American Novels Flashcards
1850, Hawthorne, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimsdale, Roger Chillingworth.
“Fantastically embroidered with gold thread”
The Prison Door = Chapter 1
The Essence of the Pillory
The Scarlet Letter
Herman Melville (1851), Whales! Ishmael, Ahab, Queequeg, Starbuck. The Pequod Hashtego + Daggo Cetology=whales Ambergris=perfume Final Chapter: The Chase-third day
Moby Dick
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
Tom, Little Eva, Aunt Chloe, Arthur Shelby, George Harris, Simon Legree (villain)
“It’s a sin to hold a slave under laws like ours”
Eliza escapes thru Underground Railroad
“So this is the little lady who started the big war”
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
John Steinbeck (1937) 1930s novella George & Lennie, Curly Lennie loves rabbits (rabbit farm) Migrant laborers, Des Ratones Y Hombres, Van Maussen und Menschen “Something that happened”
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck (1939) Tom Joad, The Joads, Muley Graves, Grampa
Dust Bowl, California
Okies, Route 66
“The men sat still-thinking-figuring”
Battle Hymn of the Republic (song by Odetta)
Jalopy
Henry Fonda (John Ford)
“To the red country and part of the gray county of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently”
The Grapes of Wrath
Ernest Hemingway (1940)
Spanish Civil War
Robert Jordan, Maria
Absinthe “that’s the worm wood” Spain, Segovia
John Donne “any man’s death diminished me…for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for three”
For Whom the Belle Tolls
JD Salinger (1951) Pencey School
Holden Caulfield, Stradlater, Phoebe
David Copperfield mentioned in first line (Dickens)
Book cover: Red carousel horse, Title in Yellow
“Phonies”
The Catcher in the Rye
Ray Bradbury (1953) Guy Montag (fireman) Clarisse Burning Books Fire Captain Beatty Asbestos “It was a pleasure to burn.” “With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene”
Fahrenheit 451
Joseph Heller (1961) Yossarian Doc Daneeka, Milo Menderbinder Bombardier Cover: dancing figure and little plane “Major, Major, Major, Major” “It was love at first sight…” Mike Nichols filmed the movie with Art Garfunkel Closing Time = Sequel “Rational mind”
Catch-22
Ken Kesey (1962)
Randle McMurphy, Nurse Ratched, the Chief, Billy Bibbit
Hospital psych ward
Kirk Douglas played McMurphy on Broadway
Big 5 Academy Awards
Lobotomies
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Kurt Vonnegut Jr (1969) Billy Pilgrim, WWII Town of Ilium, Planet=Tralfamadore “Unstuck in time” Firebombing of Dresden Partly autobiographical “The Children’s Crusade: a duty dance with death” “All this happened, more or less. The war parts anyway, are pretty much true”
Slaughter House Five
Alice Walker (1982) 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Rural Georgia
Celie
“You better not tell nobody but God”
Oprah, Avery, Whoopi Goldberg nominated for Oscars (3 black women)
Movie 11 nominations
The Color Purple
