11th Grade English

In Shakespeare’s most famous play, a young prince, alienated and betrayed, struggles to make a decision; in a court where every friend is a spy, and every loving act somehow leads to murder, the sanest person is he who pretends to be mad. A brilliantly controlled plot, complex and convincing characters, and, above all, wonderful poetry have won Hamlet a deserved place as Shakespeare’s most popular and frequently-performed play.

	The Grapes of Wrath The Joads and thousands of others are driven out of Oklahoma by drought and the Depression. It is bad enough they lose their farms to homes and have to move. It is worse that the big business fruit growers in California print misleading flyers claiming to have far more well-paying jobs available than they ever intended to have. The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joads family as they journey across America to find a new beginning.		The Great Gatsby It's also a love story, of sorts. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama.
	Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was first published in 1899 in serial form in London’s Blackwood’s Magazine. Loosely based on Conrad’s firsthand experience of rescuing a company agent from a remote station in the heart of the Congo, the novel is considered a literary bridge between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With its modern approach to questions such as the nature of good and evil, the novel foreshadows many of the themes that define modern literature.		Moby Dick A masterpiece of storytelling and symbolic realism, this thrilling adventure and epic saga pits Ahab, a brooding sea captain, against the great white whale that crippled him. More than just the tale of a hair-raising voyage, Melville's riveting story passionately probes man's soul. A literary classic first published in 1851, Moby-Dick represents the ultimate human struggle.
	The Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne accepts punishment for an adulterous affair with an unknown secret lover. Her husband sent Hester over to Boston township a few years prior to the novel's beginnings, but until her sentencing, had not been heard from. Hester has been sentenced to the adornment of a letter `A' on her attire, signifying the adulterous affair. The young Reverend Dimmesdale, a sympathetic observer, turns out to be more than a friend. As Hester is forced to stand on the town's scaffolds with her young infant, Pearl, an unknown man enters the crowd, and Hester realizes that it is her husband, finally arrived in Boston.		A Farewell to Arms A Farewell to Arms is one of Hemingway's earliest novels. With much of the material loosely based on his own personal experiences as an ambulance driver during World War I, the story captures in great detail the conflict in all of its horror and barbarism. The book invites us to imagine all of the brave soldiers who went into the war in search of glory. What they found instead was the endless stalemate of trench warfare. Hemingway, who was there himself, serves as a perfect instrument to portray what it was really like.
	The Crucible Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism.		Leaves of Grass "The most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." — Ralph Waldo Emerson. Inspired by transcendentalism, Whitman's immortal collection includes some of the greatest poems of modern times, including his masterpiece "Song of Myself." Shattering standard conventions of symbolism and allegory, it stands as an unabashed celebration of body and nature.
	Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain For deft plotting, riotous inventiveness, unforgettable characters, and language that brilliantly captures the lively rhythms of American speech, no American writer comes close to Mark Twain. This sparkling anthology covers the entire span of Twain’s inimitable yarn-spinning, from his early broad comedy to the biting satire of his later years. This book contains all six of Mark Twains stories.		Hamlet "…what is this quintessence of dust?" In Shakespeare’s most famous play, a young prince, alienated and betrayed, struggles to make a decision; in a court where every friend is a spy, and every loving act somehow leads to murder, the sanest person is he who pretends to be mad. A brilliantly controlled plot, complex and convincing characters, and, above all, wonderful poetry have won Hamlet a deserved place as Shakespeare’s most popular and frequently-performed play.
	Othello The actual play is about one of the major themes in life known to everyone. Cheating. In Othello, newly weds are having to perfect a life and a jealous man intends to ruin it. Iago, honest Iago whom everyone loves, hints to the husband about his wife's possible side actions. Through little hints and many coincidences, everything goes wrong leading to a very tragic ending.		Walden and Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau's masterwork, Walden, is a collection of his reflections on life and society. His simple but profound musings-as well as "Civil Disobedience," his protest against the government's interference with civil liberty-have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and love of nature.