the Locust (Nathaniel West, American)
Novel: Tod Hackett aspires to paint "The Burning of Los Angeles"
The Professor's House (Willa Cather, American)
Novel: Tom Outland connects with nature in Blue Mesa
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers, American)
Novel: Tomboy Mick Kelly befriends deaf-mute John Singer
Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Novel: Tyrone Slothrop travels across war-torn Europe
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, American)
Novel: Unnamed black youth experiences systematic racism and social invisibility
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, American)
Novel: Work set in Pianosa in which John Yossarian attempts to get out of flying more missions
Benito Cereno (Herman Melville, American)
Novella: Babo leads slave insurrection against title Spanish captain aboard San Dominick
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (Carson McCullers, American)
Novella: Miss Amelia Evans creates title establishment
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Novella: Titular fisherman Santiago struggles to catch 18-foot marlin
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
O'Neill
Mourning Becomes Electra
O'Neill
Willy from Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, American)
Obsessed w being well-liked
Quentin in The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, American)
Obsesses over pocket watch his father described as the "mausoleum of all hope and desire"
The Last Leaf (O. Henry, American)
Old Behrman dies of pneumonia after painting title object outside Sue's window in Greenwich village
Spoon River Anthology (Edgar Lee Masters, American)
Old Fiddler Jones babbles abt "what Abe Lincoln said / one time at Springfield"
The Book of the Grotesque in Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson, American)
Old writer makes bed level w window; has dream inspiring him to write title work abt "truths"
Our Town
One character imagines the plays of William Shakespeare
Duke and Dauphin in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, American)
One is painted blue and called "Sick Arab"
Mary Jane Reed in Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Milton Roth, American)
One of protagonist's lovers; dubbed "The Monkey"
I Sing the Body Electric (Walt Whitman, American)
One part describes farmer and five sons
To His Excellency General Washington (Phillis Wheatley, American)
Opens "Celestial choir! enthron'd in realms of light"
Skunk Hour (Robert Lowell, American)
Opens by describing "Nautilus Island's hermit heiress"
Paterson (William Carlos Williams, American)
Opens by noting that title town "lies in a valley under the Passaic Falls
The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton, American)
Opens w Christine Nilsson performing in Gounod's Faust
Duncan Heyward in The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Opens w him leading Cora and Alice to Fort William Henry
The Awakening (Kate Chopin, American)
Opens w image of caged parrot squawking "Allez Vous-en!" (Go away!)
Theme for English B (Langston Hughes, American)
Opens w instructor saying "Go home and write a page tonight"
Spoon River Anthology (Edgar Lee Masters, American)
Opens w poem asking for "Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley" before declaring, "All, all are sleeping on the hill"
The Odd Couple (Neil Simon, American)
Opens w poker game including Vinnie, Murray, and Speed
The Rise of Silas Lapham (William Dean Howells, American)
Opens w protaognist being interviewed for "Solid Men of Boston" by Bartley Hubbard
Sergeant Croft in The Naked and the Dead (Norman Mailer, American)
Orders surviving men to scale Mount Anaka
Our Town (Thornton Wilder, American)
Organist Simon Stimson commits suicide; milkman Howie Newsome dies
Sympathy (Paul Laurence Dunbar, American)
Origin of line "I know why the caged bird sings"
In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound, American)
Originally 30 lines but scrapped bc it wasn't "intense" enough
On The Road (Jack Kerouac, American)
Originally produced on 120-foot long scroll bc author couldn't afford typing paper
The Devil's Dictionary (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Originally published in San Francisco Wasp
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving, American)
Originally published in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon
The Devil's Dictionary (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Originally titled The Cynic's Word Book
Mourning Becomes Electra
Orin commits suicide at the behest of Lavinia
(Thorton) Wilder
Our Town
Ophelia in Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, American)
Overcomes her prejudices to care for young black girl named Topsy
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Owl-Eyes is only guest at title character's funeral
Cannery Row (John Steinbeck, American)
Palace Flophouse leased out to "Mack and the boys" by grocer Lee Chong
Why I Live at the P.O. (Eudora Welty, American)
Pappa-Daddy yells at protagonist for suggesting he shave his beard
The Cantos (Ezra Pound, American)
Partly inspired by author's fascism and arrest in Genoa
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, American)
Patients fear "fog": state of mind induced by Nurse Ratched's mind-numbing treatments and routines
Jamie in Long Day's Journey into Night (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Patriarch of Tyrone family; struggles to find work as actor bc he was typecast as Shakespearean
Beloved (Toni Morrison, American)
Paul D leaves protagonist after learning of her mercy killing her child
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Paul Lazzaro commits murder to avenge death of Roland Weary
Death of a Salesman
People who are "liked" but not "well-liked."
Duke and Dauphin in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, American)
Perform play "The Royal Nonesuch"
The Weary Blues (Langston Hughes, American)
Performer sleeps "like a rock or a man that's dead" after finishing song
Mary in Long Day's Journey into Night (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Performs Chopin waltz after bringing wedding dress down from attic
Charles Drouet in Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Persuades protagonist to move in w him over sirloin and asparagus; gives her two $10 bills
The Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe, American)
Peter Fallow wins Pulitzer Prize for writing articles in City Light newpaper abt Henry Lamb
Mourning Becomes Electra
Peter and Hazel have broken engagements, suicide due to jealousy of Peter
The Jungle (Upton Sinclair, American)
Phil Connor rapes protagonist's wife Ona
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath, American)
Philomena Guinea funds protagonist's treatment under Doctor Nolan
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Phrase "so it goes" used each time someone dies
Mademoiselle Reisz
Pianist whom Edna meets
The Odd Couple (Neil Simon, American)
Pigeon sisters allow Felix to move in w them at play's end
Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Plans to depart w Hester and Pearl after delivering Election Sermon
Death of a Salesman
Plant seeds in the garden at night
The Rose Tattoo (Tennessee Williams, American)
Play: Alvaro Mangiacavallo has same mark on his chest as Serafina's late husband
The Skin of Our Teeth (Thornton Wilder, American)
Play: Antrobus family survives by title expression
All My Sons (Arthur Miller, American)
Play: Businessman Joe Keller exposed for causing death of 21 WWII pilots
Barefoot in the Park (Neil Simon, American)
Play: Cautious Paul refuses to walk w her in title fashion
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams, American)
Play: Depicts tense marriage of Maggie and alcoholic BIG DADDY POLLITT
The Crucible (Arthur Miller, American)
Play: Describes Salem witch trials, allegory for McCarthyism
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, American)
Play: Describes couples Honey and Nick meeting Martha and George
After the Fall (Arthur Miller, American)
Play: Fictionalizes author's marriage to Marilyn Monroe
The Little Foxes (Lillian Hellman, American)
Play: Hubbard family members attempt to get enough money to build cotton mill
Winterset (Maxwell Anderson, American)
Play: Inspired by case of Sacco and Vanzetti
Angels in America (Tony Kushner, American)
Play: Louis Ironson learns of lover Prior Walter's AIDS diagnosis
The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (Edward Albee, American)
Play: Martin has affair with corpse of title figure
The Children's Hour (Lillian Hellman, American)
Play: Mary Tilford accuses teachers Karen Wright and Martha Dobie of lesbian relationship
Seascape (Edward Albee, American)
Play: Nancy and Charlie talk to human-sized lizards Leslie and Sarah on the beach
The Odd Couple (Neil Simon, American)
Play: Neat-freak Felix Ungar and slob Oscar Madison clash after becoming roommates
Night of the Iguana (Tennessee Williams, American)
Play: Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon liberates title reptile
The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Play: Salesman "Hickey" Hickman encourages drunkards to abandon their "pipe dreams"
A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, American)
Play: Southern country girl Blanche DuBois moves into sister Stella's New Orleans apartment on Elysian Fields Avenue
Our Town (Thornton Wilder, American)
Play: Stage Manager tells audience abt people of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire
Zoo Story (Edward Albee, American)
Play: Strangers Jerry and Peters converse on Central Park bench
Suddenly Last Summer (Tennessee Williams, American)
Play: Supposedly insane Catherine Holly reveals illicit activities of gay cousin Sebastian Venable
Three Tall Women (Edward Albee, American)
Play: Title characters named A, B, and C
The Sandbox (Edward Albee, American)
Play: Young Man exercises on beach until he says he is angel of death and has come for Grandma
Hortense Briggs in An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Plays her lovers off each other to buy expensive coat
The Chambered Nautilus (Oliver Wendell Holmes, American)
Poem abt creature that lives in "ship of pearl"
Comedian as the Letter C (Wallace Stevens, American)
Poem abt voyage undertaken by Crispin
North of Boston (Robert Frost, American)
Poem collection containing "Mending Wall"
Spoon River Anthology (Edgar Lee Masters, American)
Poem describes a woman "wedded... not through union, but through separation" to Abraham Lincoln
Acquainted with the Night (Robert Frost, American)
Poem in terza rima: Speaker has "outwalked the furthest city light" and "looked down the saddest city lane"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (Langston Hughes, American)
Poem suite containing Theme for English B
Sacred Emily (Gertrude Stein, American)
Poem: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"
I, Too (Langston Hughes, American)
Poem: "They send [him] to eat in the kitchen" but imagines how "tomorrow / [he'll] be at the table"
Daddy (Sylvia Plath, American)
Poem: Addressed to author's father
"Telling the Bees" (John Greenleaf Whittier, American)
Poem: Asks the title creatures to "Stay at home...fly not hence!"
A Supermarket in California (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Poem: Author imagines walking w Walt Whitman through title store
The British Prison-Ship (Philip Freneau, American)
Poem: Based on author's actual experiences on board Hunter and the Scorpion
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun (Emily Dickinson, American)
Poem: Card this
I Sing the Body Electric (Walt Whitman, American)
Poem: Celebration of human form
The Fish (Elizabeth Bishop, American)
Poem: Describes "battered and venerable and homely" fish whose "brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper"
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Ezra Pound, American)
Poem: Describes "life and contacts" of title aspiring artist
To His Excellency General Washington (Phillis Wheatley, American)
Poem: Describes Columbia's victory over Britannia led by title figure
The Negro Speaks of Rivers (Langston Hughes, American)
Poem: Describes Euphrates, Nile, Congo, Mississippi
"Snow-bound: A Winter Idyll" (John Greenleaf Whittier, American)
Poem: Describes New England family trapped indoors by blizzard
For the Union Dead (Robert Lowell, American)
Poem: Describes Robert Gould Shaw Civil War memorial in Boston
Old Ironsides (Oliver Wendell Holmes, American)
Poem: Describes USS Constitution
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Poem: Describes aging man's search for love
You, Andrew Marvell (Archibald Macleish, American)
Poem: Describes author of "To His Coy Mistress"
Howl (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Poem: Describes author seeing "the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness"
The Brewing of Soma (John Greenleaf Whittier, American)
Poem: Describes creation of sacred Vedic drink
Verses Upon the Burning of our House (Anne Bradstreet, American)
Poem: Describes disastrous event that occured on July 10, 1666
Mending Wall (Robert Frost, American)
Poem: Describes fixing of barrier (wow!)
Grass (Carl Sandburg, American)
Poem: Describes how title phenomenon covers casualties of war
The Song of Hiawatha (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Poem: Describes lover of Minnehaha
The Emperor of Ice Cream (Wallace Stevens, American)
Poem: Describes man preparing sweets
Fog (Carl Sandburg, American)
Poem: Describes phenomenon that "comes on little cat feet"
The Indian Burying Ground (Philip Freneau, American)
Poem: Describes place w many dead Native Americans
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (Walt Whitman, American)
Poem: Describes placing title flowers on coffin
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket (Robert Lowell, American)
Poem: Describes sailors who cry "If God himself had not been on our side" while hunting for "the whited monster," a sperm whale
Patterns (Amy Lowell, American)
Poem: Describes speaker walking "down the garden paths" after getting letter that fiancée Lord Hartwell killed in action
I taste a liquor never brewed (Emily Dickinson, American)
Poem: Describes spiritual intoxication
Paul Revere's Ride (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Poem: Describes title Rev. War figure's "midnight ride" to spread alarm of British coming
"Hope" is the thing with the feathers (Emily Dickinson, American)
Poem: Describes title feeling as "little bird / that kept so many warm"
Barbara Frietchie (John Greenleaf Whittier, American)
Poem: Describes title old lady who expels Confederates
Chicago (Carl Sandburg, American)
Poem: Describes titular "City of the Big Shoulders"
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower (William Carlos Williams, American)
Poem: Describes titular flower of the Greek underworld
Kaddish (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Poem: Elegy for author's dead mother Naomi
A Psalm of Life (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Poem: Evokes oft-quoted book of New Testament
anyone lived in a pretty how town (e.e. cummings, American)
Poem: Follows lives of residents of nameless town
Theme for English B (Langston Hughes, American)
Poem: Framed as composition assignment; appears in Montage of a Dream Deferred
Thanatopsis (William Cullen Bryant, American)
Poem: Greek title translates to "Meditation upon Death"
Peter Quince at the Clavier (Wallace Stevens, American)
Poem: Makes various allusions to the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders.
The Road not Taken (Robert Frost, American)
Poem: Narrator "took the [road] less traveled by / And that has made all the difference"
The Raven (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Poem: Narrator converses w title bird while mourning death of Lenore
I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died (Emily Dickinson, American)
Poem: Notes coincidence of narrator's expiration and insect's noise
Wild Nights! Wild Nights! (Emily Dickinson, American)
Poem: Ode to natural eroticism; ends "Might I but moor tonight in thee"
On Being Brought from Africa to America (Phillis Wheatley, American)
Poem: Opens "Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land"
Sunflower Sutra (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Poem: Opens w speaker sitting next to Jack Kerouac
Skunk Hour (Robert Lowell, American)
Poem: Pairs small town's decay w nocturnal activity of title creature
To a Waterfowl (William Cullen Bryant, American)
Poem: Poet prays God will guide him as he does the title bird
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Wallace Stevens, American)
Poem: Presents number of views of avian
Sunday Morning (Wallace Stevens, American)
Poem: Set at weekly time of Christian churchgoing
This is Just to Say (William Carlos Williams, American)
Poem: Speaker asks for forgiveness for taking plums from icebox
Lady Lazarus (Sylvia Plath, American)
Poem: Speaker declares "Out of the ash I rise with my red hair, and I eat men like air"
Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock (Wallace Stevens, American)
Poem: Speaker describes houses haunted "By white night-gowns" and "an old sailor" who in his sleep "Catches tigers in red weather"
Luke Havergal (Edward Arlington Robinson, American)
Poem: Speaker implores title character to "go to the western gate"
Birches (Robert Frost, American)
Poem: Speaker observes title trees after ice-storm
Mother to Son (Langston Hughes, American)
Poem: Thing Radebaugh made us read
The Weary Blues (Langston Hughes, American)
Poem: Title "drowsy syncopated tune" played by Harlem pianist
The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver in A Few Figs From Thistles (Edna St. Vincent Millay, American)
Poem: Title character freezes to death while magically creating wardrobe for her impoverished child
The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Poem: Title characters are spiritually empty
Because I could not stop for Death (Emily Dickinson, American)
Poem: Title figure "kindly stopped for [the narrator]"
Richard Cory (Edward Arlington Robinson, American)
Poem: Title gentleman shoots himself despite happy outward appearance
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman (Wallace Stevens, American)
Poem: Title may refer to author's religious mother
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Robert Frost, American)
Poem: Title objects are "lovely, dark and deep"
The Bells (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Poem: Title objects keep "time, time, time in a sort of Runic rhyme"
Miniver Cheevy (Edward Arlington Robinson, American)
Poem: Title resident of Tilbury Town is "a child of scorn" who was "born too late"
To Helen (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Poem: Title woman's beauty compared to "Nicean barks of yore"
We Wear the Mask (Paul Laurence Dunbar, American)
Poem: Titled for object that "grins and lies", and "hides our cheeks and shades our eyes"
The Death of the Hired Man (Robert Frost, American)
Poem: Warren and Mary disagree about how to treat ex-employee Silas
A Dream Deferred (Langston Hughes, American)
Poem: Where title of Raisin in the Sun comes from
The Armadillo (Elizabeth Bishop, American)
Poem: Written for author's friend Robert Lowell
Gerontion (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Poem: Written from perspective of "old man in a dry month"
The Conqueror Worm (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Poem: ends by revealing that "the play is the tragedy, 'Man'" and title creature is the hero
Ariel (Sylvia Plath, American)
Poetry collection containing Lady Lazarus and Tulips
The Children of the Night (Edward Arlington Robinson, American)
Poetry collection containing Luke Havergal
Life Studies (Robert Lowell, American)
Poetry collection containing Skunk Hour
Harmonium (Wallace Stevens, American)
Poetry collection containing The Emperor of Ice Cream, The Comedian as Letter C, and Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock
Lord Weary's Castle (Robert Lowell, American)
Poetry collection containing The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket
Tender Buttons (Gertrude Stein, American)
Poetry collection inspired by Cubism
Spoon River Anthology (Edgar Lee Masters, American)
Poetry collection of epigrams abt residents of title Illinois town
A Few Figs From Thistles (Edna St. Vincent Millay, American)
Poetry collection: opens "My candle burns at both ends / It will not last the night"
A Streetcar Named Desire
Poker buddy gossips about her affairs following the loss of Belle Reve
The Birthmark (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Portrait of Georgiana comes out blurred except for title blot
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, American)
Posits that detectives should be a "complete," "common," and "unusual" man
The Love of the Last Tycoon (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Posthumous novel detailing film producer Monroe Stahr's rise to power in Hollywood
Annabel Lee (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Posthumously published poem abt angels taking title girl away form narrator
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Praying to the Virgin while wearing her wedding dress.
Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin, American)
Preacher Gabriel fathered twin sons Royal (one is a bastard); both dead
Duncan Heyward in The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Pretends to be doctor to rescue Alice by wrapping her in blanket
Jim Conklin in Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane, American)
Previously told protagonist he would run from battle if other soldiers did
Angels in America (Tony Kushner, American)
Prior Walter goes to heaven and tells inhabitants that he will not deliver a message
Paterson (William Carlos Williams, American)
Prose and verse epic abt author's New Jersey hometown
The Minister's Black Veil (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Protagonist abandoned by wife Elizabeth after refusing to remove title object
Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane, American)
Protagonist abandons "tattered soldier" after battle
Home to Harlem (Claude McKay, American)
Protagonist accidentally sleeps w friend Zeddy's girlfriend Felice
White Fang (Jack London, American)
Protagonist adopted by Grey Beaver into Native American camp but persecuted by puppy Lip-Lip
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison, American)
Protagonist adores Shirley Temple mug w title characteristic
A Hazard of New Fortunes (William Dean Howells, American)
Protagonist and Dryfoos begin literary magazine "Every Other Week"
Daisy Miller (Henry James, American)
Protagonist and title character meet first in Vevey, Switzerland and later Rome
The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Bret Harte, American)
Protagonist appeared as minor character in author's earlier work "The Luck of Roaring Camp"
The Song of the Lark (Willa Cather, American)
Protagonist asks for money from Doctor Archie to fund musical education
Beloved (Toni Morrison, American)
Protagonist attacks Mr. Bodwin w ice pick after going insane
The Call of the Wild (Jack London, American)
Protagonist avenges Hans, Pete, and Thornton's death by killing Yeehat Indians
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger, American)
Protagonist beaten by pimp Maurice after refusing to pay prostitute Sunny
Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Protagonist beats son and wife bc he believes book he reads stating everyone else is a robot
A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole, American)
Protagonist becomes hot dog vendor and runs off w Myrna Minkoff
Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Protagonist becomes star actress while husband George Hurstwood descends into poverty
Main Street (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Protagonist begins affair w Erik Valborg after birth of son Hugh
The Color Purple (Alice Walker, American)
Protagonist begins writing to God after father Alphonse sexually assaults her
Why I Live at the P.O. (Eudora Welty, American)
Protagonist believes Shirley T. is daughter of her sister and Mr. Whitaker
Elmer Gantry (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Protagonist blackmailed at end of novel bc of affair w Hettie Dowler
American Pastoral (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Protagonist blackmailed by Rita Cohen
Henderson the Rain King (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Protagonist blows up cistern infested w frogs
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath, American)
Protagonist breaks up w Buddy Willard, who later gets tuberculosis
The Awakening (Kate Chopin, American)
Protagonist buys "pigeon house" to establish her independence
The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck, American)
Protagonist buys land from wealthy House of Hwang; wife O-Lan is servant for them
The Natural (Bernard Malamud, American)
Protagonist calls his bat "Wonderboy" after leading team to lengthy win streak
Big Two-Hearted River (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Protagonist carries bottle full of grasshoppers w him
Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote, American)
Protagonist changes name from Lulamae Barnes
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, American)
Protagonist chased by Mechanical Hound
The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Protagonist cheats on husband Mucho w lawyer Metzger
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Protagonist child of farmer Benedict; lives in village of Grand Pre
Babbitt (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Protagonist commends son Ted for secretly marrying neighbor Eunice
Their Eyes were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, American)
Protagonist compares sexual awakening to blossoming pear tree kissed by bees in spring
Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Protagonist conditioned by the inventor of Imipolex G, Laszlo Jamf
O Pioneers! (Willa Cather, American)
Protagonist consults Crazy Ivar abt pig rearing at farm she works w brothers Lou and Oscar
Herzog (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Protagonist currently in relationship w Ramona
Bernice Bobs Her Hair (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Protagonist cuts off sleeping cousin Marjorie's braids before heading home to Eau Claire
Rip Van Winkle (Washington Irving, American)
Protagonist declares himself loyal subject of George III only to find he has missed Rev. War
Babbitt (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Protagonist declares support for conservative Lucas Prout
Harrison Bergeron (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Protagonist defies 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments by declaring "I am the Emperor!"
Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote, American)
Protagonist delivers "weather reports" for gangster Sally Tomato
Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin, American)
Protagonist depends on financial generosity of businessman Jacques
The Minister's Black Veil (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Protagonist dies after seeing title object "on every visage"; asks "Why do you tremble at me alone?"
Rip Van Winkle (Washington Irving, American)
Protagonist discovers Brom Dutcher and Nicholas Vedder have died
The Color Purple (Alice Walker, American)
Protagonist discovers husband's letters from sister Nettie; recovered w help from Shug Avery
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Protagonist doesn't catch anything for 84 days
The Awakening (Kate Chopin, American)
Protagonist drowns herself by walking into Gulf of Mexico after Robert Lebrun leaves her again
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist escapes from cave w Becky Thatcher after being trapped w Injun Joe
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, American)
Protagonist expelled by Dr. Bledsoe after showing Mr. Norton the dark side of black life
This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Protagonist fails to marry Rosalind Connage because of financial troubles
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath, American)
Protagonist fails to write thesis on "twin images" in Finnegans Wake
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist fakes death w pig blood to escape abusive father Pap
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Protagonist feels heavy blow in neck as he rushes to embrace wife; realizes he is being hanged
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Protagonist fights constipated father Jack to use the bathroom
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist finds treasure w Huck Finn at end of novel
Native Son (Richard Wright, American)
Protagonist flees police w and later kills Bessie
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Protagonist flees to Switzerland after Battle of Caporetto
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Protagonist forced to mate w Montana Wildhack in public zoo for aliens on Tramalfadore
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, American)
Protagonist forced to participate in Battle Royal
The Man Without a Country (Edward Everett Hale, American)
Protagonist gets nickname "Plain-Buttons" from habit of wearing regulation uniforms
Rappaccini's Daughter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Protagonist given silver phial made by Cellini containing liquid intended for his beloved
The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler, American)
Protagonist gives nickname "SilverWig" to Mona Mars
Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Protagonist goes crazy and kills gay piano-playing son Bunny in hotel
Herzog (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Protagonist goes to aunt Taube's house and finds grandpa's gun there
Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin, American)
Protagonist goes to movie on 14th birthday; returns to find brother Roy stabbed
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Protagonist had adolescent obsession w masturbation
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Protagonist had enormous Oedipus complex w mother Sophie
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Protagonist hallucinates in forest; cannot recognize constellations
The Executioner's Song (Norman Mailer, American)
Protagonist has affair w Nicole Baker Barrett
Babbitt (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Protagonist has affair w Tanis Judique; supports socialist Seneca Doane
The Awakening (Kate Chopin, American)
Protagonist has affairs w Alcee Arobin and Robert Lebrun while cheating on husband Leonce
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Protagonist has his alcohol taken away by Miss Van Campen to cure his jaundice
Henderson the Rain King (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Protagonist has inner voice crying out "I want! I want!"
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Protagonist has knee operated on by Dr. Valentini
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath, American)
Protagonist hemorrhages after losing virginity to math professor Irwin; taken to ER by Joan
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist hides money in Peter Wilks's coffin to evade the duke and the dauphin
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Protagonist imagines traveling 30 miles back to plantation
A White Heron (Sarah Orne Jewett, American)
Protagonist is granddaughter of Mrs. Tilley
Beloved (Toni Morrison, American)
Protagonist is guided across Ohio River by Stamp Paid
The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton, American)
Protagonist is w son Dallas in Paris twenty six years later
The Call of the Wild (Jack London, American)
Protagonist joins crew of Hal, Charles, and Mercedes; gets mistreated
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger, American)
Protagonist kicked out of Pencey Prep; complains abt "phonies"
The Call of the Wild (Jack London, American)
Protagonist kidnapped from Judge Miller's California estate by gardener Manuel to fund gambling addiction
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, American)
Protagonist kills Captain Beatty
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck, American)
Protagonist kills man w axe; becomes fugitive after witnessing death of preacher Jim Casey
The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton, American)
Protagonist leaves check for Gus Trenor before overdosing on chloral hydrate
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Protagonist left by girlfriend in Rome after sleeping with prostitute Lina
Henderson the Rain King (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Protagonist lifts statue of goddess Mummah to become Wariri village's Rain King
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, American)
Protagonist lives in basement w 1369 lights
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist lives in town of St. Petersburg
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist lives w Aunt Polly
The Ambassadors (Henry James, American)
Protagonist loves Madame de Vionnet; encounters her and Chad at rural inn
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Protagonist maimed by tank while escaping bridge destruction scene
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist makes final stand against knights of England w Gatling guns and electric fences
Herzog (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Protagonist married Daisy and had son Marcos before divorce
Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote, American)
Protagonist married Texas veterinarian Doc Holiday at age 14
O Pioneers! (Willa Cather, American)
Protagonist marries Carl Linstrum
Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy, American)
Protagonist marries Edith Bartlett, daughter of Dr. Leete
The Financier (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Protagonist marries Lillian Semple then Aileen Butler; moves from Philadelphia to Chicago
The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton, American)
Protagonist marries May Welland but loves Countess Ellen Olenska
The Country of Pointed Firs (Sarah Orne Jewett, American)
Protagonist meets Captain Littlepage, Abby Martin, and William Blackitt
Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Protagonist meets Charles Drouet on train to Chicago
The Jungle (Upton Sinclair, American)
Protagonist meets Jack Duane in jail; becomes part of Mike Scully's gang
Gimpel the Fool (Isaac Singer, American)
Protagonist mocked by Rietze the Candle-Dipper
An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Protagonist moves to Lycurgus to work in uncle Samuel's factory; pursues wealthy Sondra Finchley
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Protagonist names past lovers "The Pilgrim," "The Pumpkin," and "The Monkey"
Edna Pontellier
Protagonist of The Awakening
American Pastoral (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Protagonist operates glove factory in Newark, New Jersey
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Protagonist plays billiards w Count Greffi; introduced to his lover by surgeon Rinaldi
The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck, American)
Protagonist purchases concubines Pear Blossom and Lotus Flower
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, American)
Protagonist questions his own happiness after conversation w neighbor Clarisse McClellan
Their Eyes were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, American)
Protagonist raised by grandmother Nanny after she was abandoned by mother Leafy
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison, American)
Protagonist raped by her father Cholly, leading her to believe she has acquired title characteristic
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, American)
Protagonist reads Dover Beach, memorizes parts of Ecclesiastes
Portrait of a Lady (Henry James, American)
Protagonist receives large fortune from Mr. Touchett
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist receives love note in Bible Church from Sophia
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath, American)
Protagonist receives successful shock therapy treatments under Doctor Nolan
Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane, American)
Protagonist receives title mark after being hit w rifle; pretends it is bullet wound
A White Heron (Sarah Orne Jewett, American)
Protagonist refuses to tell hunter where title bird's nest is
Portrait of a Lady (Henry James, American)
Protagonist rejects Lord Warburton and Caspar Goodwood
The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton, American)
Protagonist rejects Simon Rosedale by burning love letters implicating Bertha Dorset
The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton, American)
Protagonist rejects advances from Gus Trenor
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist repairs well to cause water to flow again into Valley of Holiness
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Protagonist rescued by Austrian ski instructors from plane crash en route to optometrist convention
The Sea-Wolf (Jack London, American)
Protagonist rescued by Captain Wolf Larson; brought onboard seal-hunting ship The Ghost
The Call of the Wild (Jack London, American)
Protagonist rescued by Thornton before former three drown trying to cross frozen river
An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Protagonist rides in limousine which runs over girl while Willard Sparser is driving
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving, American)
Protagonist rides old horse Gunpowder
Beloved (Toni Morrison, American)
Protagonist runs away from from sadistic slave owner Schoolteacher
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist runs away from home to avoid being "civilized" by Aunt Sally
Young Goodman Brown (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Protagonist runs in mad frenzy after discovering wife Faith's pink ribbon on branch
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Protagonist says "Farewell, goodbye, farewell, goodbye" before being killed by sniper
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Protagonist says goodbye to Maria before preparing to launch final ambush
Jennie Gerhardt (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Protagonist seduced and impregnated by Senator Brander
This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Protagonist sees hallucination of friend who died in car accident, Dick Humbird
Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Protagonist sent to Casino Hermann Goering in novel's second section
The Executioner's Song (Norman Mailer, American)
Protagonist sentenced to death for killing two men during armed robbery he committed on parole
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers, American)
Protagonist shoots himself thru the heart after learning of Spiros Antonapoulos's death
Their Eyes were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, American)
Protagonist shoots lover Tea Cake after he gets rabies during hurricane
A Modern Instance (William Dean Howells, American)
Protagonist shot in Whited Sepulchre after failing to divorce Marcia Gaylord
The Natural (Bernard Malamud, American)
Protagonist shot w silver bullet by Harriet Byrd
The Man Without a Country (Edward Everett Hale, American)
Protagonist shouts "Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!"
Rip Van Winkle (Washington Irving, American)
Protagonist sleeps for 20 yrs in Catskill Mountains
The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton, American)
Protagonist socially sacrificed to cover up extramarital affair btwn Ned Silverton and Bertha Dorset
The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Protagonist spends two hours staring at photo James Clerk Maxwell in attempt to operate Nefastis machine
The Ambassadors (Henry James, American)
Protagonist spurns Maria Gostrey to return to America
Where are you Going? Where Have You Been? (Joyce Carol Oates, American)
Protagonist stays home from Aunt Tillie's barbecue and listens to Bobby King
The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck, American)
Protagonist supports family by pulling rickshaw in city looted by beggars
The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton, American)
Protagonist toys w feelings of Percy Gryce
A Worn Path (Eudora Welty, American)
Protagonist travels from home to doctor's office in Natchez where she obtains throat medicine for grandson
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Protagonist travels w Shawnee guide to Ozark Mtns in search of lost husband
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist tricks friend into giving him apple, kite, dead rat to whitewash fence for him
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, American)
Protagonist uses "green bullet" to communicate w Faber
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Protagonist uses grenades to blow up bridge after Pablo steals detonator
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mark Twain, American)
Protagonist usurps Merlin by performing "miracles": restoring dry fountain, predicting eclipse
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger, American)
Protagonist wakes up to find former English teacher Mr. Antolini patting his head
The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Protagonist watches performance of The Courier's Tragedy after being named executor of Pierre Inverarity's will
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger, American)
Protagonist watches sister Phoebe ride carousel at Central Park Zoo
An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Protagonist withholds money from pregnant sister Esta to buy fur coat for Hortense Briggs
Indian Camp (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Protagonist witnessed man slit his own throat while wife undergoes operation w/o anesthetic
Rappaccini's Daughter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Protagonist works at University of Padua
The Adventures of Augie March (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Protagonist works for CIO and assists Einhorn
The Call of the Wild (Jack London, American)
Protagonist works for Francois and Perrault delivering mail
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath, American)
Protagonist works for Ladies' Day Magazine during summer when Rosenbergs are electrocuted
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving, American)
Protagonist worries he will meet Major John Andre
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger, American)
Protagonist writes depressed poetry on brother Allie's baseball glove
Herzog (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Protagonist writes real and imaginary letters to various historical personages
Daisy Miller (Henry James, American)
Protagonist's aunt Mrs. Costello disapproves of title character
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger, American)
Protagonist's brother DB is Hollywood screenwriter
American Pastoral (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Protagonist's daughter Merry converts to Jainism; protests Vietnam War by setting off bomb in post office
Jennie Gerhardt (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Protagonist's daughter Vesta dies of typhoid
An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser, American)
Protagonist's desire to marry Sondra Finchley leads him to kill girlfriend Roberta Alden
The Rise of Silas Lapham (William Dean Howells, American)
Protagonist's dream home on Beacon Street burns down bc he forgot to put out fireplace
Madeleine in Herzog (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Protagonist's ex-wife; had affair w Valentine Gersbach
Herzog (Saul Bellow, Canadian-American)
Protagonist's first name is Moses
Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin, American)
Protagonist's girlfriend Hella leaves him after discovering his bisexuality
The Jungle (Upton Sinclair, American)
Protagonist's infant son Antanas drowns in mud puddle
Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Protagonist's own downward spiral eventually leads to Tommy Barban marrying his wife
The Maltese Malcon (Samuel Dashiell Hammett, American)
Protagonist's partner Miles Archer shot while following Floyd Thursby
McTeague (Frank Norris, American)
Protagonist's relationship w Trina turns sour when she wins 5,000 dollars in lottery
Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Protagonist's sexual encounters corresponds to locations of V-2 rocket strikes
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Protagonist's war wound has left him unable to have sex
Gimpel the Fool (Isaac Singer, American)
Protagonist's wife Elka has 6 illegitimate children
American Pastoral (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Protagonist's wife dawn is former Miss America pageant; has affair w Bill Orcutt
The Rise of Silas Lapham (William Dean Howells, American)
Protaognist's plain daughter eventually marries wealthy Tom Corey after his paint business goes bankrupt
Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy, American)
Publication inspired formation of 160+ Nationalist clubs that tried to implement its ideals
A White Heron (Sarah Orne Jewett, American)
Published in namesake short story collection also containing "A Country Doctor"
A Hazard of New Fortunes (William Dean Howells, American)
Publisher Conrad Dryfoos killed while shielding Berthold Lindau from streetcar riot
The Skin of Our Teeth (Thornton Wilder, American)
Purports to tell history of humans
A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, American)
Radio thrown out window after playing rumba music
Thanatopsis (William Cullen Bryant, American)
Readers urged to join the "innumerable caravan" and "go not like the quarry slaves at night"
Daddy (Sylvia Plath, American)
Recalls author's "Colossus" w image of "Ghastly statue with one gray toe / Big as a Frisco seal"
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Ezra Pound, American)
Recalls time when "the English Rubaiyat was still-born" and "Gladstone was still respected" in section "Yeux Glauques"
Jerry in Zoo Story (Edward Albee, American)
Recounts how he inserted rat poison in hamburger meat to murder landlady's pet black dog
Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, American)
Recurring flute melody that protagonist "hears but is not aware of"
The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Recurring muted post-horn symbol indicates existence of underground postal service Trystero
The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
References Guy Fawkes Day: "A Penny for the Old Guy" and "headpiece filled with straw"
"Snow-bound: A Winter Idyll" (John Greenleaf Whittier, American)
Refers to Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy: "the gray wizard's conjuring book"
Meyer Wolsheim in The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Refuses to attend funeral for title character
The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin, American)
Rejects teachings of Elijah Muhammad
Angels in America (Tony Kushner, American)
Released in two parts: "Millenium Approaches" and "Perestroika"
The Crucible
Remember the Ten Commandments.
On The Road (Jack Kerouac, American)
Remi Boncoeur arranges for protagonist to get job as night watchman
On Being Brought from Africa to America (Phillis Wheatley, American)
Reminds reader that people "may be refin'd, and join th' angelic train"
Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Repeatedly calls himself racially-pure "man without a cross"
Phoebe Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger, American)
Repeats "Daddy's gonna kill you"
Theodore Hickman in The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Repeats "The days grow hot in Babylon!"
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Repeats line "HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME" in section "A Game of Chess"
Robert
Returns to New Orleans to have relationship with Edna, but it is different than it used to be
The Human Stain (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Revealed that professor Coleman Silk is actually black man passing as white
Armand Aubigny in Desiree's Baby (Kate Chopin, American)
Revealed to be the one w black ancestry
Gilbert Osmond in Portrait of a Lady (Henry James, American)
Revealed to have conceived his daughter Pansy during an affair with Madame Merle
The Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe, American)
Reverend Bacon and Peter Fallow stir up media frenzy around Henry Lamb's death
Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson, American)
Reverend Hartmann punches hole in window w "the strength of God" to spy on naked Kate Swift
The Crucible (Arthur Miller, American)
Reverend Parris discovers ceremony led by slave Tituba involving his daughter Betty
Night of the Iguana (Tennessee Williams, American)
Reverend Shannon fired from job as tour guide for Baptist women after sleeping w Charlotte Goodall
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Ringing "like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil" turns out to be protagonist's watch
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Robert Cohn beats up matador Pedro Romero night before bullfight in Pamplona
Moxon's Master (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Robot resembles gorilla, wears fez
Lady Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Runs away w Pedro Romero before deciding to return to Mike Campbell
Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Runs over Myrtle Wilson and lets Gatsby take the blame
The Luck of Roaring Camp (Bret Harte, American)
Sailor named Man O' War Jack sings song abt adventures of ship Arethusa
For the Union Dead (Robert Lowell, American)
Saint Gaudens work in Boston inspires speaker's musing
J.B. (Archibald Macleish, American)
Sarah reconciles w husband after death of their 5 children
Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote, American)
Scandal surrounding Sally Tomato leads Jose to abandon protagonist
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, American)
Scheme involves buying eggs in Malta for 7 cents and selling them in mess halls for 5
The Children's Hour (Lillian Hellman, American)
Schoolgirls secretly pass copy of Mademoiselle de Maupin btwn themselves
Hands in Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson, American)
Schoolteacher changed name from Adolf Myers after being accused of molestation
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Scout who mentions flammable driftwood convinces protagonist to try to burn title structure
Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, American)
Screams "Fire!" to avoid Harold Mitchell's (Mitch's) advances
A Streetcar Named Desire
Screams "Fire!" to avoid Mitch's advances.
Suddenly Last Summer (Tennessee Williams, American)
Sebastian Venable revealed to have been killed and eaten by starving children while in Spain
Our Town (Thornton Wilder, American)
Second act centers on marriage btwn childhood friends George Gibbs and Emily Webb
The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Second novel in Leatherstocking Tales; set during French-Indian War
The Cantos (Ezra Pound, American)
Second poem opens "Hang it All, Robert Browning!" because "there can only be one Sordello"
The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan, American)
Second section "Twenty-six Malignant Gates"
Howl (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Second section compares Moloch to war, government, capitalism, and mainstream culture
Howl (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Second section opens mentioning "sphinx of cement and aluminum"
The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Section "Death by Water" warns against drowning like Plebas the Phoenician sailor
The Cantos (Ezra Pound, American)
Section quotes heavily from John Adams
The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin, American)
Sections "My Dungeon Shook" and "Down at the Cross"
Mary in Long Day's Journey into Night (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Self-conscious about her rheumatic hands
A Death in the Family (James Agee, American)
Semi-autobiographical novel describing how death of Jay Follett in car crash affects him and his family
Long Day's Journey into Night (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Semi-autobiographical play abt collapse of the Tyrone family
A Tramp Abroad (Mark Twain, American)
Semi-autobiographical travelogue abt author's journey thru the Alps
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Sensitive about her swollen rheumatic hands and her husband's snoring.
Sofia in The Color Purple (Alice Walker, American)
Sentenced to twelve years in jail for attacking mayor after his wife asks her to be their maid
Our Town
Sentinel newspaper being placed beneath a new bank
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, American)
Sequel Closing Time
Little Men (Louisa May Alcott, American)
Sequel to Little Women; second book in Little Women series
Lanny Budd series (Upton Sinclair, American)
Series of eleven novels containing World's End and Dragon's Teeth
The Little Foxes (Lillian Hellman, American)
Servant Addie promised 1700 dollar bills from man returning from Baltimore
The Jungle (Upton Sinclair, American)
Served as exposé of meatpacking industry
For the Union Dead (Robert Lowell, American)
Set in "Sahara of snow" where aquarium used to be
The Rise of Silas Lapham (William Dean Howells, American)
Set in Boston
The Little Foxes (Lillian Hellman, American)
Set in Chicago
The Blue Hotel (Stephen Crane, American)
Set in Fort Romper, Nebraska
Tobacco Road (Erskine Caldwell, American)
Set in Georgia
The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Set in Harry Hope's saloon
In Cold Blood (Truman Capote, American)
Set in Holcomb, Kansas; considered first work in the true crime genre
Banana Bottom (Claude McKay, American)
Set in Jamaica
The Devil and Daniel Webster (Stephen Vincent Benet, American)
Set in New England
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, American)
Set in Oregon
Big Two-Hearted River (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Set in burnt-down woodlands where all grasshoppers have adapted by turning black
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (F. Scott, Fitzgerald, American)
Set in never-before surveyed area in Montana Rockies
The Lottery (Shirley Jackson, American)
Set on June 27th
Beloved (Toni Morrison, American)
Sethe haunted by title daughter she killed to protect from slavery
The Death of the Hired Man (Robert Frost, American)
Setting is "thirteen little miles / As the road winds" away from "a somebody - director in the bank"
New Orleans, Louisiana
Setting of The Awakening
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Wallace Stevens, American)
Seventh section asks "O thin men of Haddam, / Why do you imagine golden birds?"
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Sharks eat marlin, leaving protagonist w only skeleton
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Shaughnessy gets into a disagreement with the oil magnate Harker
George Wilson in The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Shoots title character in his pool before committing suicide
Goodbye, Columbus (Philip Milton Roth, American)
Short Story collection containing "Defender of the Faith" and "The Conversion of the Jews"
A Late Encounter with the Enemy (Flannery O'Connor, American)
Short Story: 104-year-old dies onstage at graduation before granddaughter Sally collects her diploma
Where are you Going? Where Have You Been? (Joyce Carol Oates, American)
Short Story: 15 yr old Connie visited by Arnold Friend, who presumably abducts and kills her
There Will Come Soft Rains (Ray Bradbury, American)
Short Story: Automated house reads Sara Teasdale poem after family dies in nuclear war
The Luck of Roaring Camp (Bret Harte, American)
Short Story: Baby born to Cherokee Sal and raised by California mining camp is killed in flood
Good Country People (Flannery O'Connor, American)
Short Story: Bible salesman Manley Pointer steals wooden leg from Hulga Hopewell
The Blue Hotel (Stephen Crane, American)
Short Story: Centers on Swede's death at Pat Scully's title establishment
The Turn of the Screw (Henry James, American)
Short Story: Children Miles and Flora visited by ghosts Peter Quint and Miss Jessel on Bly estate
The Open Boat (Stephen Crane, American)
Short Story: Cook, Oiler, Correspondent, and Captain lost at sea in title vessel
Big Two-Hearted River (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Short Story: Describes Nick Adams' fishing trip on the Black
A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor, American)
Short Story: Ends w the Misfit murdering the Grandmother
The Outcasts of Poker Flat (Bret Harte, American)
Short Story: Gambler John Oakhurst commits suicide
The Cop and the Anthem (O. Henry, American)
Short Story: Homeless man named Soapy ironically gets arrested after deciding not to go to prison
The Devil and Daniel Webster (Stephen Vincent Benet, American)
Short Story: Jabez Stone's soul saved in trial won by titular politician
The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry, American)
Short Story: Jim and Della sell their watch and hair to buy each other watch chain and comb
The Enormous Radio (John Cheever, American)
Short Story: Jim and Irene Westcott buy title object and learn they can listen to other ppl's apartments
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (F. Scott, Fitzgerald, American)
Short Story: John T. Unger discovers Washington family estate situated atop titular giant gem
By the Waters of Babylon (Stephen Vincent Benet, American)
Short Story: John travels to Place of the Gods in post-apocalyptic wasteland
The Last Leaf (O. Henry, American)
Short Story: Johnsy refuses to die until title object falls
The Story of an Hour (Kate Chopin, American)
Short Story: Louise Mallard learns of husband's death; dies of shock after he returns home alive
Indian Camp (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Short Story: Nick Adams' father performs emergency C section in the title location
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Short Story: Peyton Farquhar revealed to have hallucinated escape from hanging
A Worn Path (Eudora Welty, American)
Short Story: Phoenix Jackson travels along titular trail
Harrison Bergeron (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Short Story: Protagonist revels against artificial handicaps that prevent ppl from being above average
To Build a Fire (Jack London, American)
Short Story: Protagonist ventures into Yukon w dog and dies after failing 3 times to do title action
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (Stephen Crane, American)
Short Story: Scratchy Wilson doesn't have gun battle w Jack Potter after seeing his title newlywed
A Perfect Day for Bananafish (J.D. Salinger, American)
Short Story: Seymour Glass tells Sibyl Carpenter abt title mythical animals while at beach before shooting himself
Why I Live at the P.O. (Eudora Welty, American)
Short Story: Sister explains why she lives at title location
The Lottery (Shirley Jackson, American)
Short Story: Tessie Hutchinson stoned to death by her village after "winning" title event
Hills Like White Elephants (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Short Story: The American tries to convince Jig to get abortion without mentioning the word
The Man Without a Country (Edward Everett Hale, American)
Short Story: Title character Philip Nolan tried for involvement in Aaron Burr's treason plot
The Ransom of Red Chief (O. Henry, American)
Short Story: Title character abducted by two kidnappers while pretending to be title Indian
Moxon's Master (Ambrose Bierce, American)
Short Story: Title character creates chess-playing automaton that later kills him in fit of rage
Bernice Bobs Her Hair (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Short Story: Title character gets new hairstyle
Daisy Miller (Henry James, American)
Short Story: Title girl chooses Mr. Giovanelli over Frederick Winterbourne
Rip Van Winkle (Washington Irving, American)
Short Story: Title man falls asleep for 20 yrs and misses American Revolution
Chrysanthemums (John Steinbeck, American)
Short Story: Traveling tinker mends two of Eliza's pan but breaks her heart by discarding flowers she gives him
The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Short Story: Utopian city relies on child's constant suffering to prosper
In Our Time (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Short story collection containing "Indian Camp" and "The End of Something"
The Four Million (O. Henry, American)
Short story collection containing "The Gift of the Magi"
Flappers and Philosophers (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Short story collection containing "The Ice Palace"
The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury, American)
Short story collection containing "There Will Come Soft Rains"
Slow Learner (Thomas Pynchon, American)
Short story collection containing Entropy and Under the Rose
Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson, American)
Short story collection named after fictional town
Mosses from an Old Manse (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Short story collection named for author's house; contains "Young Goodman Brown" and "Rappaccini's Daughter"
Desiree's Baby (Kate Chopin, American)
Short story: Armand Aubigny's son revealed to be a quadroon (1/4 black)
The Birthmark (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Short story: Aylmer becomes obsessed w removing wife Georgiana's title blemish
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving, American)
Short story: Headless Horseman haunts Ichabod Crane in forest
The Magic Barrel (Bernard Malamud, American)
Short story: Leo Finkle enlists Pinye Salzman to find him a wife; falls in love w pic of Salzman's daughter
The Minister's Black Veil (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Short story: Reverend Hooper covers head w title garment
A White Heron (Sarah Orne Jewett, American)
Short story: Sylvia decides to save title bird
Rappaccini's Daughter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Short story: Title character Beatrice becomes as poisonous as plants she cares for
Bartleby the Scrivener (Herman Melville, American)
Short story: Title character used to work in Dead Letter Office but got depression
Dr. Heidegger's Experiment (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Short story: Title doctor gives four geriatrics vase of water from Fountain of Youth
Young Goodman Brown (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Short story: Title man discovers his entire town is involved in Satanic cult
Sula (Toni Morrison, American)
Sight of title character causes Mr. Finley to choke to death on chicken bone
Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Skillful preacher who denounces sin but secretly harbors it himself
All The King's Men (Robert Penn Warren, American)
Slave Phebe's accidental discovery of wedding ring confirms Annabel Trice's complicity in husband's suicide
Roxana in Pudd'nhead Wilson (Mark Twain, American)
Slave; switches son and master's son at birth to give him life of privilege
Simon Rosedale in The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton, American)
Socially-climbing Jewish banker; rescinds offer to marry protagonist
Long Day's Journey into Night (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Son Edmund diagnosed w consumption while mother Mary relapses into morphine addiction
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Son doesn't actually exist.
Gabriel Lejuanesse in Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Son of blacksmith Basil
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Son purposefully infected Eugene with measles
Etienne and Raoul
Sons of Edna in The Awakening
The Long Goodbye (Raymond Chandler, American)
Sound of speedboat distracts protagonist from seeing Roger Wade shoot himself
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Speaker "measured out [his] life in coffee-spoons"
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Wallace Stevens, American)
Speaker claims that "I know noble accents / And lucid, inescapable rhythms"
The Negro Speaks of Rivers (Langston Hughes, American)
Speaker claims to have "looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Speaker comes to terms w being deferential attendant lord
Because I could not stop for Death (Emily Dickinson, American)
Speaker describes final destination as house which seemed but "a swelling of the ground"
Luke Havergal (Edward Arlington Robinson, American)
Speaker describes location "where vines cling crimson on the wall"
Because I could not stop for Death (Emily Dickinson, American)
Speaker describes passing "fields of gazing grain" and the "setting sun"
Daddy (Sylvia Plath, American)
Speaker describes telephone "off at the root"; explains "the voices just can't worm through"
I taste a liquor never brewed (Emily Dickinson, American)
Speaker evokes time when "Seraphs swing their snowy Hats - / And Saints - to windows run"
Chicago (Carl Sandburg, American)
Speaker has seen "the gunman kill and go free to kill again" and "painted women under the gas lamps"
Chicago (Carl Sandburg, American)
Speaker has seen the "marks of wanton hunger" on "faces of women and children"
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Robert Frost, American)
Speaker has stopped "without a farmhouse near" to watch neighbor's "woods fill up with snow"
The Chambered Nautilus (Oliver Wendell Holmes, American)
Speaker imagines voice from "deep caves of thought"
You, Andrew Marvell (Archibald Macleish, American)
Speaker is "here face down beneath the sun . . . upon earth's noonward height"
Skunk Hour (Robert Lowell, American)
Speaker notes "nobody's here" as he hears car radio bleat "Love, O Careless Love"
Theme for English B (Langston Hughes, American)
Speaker notes "you are white-yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That's American"
Chicago (Carl Sandburg, American)
Speaker notes how title entity laughs "with white teeth" and "as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle"
Mending Wall (Robert Frost, American)
Speaker notes that "here there are no cows"
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Wallace Stevens, American)
Speaker recalls icy window made of "barbaric glass" which title creature's shadow crossed "to and fro"
Because I could not stop for Death (Emily Dickinson, American)
Speaker rides in "carriage [that] held but just [themselves]/And Immortality"
A Supermarket in California (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Speaker sees Garcia Lorca among the watermelons
The Negro Speaks of Rivers (Langston Hughes, American)
Speaker states "my soul has grown deep" like title objects
Daddy (Sylvia Plath, American)
Speaker thinks "I may well be a Jew"; remembers "barely daring to breathe or Achoo"
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, British-American)
Speaker worries abt "bald spot in [his] hair""To have squeezed the universe into a ball"; reference to Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress"
Theme for English B (Langston Hughes, American)
Speaker would like "records-Bessie, bop or Bach"
Mending Wall (Robert Frost, American)
Speaker's surly neighbor twice repeats line "Good fences make good neighbors"
Richard Cory (Edward Arlington Robinson, American)
Speakers must go "without the meat"
Our Town
Speech about the Louisiana Purchase
The Rose Tattoo (Tennessee Williams, American)
Stage direction calling for condom to fall out of Alvaro's pocket got director arrested
A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, American)
Stage directions frequently reference "blue piano"
The Skin of Our Teeth (Thornton Wilder, American)
Stage manager Mr. Fitzpatrick interrupts action of play to admonish actress Miss Somerset for repeatedly breaking fourth wall
Rosemary Hoyt in Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Star of film Daddy's Girl
Edna
Starts to avoid motherly duties, causing Leonce to ask Dr Mandelet about her behavior
To His Excellency General Washington (Phillis Wheatley, American)
States "Columbia's scenes of glorious toils I write"
Chambers in Pudd'nhead Wilson (Mark Twain, American)
Steals ornate Indian knife from Capello twins to kill Judge Driscoll
Death of a Salesman
Stole a crate of basketballs
Uncle Remus Stories (Joel Chandler Harris, American)
Story collection detailing adventures of Mister Fox and Brer Rabbit
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Story of orphan girl falsely accused and executed for theft of pearl necklace; later found in magpie nest
A Rose for Emily (William Faulkner, American)
Strand of gray hair found next to Homer Barron's body
The Luck of Roaring Camp (Bret Harte, American)
Stumpy declares himself godfather of and christens title character "Thomas"
Paul Revere's Ride (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Subject notices two lamps lit in Old North Church
Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller, American)
Subject of several obscenity trials 30 yrs after publication
The Raven (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Subject stands upon "pallid bust of Pallas"
Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy, American)
Subtitled "2000-1887"
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, American)
Subtitled "A Life Among the Lowly"
McTeague (Frank Norris, American)
Subtitled "A Story of San Francisco"
The Making of Americans (Gertrude Stein, American)
Subtitled "Being a History of a Family's Progress"
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Subtitled "The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death"
Angels in America (Tony Kushner, American)
Subtitled "a gay fantasia on national themes"
The Song of Hiawatha (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Takes place by "the shores of Gitchee Gumee, by the Big-Sea-Water"
Main Street (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Takes place in Gopher Prairie
The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler, American)
Takes place in Los Angeles; features character Arthur Geiger
Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Takes place in Midland City
Babbitt (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Takes place in fictional city of Zenith
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Robert Frost, American)
Takes place on winter solstice, "the darkest evening of the year"
The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (Edward Albee, American)
Takes title from line in The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Death of a Salesman
Tape recording of a child reciting state capitals
A Streetcar Named Desire
Telegram from her old admirer Shep Huntleigh
Simon Wheeler in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (Mark Twain, American)
Tells anecdote of quial shot being used to win bet w Jim Smiley
Howl (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Tells of place "where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses"
Professor Baglioni in Rappaccini's Daughter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Tells story of Indian prince gifting Alexander the Great beautiful woman in attempt to kill him
Long Day's Journey into Night (Eugene O'Neill, American)
Tenant farmer Shaughnessy gets into disagreement w oil magnate Harker
The Lottery (Shirley Jackson, American)
Tessie Hutchinson screams "it isn't fair" before dying
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Belle Reve plantation is in the backstory of this play
Death of a Salesman
The Woman in Boston
A Streetcar Named Desire
The drama was developed into a movie, marking the breakthrough performance of method actor Marlon Brando.
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
The father is a miserly actor, while the mother, Mary, is a morphine addict, and the brother is a drunk; they argue and cut each other down throughout the play
A Raisin in the Sun
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
A Raisin in the Sun
The long opening stage direction in this play mentions a light source "which fights its way through" a "little window."
Our Town
The organist Simon Stimson commits suicide in Act 3
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
The patriarch is only famous for one role, as a shakespearean actor
A Raisin in the Sun
The title comes from the Langston Hughes poem "Harlem" (often called "A Dream Deferred").
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Theft of teacup prompts execution by firing squad of Edgar Derby
Benji in The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, American)
Thinks sister Caddy "smells of trees"
The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan, American)
Third and fourth sections describe marriages of Lena St. Clair and Waverley Jong
The British Prison-Ship (Philip Freneau, American)
Third canto begins in misnamed "slaughter-house" where Hessian doctor poorly treats dying
Howl (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Third part repeatedly tells Carl Solomon "I'm with you in Rockland"
Mourning Becomes Electra
This play is really a trilogy, consisting of "Homecoming," "The Hunted," and "The Haunted."
Death of a Salesman
This play questions American values of success
Mourning Becomes Electra
Though it is set in post-Civil War New England, O'Neill used Aeschylus's tragedy The Oresteia as the basis for the plot.
Our Town
Three acts: "Daily Life", "Love and Marriage", "Death"
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Three acts: "Fun and Games," "Walpurgisnacht", and "The Exorcism."
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Three male characters unconsciously raise their glasses at the same time
Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Thwarts burning of 3 prisoners tied to trees
Our Town
Time capsule is placed in a bank
"i sing of olaf glad and big" (e.e. cummings, American)
Title "conscientious object-or" is "more brave than me: more blond than you"
The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain, American)
Title Character Satan (Number 44) visits 2 boys in village of Esseldorf
Bernice Bobs Her Hair (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Title action takes place at Sevier Hotel; prompted by Warren McIntyre's interest in protagonist
Skunk Hour (Robert Lowell, American)
Title animal "drops her ostrich tail" and "jabs her wedge-head in a cup of sour cream"
The Birthmark (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Title blemish shaped like small red hand; located on Georgiana's cheek
Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Title borrowed from Wheaties motto but actually refers to dry martinis
Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, American)
Title character Willy Loman kills himself to give family insurance money
Sula (Toni Morrison, American)
Title character accidentally drowns Chicken Little by throwing him into river
Desiree's Baby (Kate Chopin, American)
Title character and mother run away into bayou; return to live w Madame Valmonde
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, American)
Title character appears at his own funeral; everyone believes he has drowned in Mississippi
Rappaccini's Daughter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Title character brings death w her breath and touch
Daisy Miller (Henry James, American)
Title character catches Roman Fever (malaria) at Colosseum and dies
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Title character claims "Indians of Cleveland" will be defeated by The Great DiMaggio
Rappaccini's Daughter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Title character dies after Giovanni gives her antidote
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Title character finally finds Gabriel Lajeunesse working in almshouse in Pennsylvania
Ethan Frome (Edith Wharton, American)
Title character first seen by narrator limping around in Starkfield, Massachusetts
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Title character fixates on green light on Daisy Buchanan's dock
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Title character frequently calls others "old sport"
Pudd'nhead Wilson (Mark Twain, American)
Title character gets nickname by saying: "I wish I owned half that dog, because I would kill my half"
Sula (Toni Morrison, American)
Title character has affair w Nel's husband Jude
Elmer Gantry (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Title character has affairs w evangelist Sharon Falconer and Lulu Bains
Sula (Toni Morrison, American)
Title character has grandmother who cuts off leg for insurance money and mother who dies when her dress catches fire
Daddy (Sylvia Plath, American)
Title character is "a man in black with a meinkampf look"
Richard Cory (Edward Arlington Robinson, American)
Title character is "richer than a king / and admirably schooled in every grace"
Miniver Cheevy (Edward Arlington Robinson, American)
Title character laments he was born in wrong generation to justify constant drinking
Sula (Toni Morrison, American)
Title character lives in the Bottom
My Antonia (Willa Cather, American)
Title character made pregnant and abandoned by Larry Donovan; eventually marries Anton Cuzak
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Title character mentored by Dan Cody as child
Miniver Cheevy (Edward Arlington Robinson, American)
Title character mourns both Romance and Art
The Ransom of Red Chief (O. Henry, American)
Title character plays games such as "Black Scout"
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, American)
Title character proposes to Becky w doorknob
The Rise of Silas Lapham (William Dean Howells, American)
Title character refuses to sell worthless mills his partner Milton Rogers tricked him into buying
The Ransom of Red Chief (O. Henry, American)
Title character runs away from father Ebenezer Dorset
Bartleby the Scrivener (Herman Melville, American)
Title character sent to Tombs for vagrancy
Harrison Bergeron (Kurt Vonnegut, American)
Title character shot by Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers after dancing w ballerina
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, American)
Title character sold down Mississippi by Shelby's while Eliza runs away w son Harry
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, American)
Title character spends week living as pirate on island w Huck Finn and Joe Harper
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Ezra Pound, American)
Title character strove for three years "to resuscitate the dead art of poetry"
Daisy Miller (Henry James, American)
Title character tries to go on evening boat ride to Chateau de Chillon
Babbitt (Sinclair Lewis, American)
Title character ultimately returns to bourgeois lifestyle after wife Myra gets acute appendicitis
My Antonia (Willa Cather, American)
Title character used to work for Harling family
My Antonia (Willa Cather, American)
Title character used to work for moneylender Wick Cutter who attempted to molest her
Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin, American)
Title character works as bartender for Guillaume; strangles him to death and is executed
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Ezra Pound, American)
Title character's "true Penelope was Flaubert"
Daisy Miller (Henry James, American)
Title character's brother Randolph introduces protagonist to title character
Uncle Remus Stories (Joel Chandler Harris, American)
Title character's christmas song partly addressed to Mr. Killdee and Mr. Whipperwill
White Fang (Jack London, American)
Title character's mother Kiche protects him after lynx kills his father One-Eye
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, American)
Title characters cared for by servant Hannah; are daughters of Marmee
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, American)
Title characters create Pickwick Club (book club) based on The Pickwick Papers
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, American)
Title characters give Christmas breakfast to Hummels
The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, American)
Title comes from Macbeth when he learns of wife's death
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein, American)
Title comes from book of Exodus
Fog (Carl Sandburg, American)
Title entity "sits looking over harbor and city / on silent haunches / and then moves on"
A Dream Deferred (Langston Hughes, American)
Title entity may "[sag] like a heavy load," stink "like rotten meat," or crust "over / like a syrupy sweet?"
Delta Wedding (Eudora Welty, American)
Title event takes place at Shellmound plantation
I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died (Emily Dickinson, American)
Title figure makes "blue, uncertain, stumbling Buzz"
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Title from graffiti he saw on a men's room wall
The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler, American)
Title is euphenism for death
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower (William Carlos Williams, American)
Title object is "like a buttercup / upon its branching stem"
The Bells (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Title objects are silver, golden, brazen, and iron
The Bells (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Title objects leap "higher, higher, higher, with a desperate desire"
The Swimmer (John Cheever, American)
Title protagonist names series of pools "The Lucinda River" after his wife
All My Sons (Arthur Miller, American)
Title refers to pilots killed by Joe's faulty cylinder heads
Old Ironsides (Oliver Wendell Holmes, American)
Title ship is "the meteor of the ocean's air"
Cannery Row (John Steinbeck, American)
Title street famous for producing sardines
The Song of Hiawatha (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Title subject defeats evil magician Pearl-Father, invents written language, discovers corn
Annabel Lee (Edgar Allen Poe, American)
Title woman laid to rest in "tomb by the sounding sea"
Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane, American)
Title wound cared for by Tom Wilson
Kaddish (Allen Ginsberg, American)
Titled after Jewish prayer for the dead
The Professor's House (Willa Cather, American)
Titled for edifice constructed by Godfrey St. Peter using prize money from Oxford Prize in history
Notes of a Native Son (James Baldwin, American)
Titles collection that includes "The Harlem Ghetto" and "Everybody's Protest Novel"
A Perfect Day for Bananafish (J.D. Salinger, American)
Titular imaginary creatures swim into holes and eat so much fruit they bloat and die of terrible fever
Chicago (Carl Sandburg, American)
Titular location called "tool maker," "stacker of wheat," and "hog butcher of the world."
McTeague (Frank Norris, American)
Titular unlicensed dentist kills wife Trina and absconds w her lottery winnings
Brick Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams, American)
Told he has spastic colon to hide his true diagnosis of cancer
A Rose for Emily (William Faulkner, American)
Townsfolk gossip abt relevance of purchase of men's toilet set
Our Town (Thornton Wilder, American)
Traditionally peformed on bare stage without props
Pablo in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Traitorous husband of Pilar; steals detonator in attempt to sabotage operation
Mistress Higgins in The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Tries and fails to persuade Hester to join witches' Sabbath in forest at night
David Gamut in The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Tries to teach psalms to group of beavers
USA Trilogy (John Dos Passos, American)
Trilogy consisting of books 1919, The 42nd Parallel, and Big Money
Paul Revere's Ride (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American)
Twelve, one, and "two by the village clock," he makes it to, respectively, Medford, Lexington, and Concord
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Two dreams: to become a nun, and to become a professional pianist.
Sheperdsons and Grangerfords in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, American)
Two feuding families; attend church together
A Streetcar Named Desire
Two visions of the South: declining "old romantic" vs. the harsh modern era.
Death of a Salesman
Uncle Ben "walked into the jungle" and walked out rich
The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain, American)
Unfinished novel completed by Albert Bigelow Paine
Death of a Salesman
University of Virginia insignia on his sneakers
The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, American)
Uses trope of noble savage thru Uncas and Chingachgook
Zeena in Ethan Frome (Edith Wharton, American)
Utterly distraught after protagonist breaks pickle dish
Angels in America (Tony Kushner, American)
Valium-addicted Harper Pitt leaves her Mormon husband Joe Pitt
Daddy (Sylvia Plath, American)
Vampire who drank speaker's blood for seven years references author's marriage to Ted Hughes
Oil! (Upton Sinclair, American)
Vernon Roscoe helps instigate Teapot Dome scandal
J.B. (Archibald Macleish, American)
Verse Play: Retells biblical story of Job thru title character
In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound, American)
Very short poem: "The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough"
Our Town
Village of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire just after the turn of the 20th century
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving, American)
Villagers find schoolteacher's hat and smashed pumpkin beside brook at end of story
One Art (Elizabeth Bishop, American)
Villanelle: repeats lines "The art of losing isn't hard to master"
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck, American)
Waitress Mae sells begging man and two sons loaf of bread and two pieces of candy for discount
Biff from Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, American)
Walks in on Willy and "The Woman" (mistress), fails math afterward
Our Town
Wally dies of a burst appendix on a Boy Scout trip
Our Town
Warns one of the newly dead not to relive a past memory
Pearl in The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Washes away father's kiss in river
The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan, American)
Waverley Jong becomes chess champion at age nine
The Ambassadors (Henry James, American)
Waymarsh and Sarah Pocock do not see the charms of Paris
Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, American)
Wears titular symbol; bore child Pearl out of adulterous relationship w Arthur Dimmesdale
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Whiskey which is continually becoming more dilute
Bait and Switch (Barbara Ehrenreich, American)
White-collar counterpart to author's book Nickel and Dimed
The Crucible
Wife notably declares that he has "found his goodness."
Leonce
Wife of Edna in The Awakening
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Wife showed promise as a pianist and once lived in a Catholic convent.
A Streetcar Named Desire
Williams
Death of a Salesman
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.
Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, American)
Willy asks Stanley abt seed stores in the area
Uncle Ben in Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, American)
Willy's older brother, struck it rich after finding diamond mines
Bernard from Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, American)
Willy's only true friend; inspires jealousy in former due to successful lawyer career
Hands in Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson, American)
Wing Biddlebaum's propensity to touch young people
Sunday Morning (Wallace Stevens, American)
Woman enjoys "complacencies of the peignoir" and late coffee and oranges"
A Rose for Emily (William Faulkner, American)
Woman exempted from taxes by Colonel Sartoris
The Little Foxes (Lillian Hellman, American)
Woman yearns for childhood plantation home Lionnet
The Making of Americans (Gertrude Stein, American)
Work abt Dehnings and Herslands
Nickel and Dimed (Barbara Ehrenreich, American)
Worked as hotel maid, waitress, and Walmart employee
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower (William Carlos Williams, American)
Written to poet's wife Florence on his deathbed
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, American)
Yellow car kills resident of "Valley of Ashes" watched over by eyes of T. J. Eckleburg on billboard
Manolin in The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway, American)
Young boy forbidden to go w protagonist on fishing trip
Winterset (Maxwell Anderson, American)
Young lovers Mio and Miramne vow to expose the truth only to be gunned down
By the Waters of Babylon (Stephen Vincent Benet, American)
the Gods are revealed to be humans before apocalypse
