The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Aunt Polly finds Tom in the pantry where he has been eating forbidden jam. As she gets a switch, Tom
convinces her that something is behind her. As she turns, he escapes, leaving her to contemplate how he
constantly plays tricks on her. She is concerned whether or not she is "doing her duty by him," but
because he is her dead sister's child, she cannot bring herself to be harsh with him.

That afternoon, Tom plays hooky from school, and at supper that night, Aunt Polly tries to trap him into
revealing that he skipped school. Tom is able to avert her questioning, until Sid, Tom's brother, squelches
on him. Before Aunt Polly can say more, Tom escapes.

Heading into town, Tom meets a stranger, "a boy larger than himself" and dressed up like a "city slicker."
He and Tom get into a fight. Tom gets the better of the other boy and follows him home. The boy's mother
appears and calls Tom a "bad vicious, vulgar child" and orders him away. When Tom returns home with
his clothes dirty and torn, Aunt Polly decides that, as punishment, he will lose his freedom on Saturday
and will have to whitewash the fence.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King

Red, the narrator, recounts how he planned and carried out his wifes murder by disabling her brakes,
which accidentally killed a neighbor and child as well and earned him a life sentence at Shawshank
Prison. Red also remembers the arrival of an inmate named Andy Dufresne, whose tenure at Shawshank
affected the lives of everyone at the prison. Andy was sent to Shawshank for life in 1947 for the coldblooded murder of his wife, Linda, and her lover, tennis pro Glenn Quentin. Despite the damning
evidence placing him at the scene of the crime on the night of the murders, Andy has always maintained
his innocence, which Red eventually comes to believe in as well.

Andy has some initial difficulty adjusting to prison life, especially because many of the other prisoners
think hes a snob. A gang of men known as the Sisters frequently attack and rape him in the laundry room
while the guards look the other way. Andy fights the Sisters, even though it always lands him in the
infirmary and sometimes solitary confinement. Despite these hardships, however, Andy never complains
or loses his confidence

Red walks the rural hayfields in search of the stone wall Andy had described years earlier, and after
several weeks of searching, he finally finds the rock. Underneath, Red discovers a letter addressed to him
from Peter Stevens, Andys pseudonym. The letter invites Red to join Andy in Mexico and includes a gift
of $1,000. Red concludes the postscript with renewed hope for the future as he decides to abandon his
job, violate his parole, and make his way to Mexico to find Andy.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzGerald

As The Great Gatsby opens, Nick Carraway, the story's narrator, remembers his upbringing and the
lessons his family taught him. Readers learn of his past, his education, and his sense of moral justice, as
he begins to unfold the story of Jay Gatsby. The narration takes place more than a year after the incidents
described, so Nick is working through the filter of memory in relaying the story's events. The story proper
begins when Nick moves from the Midwest to West Egg, Long Island, seeking to become a "well-rounded
man" and to recapture some of the excitement and adventure he experienced as a soldier in WWI. As he
tries to make his way as a bond salesman, he rents a small house next door to a mansion which, it turns
out, belongs to Gatsby.
Daisy Buchanan, Nick's cousin, and her husband, Tom, live across the bay in the fashionable community
of East Egg. Nick goes to visit Daisy, an ephemeral woman with a socialite's luminescence, and Tom, a
brutish, hulking, powerful man made arrogant through generations of privilege, and there he meets Jordan
Baker, the professional golfer and a girlhood friend of Daisy's. Tom, known for his infidelities, makes no
pretense to cover up his affairs. As Tom and Daisy work to set up Nick and Jordan, they seize the
opportunity to question him about his supposed engagement to a girl back home. Nick reassures them
there is no impending marriage, merely a series of rumors that cannot substitute for truth.
Upon returning home that evening, as he is sitting outside, Nick notices a figure emerging from Gatsby's
mansion. Nick's initial impulse is to call out to Gatsby, but he resists because Gatsby "gave a sudden
intimation that he was content to be alone." It was while watching Gatsby that Nick witnesses a curious
event. Gatsby, standing by the waterside, stretches his arms toward the darkness, trembling. This gesture
seems odd to Nick, because all he can make out is a green light, such as one finds at the end of a dock,
across the Sound. Looking back at the mysterious figure Nick realizes that Gatsby has vanished.
Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
The story of Rip Van Winkle was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old
gentleman from New York who was especially interested in the histories, customs, and culture of the
Dutch settlers in that state. It is set in a small, very old village at the foot of the Catskill Mountains, which
was founded by some of the earliest Dutch settlers. Rip lived there while America was still a colony of
Great Britain.

Rip Van Winkle is descended from gallant soldiers but is a peaceful man himself, known for being a kind
and gentle neighbor. His single flaw is an utter inability to do any work that could turn a profit. It is not
because he is lazyin fact, he is perfectly willing to spend all day helping someone else with their labor.
He is just incapable of doing anything to help his own household. He also is well-known for being an
obedient, henpecked husband, for Dame Van Winkle has no problem shouting insults into the
neighborhood and tracking him down in the village to berate him. All the women and children in the
village love him and side with him against his wife, and even the dogs do not bark at him.

Indeed, when he tries to console himself and escape from Dame Van Winkle, he often goes to a sort of
philosophical or political club that meets on a bench outside of a small inn. Here the more idle men
actually gossip and tell sleepy stories about nothing, every once in a while discussing current events
when they find an old newspaper. Nicholaus Vedder is the landlord of the inn and the leader of the group.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau opens with the chapter "Economy." He sets forth the basic principles that guided his experiment
in living, and urges his reader to aim higher than the values of society, to spiritualize. He explains that he
writes in response to the curiosity of his townsmen, and draws attention to the fact that Walden is a firstperson account. He writes of himself, the subject he knows best. Through his story, he hopes to tell his
readers something of their own condition and how to improve it. Perceiving widespread anxiety and
dissatisfaction with modern civilized life, he writes for the discontented, the mass of men who "lead lives
of quiet desperation." Distinguishing between the outer and the inner man, he emphasizes the
corrosiveness of materialism and constant labor to the individual's humanity and spiritual development.
Thoreau encourages his readers to seek the divinity within, to throw off resignation to the status quo, to be
satisfied with less materially, to embrace independence, self-reliance, and simplicity of life. In identifying
necessities food, shelter, clothing, and fuel and detailing specifically the costs of his experiment, he
points out that many so-called necessities are, in fact, luxuries that contribute to spiritual stagnation.
Technological progress, moreover, has not truly enhanced quality of life or the condition of mankind.
Comparing civilized and primitive man, Thoreau observes that civilization has institutionalized life and
absorbed the individual. He writes of living fully in the present. He stresses that going to Walden was not
a statement of economic protest, but an attempt to overcome society's obstacles to transacting his "private
business." He does not suggest that anyone else should follow his particular course of action. Each man
must find and follow his own path in understanding reality and seeking higher truth. Discussing
philanthropy and reform, Thoreau highlights the importance of individual self-realization. Society will be
reformed through reform of the individual, not through the development and refinement of institutions.