Novel Choices

PRE-AP LITERATURE CIRCLES2014

Published in 1951220 pagesBuildingsromanThematic Topics:

Alienation as a form of self-protectionThe painfulness of growing upThe phoniness of the adult world

THE CATCHER IN THE RYEJ.D. SALINGER

Holden Caulfield, a ancient boy of 16 years, has recently been expelled from his prep school at the start of the novel. The story follows Holden’s pursuits of pleasure in New York City after his failed academic career. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex; perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. The novel deals with complex issues of identity, belonging, connection, and alienation.

THE CATCHER IN THE RYEJ.D. SALINGER

A glimpse of the narration:“I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.... What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”

"A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself when I go back to school next September. It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?“

"But you can't always tell – with somebody's mother, I mean. Mothers are all slightly insane.

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

Published in 1899Originally titled “A Solitary Soul”128 pagesBuildingsroman /Feminist ‘romance’Thematic Topics:

Solitude as a consequence of independenceThe implications of self-expression

THE AWAKENINGKATE CHOPIN

A taboo subject back in its day, The Awakening tells the story of one woman's emotional journey from a stifled, miserable marriage to a spirited and lusty freedom. Young Edna Pontellier feels trapped in a loveless, although pampered, life with husband, Leonce. Stirrings of independence begin one summer while resorting in Grand Isle, an island off the coast of Louisiana. These new feelings have begun a profound change in Edna, liberating her beyond belief. But how will her newfound freedom of expression affect her marriage and children?

THE AWAKENINGKATE CHOPIN

A glimpse of the narration:

“The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.”

“I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldnt give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me.”

“There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why—when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation.”

“She's got some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women.”

Published in 1987324 pagesHistorical fictionThematic Topics:

Slavery’s destruction of identityThe importance of community solidarityThe powers and limits of language

BELOVEDTONI MORRISON

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

BELOVEDTONI MORRISON

A glimpse of the narration:“But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day. . . . Other people went crazy, why couldn't she? Other people's brains stopped, turned around and went on to something new, which is what must have happened to Halle. And how sweet that would have been.”

“Look like when I got here I love my children more because as long as I knew we were in Kentucky they really weren't mine to love.”

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”

“Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.”

"I don't want to know or have to remember that. I have other things to do: worry, for example, about tomorrow, about Denver, about Beloved, about age and sickness not to speak of love. But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day."

"Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed."

Published in 324 pagesScience-Fiction/War Novel/Black comedyThematic Topics:

The destructiveness of warThe illusion of free willThe importance of sight

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVEKURT VONNEGUT

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. The plot follows Pilgrim through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden. Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..." Slaughterhouse-Five fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy--and humor.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVEKURT VONNEGUT

A glimpse of the narration:“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”

“So it goes”

“It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.”

“There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”

“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them.

Published in 1948328 pagesDystopian Science-FicitionThematic Topics:

The dangers of totalitarianismPsychological manipulationLanguage as mind controlControl of information

1984GEORGE ORWELL

Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in London, in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own home, the Party watches him through telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the face of the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader, a figure known only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even the people’s history and language. Currently, the Party is forcing the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which attempts to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real.

1984GEORGE ORWELL

A glimpse of the narration:“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

“Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

“I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”