Love Stories From Romeo and Juliet to the Catcher in the Rye

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It's pretty easy to name famous works of literature that center around a love story. Troilus and Criseyde, Romeo and Juliet, not to mention the complete works of Jane Austen. The Bible has Adam and Eve, The Iliad and the Odyssey even have a love triangle, consisting of Menelaus, Helen and Paris. Readers have long been intrigued by love stories; one only needs to look at the extensive "romance" section of their local bookstore to see how successful such novels are.

It's harder to come up with a list of books NOT centered around a love story. Even books that at first glance seem like they're not going to have a love story in them often do, even if the love story is not a conventional one.

When someone begins to read F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, she may think that she's going to read a story about a wholesome Midwestern boy who moves to an elite suburb of New York City after the war and discovers that rich people are hideous. And while that could be considered a reasonable summary of the events of The Great Gatsby, it ignores that the story involves n ill-fated romance whose unfortunate circumstances and tragic results almost rival those of Romeo and Juliet.

Nick's own minor affair with Jordan is almost completely inconsequential compared to Jay Gatsby's long-standing infatuation with Daisy Buchanan. The reader learns that Gatsby's obsession with Daisy has motivated just about everything he has done, since the day he met her, a revelation that seems equal parts romantic and pathetic. Daisy fails to appreciate (or chooses to ignore) the efforts Gatsby has gone to in order to become "worthy" of her and, as anyone who's read The Great Gastby knows, the results are disastrous for all involved.

One may argue that there's no discernible love story in The Catcher in the Rye. J.D. Salinger's protagonist, young Holden Caulfield, can't even bring himself to utilize the services of a prostitute, let alone maintain a real relationship with a woman. But the love story at the heart of Catcher in the Rye is not between a man and a woman, it's been Holden and the memory of his deceased brother Allie.

His grief over Allie's death, and his connection to his memory, is what motivates him to do or not do all of the things he does in the novel. His obsession with the memory of his departed brother is quite akin to Gatsby's determination to win back his lost Daisy, only that Holden's quest is sadly even more futile than Gatsby's.

Great novels don't need romance to be great, but they may need passion: whether it's for a person, a dog, an ideal or a memory, where there is love, there is a quest, and those are always worth writing about.

Paul Thomson is an avid reader of English Literature. His areas of expertise include Great Gatsby, Romeo and Juliet, and Catcher in the Rye. In his spare time, he loves to participate in online literature forums and promote reading for youth.

Boys Will Be Boys: Tales of Mischief in Tom Sawyer and Lord of the Flies

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Everyone loves a good bad boy. Our media-driven society is obsessed with them, those rebels without causes, those paragons of the uber-masculine and virile. Think Charlie Sheen, George Clooney or Russell Crowe. They challenge society with a sly, charismatic smile. We're drawn to them. In Restoration drama (late 1600s England), they would be called lovable rogues or rakes, good old troublemakers with the power to charm. Today, the appeal of the bad boy comes from the tempting possibility for danger, adventure and intrigue. Especially if they have the standard bad boy garb like rolled-up T-shirts or tight blue jeans like Patrick Swayze in The Outsiders. Swoon.

But the term "bad boys" is a misnomer. George Clooney and Russell Crowe, though playfully deviant in their own ways, are not boys; they are men. Naturally, "bad boys" sounds less menacing than "bad men," but classic literature is full of literal bad boys who are actually young enough to be called boys. Reading about their mischief and exploits is as entertaining-if not more so-than reading the latest gossip magazine.

The quintessential bad boy is Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer The rambunctious twelve-year-old orphan not only has a way with the little ladies-gallantly taking a punishing beating for a cutie name Becky-but he knows how to get what he wants. He's mostly remembered for his sly manipulation of the neighborhood kids, convincing them that whitewashing a huge fence is actually an exclusive and entertaining way to spend your youth-so much so that it's worth a pretty penny to do so. He also thwarts a murderer, finds golden treasure and has the unique opportunity to go to his own funeral. We can only imagine what kind of life this tween will have once he hits puberty. In fact, Twain, a sort of bad boy of wit himself, is said to have based Tom Sawyer's antics on his own childhood. Perhaps adventurous, conniving bad boys grow up to be renowned authors of wit and humor.

Of course, not all bad boys have a sweet, charming side. Some bad boys are just plain old bad, and it takes the absence of adult supervision to bring it out. Enter William Lord of the Flies, a novel about a group of British boys marooned on an island following a plane crash that killed all the adults. The boys are left to their own devices for survival, spiraling into factions and behaving like a bunch of armed savage tweens all hopped up on sugar and pig murder. Reading this novel about humanity's inherent capacity for evil and destruction is certainly not the romp-filled joy ride that Tom Sawyer is. These bad boys kill their peers if they don't like them! It is more likely that they will end up in juvenile detention facility before they swindle the neighborhood kids in a home beautification project. But therein lies the dichotomy of the "bad boy" convention. You've got the good bad and the bad bad, the George Clooneys and the Charlie Sheens, the Tom Sawyers and the British bunch of barbarians. They are both compelling to watch, even if it is a frightening train wreck at times.

Paul Thomson is an avid reader of English Literature. His areas of expertise include Tom Sawyer, Lord of the Flies, and The Outsiders. In his spare time, he loves to participate in online literature forums and promote reading for youth.

From Adulteress to Bombshell: The Continuing Relevance of The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter

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It bears repeating that history repeats itself. Although Arthur Miller's The Crucible is about the Salem Witch Trials in 17th century New England, it is also a biting satire of McCarthyism in the 1950s. Just as colonists tried to save their own skin by accusing community members of witchcraft, American citizens, who were blacklisted as Communists in the late 40s and 50s, accused others in order to save their own reputations.

This ugly pattern is the result of a human defense mechanism known as projection, or the attribution of one's undesirable thoughts or emotions to another, which often is expressed in the form of jealousy or prejudice. In layman's terms, this is known as hypocrisy. And extended to sex and gender, it can take the shape of castration anxiety. Also set in 17th century Puritan New England, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter examines the story of another unfortunate scapegoat. The novel explicitly encapsulates the supposed threat of a powerful woman to paternalistic society, which pushes forth that political or religious order resides in domestic control, making adultery an overblown sin. Since these two classics cover a wide range of topics, including history, psychology and literature, they are prime study material for the AP Exams.

When paranoia strikes, it spreads like wildfire throughout a community. In The Crucible, one small rumor grows into a giant web of accusations of witchcraft, in which individuals who want to hide their indiscretions place the blame on others. Rigid religious and social laws do not allow for any kind of spontaneity; we may take our liberties for granted, but then, a simple act of joy like dancing in the woods could be twisted into sin. What is the chief reason for all of this hearsay? The most potent drive of human nature: sex. Abigail's affair with John Proctor is the fuel to the flame. No matter what the social climate, human desire is difficult to repress; it is the reason for the perpetuation of the human race. Despite its simple origins, the complexity of desire is a double-edged sword; it can fuel an epic love story or be the source of destructive manipulation.

In Hester's case in The Scarlet Letter, it is the latter. Hester is also a strong woman who is a force to be reckoned with in a time when Puritan religion was so pure that it was evil. The rigidity of society hypocritically makes cruelty towards Hester acceptable. Although forced to wear a letter A and shamed by the community, Hester remains stalwart, and does not reveal her lover, who is the ultimate hypocrite: a Reverend who committed adultery. The men are cowards, and the woman takes the blame so that paternal order can be maintained.

As proven time and time again throughout history, paranoia often spreads to all facets of society, which in the 50s included what to wear and what to cook for dinner. More than anyone else at the time, the housewife was the emblem of anticommunism. This may seem odd, but let's examine a term that was coined in the 1950s: bombshell. It indicates that women were an explosive sexual threat, and makes a complicated point: a woman's sexuality was contained within an ideal domestic sphere as a means of quelling anxieties over nuclear war, creating a set of national principles that connected civic virtue to domesticity, and conversely, atomic energy to promiscuity. As the heavy connotations of adulteress and bombshell demonstrate, sex is a powerful force, and in earlier times, but still even now, it is seen as a hazard to sociopolitical stability. Just look at how much commotion was caused by President Clinton's sexual indiscretions. All of the chaotic emotions surrounding sexual desire are a threat to order, and therefore transgressions can lead to unjust punishment, and in extreme cases, war.

Paul Thomson is an avid reader of English Literature. His areas of expertise include The Crucible, The Scarlet Letter, and ACT Prep. In his spare time, he loves to participate in online literature forums and promote reading for youth.