Robinson Crusoe By Daniel Defoe

"Calamus," one of the most controversial sections of the book because of its vivid autoerotic and homosexual themes, moves from a celebration of the self to a celebration of what Whitman terms "manly love." Whitman is chiefly concerned with the love that men feel for each other. He means not just brotherly love, or familial love, but sexual love as well. In "Calamus," Whitman seeks to become joined with another man in as intimate a way as possible. The relationships that men feel for each other, he believes, is incomplete until all facets of friendship are explored. It is only through these facets of love that a person can come to understand the true nature of another person and the meaning of another being. This is the basis for the democratic relationship and the purest expression of it.

In the poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," Whitman moves from the interpersonal exploration of relationships to an exploration of the unity of the collective population. While observing crowds of people crossing the river from Brooklyn into Manhattan, Whitman gains a vision of the unity of all things. He knows that future generations will feel the same feelings, ask the same questions, and contemplate the same thoughts that he has while on this ferry ride. All people, in all time, are joined together in a great scheme. Whitman does not attempt to name this scheme for he is not attempting to write philosophy or theology. Instead, he only seeks for his reader to become joined with him; to understand that they are unified through time and through the page.

Whitman lived through some of the most tumultuous years in the history of the United States. He was a witness of, and participant in, the United States Civil War which lasted from 1861 to 1865. Whitman chronicles this profound historic event in the sections "Drum-Taps" and "Memories of President Lincoln." "Drum-Taps" begins with a celebration of a call to arms. Whitman sees the promise of democracy as yet unfulfilled, chiefly because of the injustice of slavery and the inability of America's population to achieve its hope of individuality. The Civil War was an antidote to this evil. As the war draws on, however, Whitman's tone becomes less celebratory. Death becomes the reality and Whitman laments at brothers killing brothers. The summation of this death is the killing ofAbraham Lincoln, the man that Whitman saw as a model of leadership and greatness. In his most famous poem, "O Captain! My Captain!," Whitman compares Lincoln to the fallen captain of a ship that has come through much trial and tribulation. He encourages the country to sing for its victory, but he admits that he can only mourn for the fallen leader.

The closing sections of Leaves of Grass seek to reassess the themes and motifs of the previous sections while continuing the journey of discovery and exploration of the self. "Autumn Rivulets" and "From Noon to Starry Nights" can be seen as a halfway mark on Whitman's own artistic and physical journey through life. He has a clear understanding and view of death, now, yet he also seeks for his own work to become inspired with the light of his previous years. In all things of nature, he understands that even death is a regeneration of life, just as autumn leaves fall and grow again in the spring. Whitman ends his work with "Songs of Parting." He is not saying a permanent goodbye to the reader, however. Even death is a part of the journey.

 

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn By Mark Twain

Consisting of 43 chapters, the novel begins with Huck Finn introducing himself as someone readers might have heard of in the past. Readers learn that the practical Huck has become rich from his last adventure with Tom Sawyer (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) and that the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson, have taken Huck into their home in order to try and teach him religion and proper manners. Instead of obeying his guardians, however, Huck sneaks out of the house at night to join Tom Sawyer's gang and pretend that they are robbers and pirates.

One day Huck discovers that his father, Pap Finn, has returned to town. Because Pap has a history of violence and drunkenness, Huck is worried about Pap's intentions, especially toward his invested money. When Pap confronts Huck and warns him to quit school and stop trying to better himself, Huck continues to attend school just to spite Pap. Huck's fears are soon realized when Pap kidnaps him and takes him across the Mississippi River to a small cabin on the Illinois shore.

Although Huck becomes somewhat comfortable with his life free from religion and school, Pap's beatings become too severe, and Huck fakes his own murder and escapes down the Mississippi. Huck lands a few miles down at Jackson's Island, and there he stumbles across Miss Watson's slave, Jim, who has run away for fear he will be sold down the river.

Huck and Jim soon learn that men are coming to search Jackson's Island, and the two fugitives escape down the river on a raft. Jim's plan is to reach the Illinois town of Cairo, and from there, he can take the Ohio River up to the free states. The plan troubles Huck and his conscience. However, Huck continues to stay with Jim as they travel, despite his belief that he is breaking all of society and religion's tenets. Huck's struggle with the concept of slavery and Jim's freedom continues throughout the novel.

Huck and Jim encounter several characters during their flight, including a band of robbers aboard a wrecked steamboat and two Southern "genteel" families who are involved in a bloody feud. The only time that Huck and Jim feel that they are truly free is when they are aboard the raft. This freedom and tranquility are shattered by the arrival of the duke and the king, who commandeer the raft and force Huck and Jim to stop at various river towns in order to perform confidence scams on the inhabitants. The scams are harmless until the duke and the king pose as English brothers and plot to steal a family's entire inheritance. Before the duke and the king can complete their plan, the real brothers arrive. In the subsequent confusion, Huck and Jim escape and are soon joined by the duke and the king.

Disappointed at their lack of income, the duke and the king betray Huck and Jim, and sell Jim back into slavery. When Huck goes to find Jim, he discovers that Jim is being held captive on Silas and Sally Phelps' farm. The Phelps think Huck is their visiting nephew, Tom Sawyer, and Huck easily falls into the role of Tom. Tom Sawyer soon arrives and, after Huck explains Jim's captivity, Tom takes on the guise of his own brother, Sid. After dismissing Huck's practical method of escape, Tom suggests they concoct an elaborate plan to free Jim. Tom's plan is haphazardly based on several of the prison and adventure novels he has read, and the simple act of freeing Jim becomes a complicated farce with rope ladders, snakes, and mysterious messages.

When the escape finally takes place, a pursuing farmer shoots Tom in the calf. Because Jim will not leave the injured Tom, Jim is again recaptured and taken back to the Phelps farm. At the farm, Tom reveals the entire scheme to Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas. Readers learn that Miss Watson has passed away and freed Jim in her will, and Tom has been aware of Jim's freedom the entire time. At the end of the novel, Jim is finally set free and Huck ponders his next adventure away from civilization.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An American Tragedy By Theodore Dreiser

The ambitious but immature Clyde Griffiths, raised by poor and devoutly religious parents who force him to participate in their street missionary work, is anxious to achieve better things. His troubles begin when he takes a job as a bellboy at a local hotel. The boys he meets are much more sophisticated than he, and they introduce Clyde to the world of alcohol and prostitution. Clyde enjoys his new lifestyle and does everything in his power to win the affections of the flirtatious Hortense Briggs. But Clyde's life is forever changed when a stolen car in which he's traveling kills a young child. Clyde flees Kansas City, and after a brief stay in Chicago, he reestablishes himself as a foreman at the shirt-collar factory of his wealthy long-lost uncle in Lycurgus, New York, who meets Clyde through a stroke of fortune. While remaining aloof from him as a kinsman and doing nothing to embrace him personally or advance him socially, the uncle does give Clyde a job and ultimately advances him to a position of relative importance within the factory.

Although Clyde vows not to consort with women in the way that caused his Kansas City downfall, he is swiftly attracted to Roberta Alden, a poor and innocent farm girl working under his supervision at the factory. Roberta falls in love with him. Clyde initially enjoys the secretive relationship (forbidden by factory rules) and ultimately persuades Roberta to have sex with him rather than lose him, but Clyde's ambition precludes marriage to the penniless Roberta. He dreams instead of the elegant Sondra Finchley, the daughter of a wealthy Lycurgus man and a family friend of his uncle's.

Having unsuccessfully attempted to procure an abortion for Roberta, who expects him to marry her, Clyde procrastinates while his relationship with Sondra continues to mature. When he realizes that he has a genuine chance to marry Sondra, and after Roberta threatens to reveal their relationship unless he marries her, Clyde hatches a plan to murder Roberta in a fashion that will seem accidental.

Clyde takes Roberta on a row boat on Big Bittern Lake in upstate New York and rows to a remote area. As he speaks to her regarding the end of their relationship, Roberta moves towards him, and he strikes her in the face with his camera, stunning her and capsizing the boat. Unable to swim, Roberta drowns while Clyde, who is unwilling to save her, swims to shore. The narrative is deliberately unclear as to whether he acted with malice and intent to murder, or if he struck her merely instinctively. However, the trail of circumstantial evidence points to murder, and the local authorities are only too eager to convict Clyde, to the point of manufacturing additional evidence against him. Following a sensational trial before an unsympathetic audience, and despite a vigorous defense mounted by two lawyers hired by his uncle, Clyde is convicted, sentenced to death, and executed. The jailhouse scenes and the correspondence between Clyde and his mother stand out as exemplars of pathos in modern literature.

 

Martin Eden  Jack London

Martin Eden is a 21-year-old sailor, as a result of an accidental opportunity, he has known Ruth, falls in love to her, and to her family, her life. He starts to think oneself and between Ross has the huge disparity, in order to enable oneself to match on her, he must upward crawl diligently. Ruth helps him to study writing. Martin writes 40 drafts unceasingly circle throughout in various magazine company. He dosen't understand why his own work aren't accepted, but these have a liking for the spiritless thing always to be able to publish in the publication. He looks for Ruth, reads his work to her, asks her to judge. Ruth does not appreciate his work also. After repeatedly is defeated Martin still to persist to write, which causes him and Ross has the fissure. Ruth has lost confidence gradually to him, but Martin still attacks her side upper society people. Martin see Ruth and her family clearly. Once, they participates in the time which the socialist party person assembles by a tabloid reporter confusedly is interpolated in the report, becomes the anarchism leader, encounters the isolation and besieges. Ruth leaves Martin then. The only real friend of Martin, Brissenden, is dead now. At this time, a huge change happens in his life that the publication magazine starts to use his work actually. The publishing house in order to his reputation has also accepted he all sorts of harsh requests, he became the famous writer. He can’t understand that these works all are already finish, they haven't been changed as well as Martin himself. Why does everybody flatter him today? Finally, Ruth comes back. But Martin is completely discouraged. He is so disappointed that he tells her he doesn't want to see her any more. He no longer writes a character. He leaves all his money to his sister and his laundry room partner Egypt. Then he goes on a ship and jumps into the sea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Light in August William Faulkner

Lena Grove, a pregnant teenager, has made her way to Mississippi in search of her baby’s father. She hitches a ride into the small town of Jefferson, which is home to a planing mill. One of the workers at the mill, Joe Christmas, is a brooding, racially ambiguous man who appeared suddenly at the mill one day in search of a job. After gaining employment, he was soon joined at the mill by another man named Joe Brown. The two formed a partnership, making and selling liquor illegally, and eventually quit their jobs.

Another of the mill workers, Byron Bunch, is intrigued and unsettled when Lena Grove suddenly appears at the mill one day. He tells the town’s disgraced former minister, Reverend Gail Hightower, of his efforts to care for the girl. Soon, Lena comes to realize that the man she seeks—her baby’s father, Lucas Burch—is really Joe Brown. Upon Lena’s arrival in town, Brown is being held in the town jail after the murder of a local woman, Joanna Burden, and the burning of her home. Joe Christmas, Miss Burden’s occasional lover, is the chief suspect.

The narrative then shifts to explore several of the characters’ pasts. As a young minister, Gail Hightower secures a church in Jefferson to feed his obsession with his grandfather, a Confederate cavalryman who was killed in the town during the Civil War. Hightower’s young wife is unfaithful and grapples with mental health problems. She eventually dies in a fall from the window of a Memphis hotel room where she is staying with another man. A scandal ensues, and the Jefferson parishioners turn on Hightower, who is forced to step down.

As a child, Joe Christmas is left on the steps of an orphanage. When the facility’s dietician mistakenly believes that Joe has overheard her having sex with a young doctor in her room, she worries she will lose her job. To eliminate this risk, she threatens to expose young Joe’s biracial background and thus have him transferred to an orphanage for black children. She discusses the plan with the orphanage’s janitor, who kidnaps Joe and takes him to Little Rock, where he is found and returned, only to be adopted two weeks later by a sternly religious man, Mr. McEachern, and his wife.

Joe’s new foster father subjects him to regular beatings. As Joe grows and enters puberty, he eventually crosses paths with Bobbie, a prostitute who works as a waitress in the nearby town. When Mr. McEachern catches his son at a dance with Bobbie, a fight erupts, and Joe kills his foster father by smashing a chair over his head. Abandoned by Bobbie and her cohorts, Joe embraces a life on the run and wanders for more than fifteen years, eventually making his way to Jefferson.

In Jefferson, Joe Christmas stays in the cabin on Joanna Burden’s property, and the two quickly become lovers. Their relationship is marked by passion, violence, and long periods in which they ignore each other. Miss Burden wants a child and claims to be pregnant, but Joe is strongly opposed to the idea. After a time, Joe Brown comes to live with Joe Christmas in his cabin. Miss Burden tries to help Joe Christmas financially, but her meddling only provokes his ire. One night, he savagely attacks and kills her with a razor after she tries to fire a pistol at him in an apparent attempt at a murder-suicide.

Miss Burden’s nephew in New Hampshire offers a $1,000 reward for the capture of his aunt’s killer. Search parties with bloodhounds comb the countryside for the fugitive Joe Christmas, who eludes capture for days, running to the point of hunger and exhaustion. Lena, meanwhile, moves into the cabin that the two Joes had shared in order to prepare for the birth of her baby; Byron Bunch stays in a tent nearby.

Joe Christmas is apprehended on the streets of nearby Mottstown. His biological maternal grandfather, Uncle Doc Hines, makes his way through the crowd to curse Joe and call for his death. When the officials from Jefferson arrive to take charge of the prisoner, Mrs. Hines breaks through the crowd as well, hoping to see the face of the grandson who her husband told her died as a child. The Hineses then take the train to Jefferson together.

Byron and the Hineses arrive at Hightower’s house and reveal that Joe Christmas’s father was a circus worker who tried to run off with the Hineses’ daughter before Uncle Doc shot and killed him. Eventually, Uncle Doc placed the baby in the orphanage in Memphis where he worked as a janitor. Byron wants Hightower to lie and claim that Joe Christmas was with him, at his house, on the night of Joanna Burden’s murder. Hightower becomes angry and asks them to leave.

Lena goes into labor, but by the time Byron arrives with the doctor, Hightower has already delivered the baby. Assisting in the delivery is Mrs. Hines, who mistakenly believes that Lena is her long-dead daughter, Milly, and that the newborn is her grandson, Joe Christmas. Byron arranges to have Joe Brown sent to Lena’s cabin; upon arriving, Brown is shocked to see Lena holding his newborn son, slips out a back window, and runs away. Byron sees Brown escape and tries to stop him, but the much larger man beats Byron soundly and escapes on a passing train. Joe Christmas, meanwhile, escapes from his captors as well, while he is being led across the town square. Before long, he is tracked down, shot, killed, and castrated in Hightower’s kitchen by a bounty hunter named Percy Grimm. Afterward, the aging Hightower muses on his past and prepares for his own death.

After a road trip, a local furniture mover near Jefferson recounts to his wife how he gave a ride to a curious couple—a woman with a newborn child accompanied by a man who was not the child’s father. The couple—Lena and Byron—was halfheartedly in search of the baby’s biological father, as the man drove them deeper into Tennessee.

 

Lady Chatterley's Lover Summary

 

Connie and Clifford are married. They have a nice house—an estate, really; a not-so-nice coal mine; and a couple of big problems.

Connie is a bohemian intellectual; Clifford is a stuffy, old-fashioned English aristocrat. Cue misunderstandings and, if this were a sitcom, hijinks. Unfortunately, it's a work of modernist literature. Many fewer hijinks. World War I. Yeah, that happened. Clifford is paralyzed from the waist down, and you know what that means. No sex and no heir to the Chatterley name or estate. They get by all right for a while. Clifford writes some really modernist, depressing stories and people like them. Modern young men and women come visit and have intellectual conversations about how bad everything is, particularly sex and love. One of these modern young men, a really vulgar Irish playwright named Michaelis, convinces Connie to have sex with him. For a while, it's awesome. She feels much better about everything, even if he kind of jumps the gun every time they get in bed together. He even tries to convince her to marry him. When she hesitates, he says some nasty things about modern women and totally harshes Connie's mellow. Now things really start to go south for Connie. She's getting fed up with an increasingly needy and dependent Clifford, so she and her sister, Hilda, convince him to hire a nurse, Ivy Bolton. Ivy is incredibly vulgar, but Clifford likes her anyway—who wouldn't like someone catering to his every whim? Around this time, Connie starts hanging out in a hut on the edge of the clearing where the gamekeeper Oliver Mellors is raising some pheasant chicks (the bird kind) to stock Wragby park. They instantly hate each other, so of course they end up having wild, passionate sex and then endlessly talking about how great their sex is, like that really annoying couple you have to stop hanging out with for about six months after they start dating. Mellors has a lot to say. He's from a coal-mining family, but he bettered himself through literature (natch) and then got fed up with modern men and women (sensing a theme here?) and decided to go back to working with his hands. He says some nasty things about pretty much everyone, and Connie eats it up with a spoon. Eventually Connie finds herself pregnant. Clifford has actually told her he'd be okay with raising another man's child so long as Wragby gets an heir, but by now she can't stand to be around Clifford. She goes to Venice with her sister and father with the intention of faking an affair with a more appropriate guy—gamekeepers are a little déclassé—and they convince her to get a friend of the family to help her file for divorce.

Back at the ranch, Mellors's estranged wife has shown up to be all nasty, the Miss Jackson kind, to him and accuse Lady Chatterley of being his lover. Clifford doesn't exactly believe it, but he fires Mellors just in case. Connie heads home, confesses, and asks for a divorce. Clifford, for some insane reason, refuses. When the novel ends, everyone's waiting: Mellors is learning how to farm and waiting for his divorce to go through; Connie is waiting for the baby to be born so she can leave Wragby; and they're both waiting for Clifford to realize he's being a giant jerk and give Connie the divorce.

 

Pride and Prejudice Summary

 

In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen tackles a common reality in England in the early 19th century – women who lack a fortune need to marry well. By "well," we mean wealthy. So, any guy from a good family with large, steady income is fair game on the Marriage Hunt. Rich but unintelligent, unattractive, boring men? Mrs. Bennet says, "Bring it on!" To be fair, she does have five daughters who lack a fortune. When a certain (wealthy) Mr. Bingley moves into the neighborhood and is interested in her eldest daughter, Jane, Mrs. Bennet becomes deliriously happy and (to the extreme discomfort of her family and innocent spectators) tries to push them together in every way possible.

It's not all roses and champagne just yet, however. While Mr. Bingley is easygoing and pleasant, his sisters are catty snobs whose attitude is encouraged by a certain Mr. Darcy. Good-looking, rich, and close friends with Mr. Bingley, Darcy is also insufferably proud and haughty. The Bennets are beneath him in social stature, so Mr. Darcy is proportionately disagreeable, particularly to Jane's younger sister Elizabeth. When Mr. Bingley suggests that Mr. Darcy ask Elizabeth to dance, Mr. Darcy replies that she isn't pretty enough. The two men accidentally carry on their conversation within earshot of Elizabeth. Ouch.

It's clear to everyone that Mr. Bingley is falling in love with Jane, but Jane's calm temperament hides her true feelings (she loves him too). Elizabeth gossips about the situation with her close friend Charlotte Lucas, who argues that Jane needs to show affection or risk losing Mr. Bingley. Meanwhile, Mr. Darcy has finished maligning Elizabeth, and starts becoming attracted to her (something about her "fine eyes"). In any case, Mr. Bingley's sisters extend a dinner invitation to Jane, who (based on the recommendations of her mother) rides over to the Bingley mansion in the rain, gets soaking wet, falls ill, and has to remain in the Bingley household. Elizabeth arrives to nurse her sister and engage in some witty banter with Mr. Darcy. Astonished at his attraction, he keeps staring at Elizabeth, but she assumes he's being a jerk and trying to judge her.

 

Back at Longbourn (the Bennet home), Mr. Collins arrives for a visit. As Mr. Bennet's closest male relative, Mr. Collins will inherit the estate after Mr. Bennet's death. Mr. Collins has decided that the nice thing to do is to marry one of the Bennet girls in order to preserve their home. It looks like he has his sights set on Elizabeth, but did we mention that he's a complete fool and worships his boss (a certain Lady Catherine)? It's clear that Elizabeth finds him repulsive.

As for the two youngest Bennet sisters, the militia has arrived in town and they're ready to throw themselves at any officers who wander their way. They meet a charming young man named Mr. Wickham, who rapidly befriends Elizabeth. Wickham tells Elizabeth a sob story about how all of his life opportunities were destroyed by Mr. Darcy, convincing her that Darcy is Evil Personified. Elizabeth readily believes Wickham's story, and also learns that Lady Catherine (Mr. Collins's boss) is Mr. Darcy's aunt. The next day, all the Bennet girls are invited to a ball at Netherfield (a.k.a. Mr. Bingley's mansion). Elizabeth is excited about possibly dancing with Wickham, and also excited to see Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham confront each other. At the ball, Wickham is absent, but Darcy asks Elizabeth to dance. So does Mr. Collins, whose dancing style is grotesquely embarrassing to Elizabeth. The rest of Elizabeth's family is no better: Mrs. Bennet brags to everyone that Bingley will likely propose to Jane, Mary and shows off her non-existent musical talent, and Lydia and Kitty are embarrassingly flirty with the military officers. The following morning, Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth, who practically has to beat him over the head before he believes her adamant refusal. We don't feel too bad for Mr. Collins because Elizabeth's friend, Charlotte Lucas, pretends to play wingman (or wingperson, if you like), but is really hunting for a proposal of her own. Mr. Collins does indeed step up, and Charlotte accepts. Elizabeth is shocked when she learns of their engagement. She has difficulty believing that Charlotte's good sense would allow her to marry such a ridiculous man. Charlotte explains, however, that she's a spinster with no prospects, and she'd rather have her own home than live with her parents forever. Basically, beggars can't be choosers.