SCRIPTORIUM
AMERICAN SUMMARIES
The Catcher in the Rye
Author: J.D. Salinger
Time period: Modernism
Language: English
Holden Caulfield is expelled from Pencey Prep, a boarding school in Pennsylvania, and aimlessly wanders the streets of New York City. Before his expulsion, Holden failed all of his classes at Pencey except English, left his fencing gear in a New York subway station angered his team, and was embarrassed by his history teacher, Mr. Spencer. Holden is perturbed by his roommate, Robert Ackley, and writes an English composition about his brother’s baseball glove to his enemy, Stradlater. Allie Caulfield is one of Holden’s brothers, who died from leukemia. Holden becomes increasingly annoyed at Pencey, with Stradlater going on a date with his crush, Jane Gallagher. After being upset with the “phonies” at his school he leaves to go on a subway to New York where he meets the obnoxious mother of Ernest Morrow and discusses where the ducks in Central Lagoon migrate to during the winter to a taxi driver. Holden calls up a prostitute named Sunny yet refuses her, causing her to come back with her pimp Maurice demanding money. Maurice takes Holden’s money and Holden dreams of him shooting him with an automatic pistol. Holden then meets at Biltmore Theater with his date Sally Hayes, buys a “Little Shirley Beans” record for his little sister, Phoebe Caulfield, and goes ice skating at Rockefeller Center. He goes to a bar where he encounters Carl Luce, one of Holden’s former classmates. However, Carl leaves uncomfortably after Holden perturbs him of his supposed homosexuality and goes to Central Park to investigate ducks, where he breaks his record. Holden sneaks back home to see Phoebe where he shares his fantasy to her about saving children through a field of rye. He explains to her how he would save them before they fall off the cliff, to which Phoebe corrects him, explaining that he misheard Robert Burns’ poem called “Comin’ Thro the Rye.” Holden breaks into tears and leaves to stay at his former English teacher, Mr. Antolini’s house. Mr. Antolini gives him life advice but Holden quickly leaves after waking up to him patting his head, interpreting it as a sexual advance. He goes to sleep at Grand Central Terminal and regrets leaving Mr. Antolini’s house. Holden decides to move out west and dreams of living in a log cabin with his “deaf-mute” girlfriend. Before leaving, he decides to visit Phoebe’s school and sees vulgar graffiti on the walls, symbolizing the tarnishment of innocence. He takes Phoebe to the zoo where the novel ends with Phoebe riding a carousel and giving Holden back the red hunting hat he gifted her with. He finally goes back to his parents to tell them that he is going to a different school in September.
Moby Dick
Author: Herman Melville
Time Period: “The American Renaissance"
Language: English
The novel opens with the main protagonist famously stating, “Call me Ishmael.” It begins with Ishmael meeting his friend, Queequeg, in New Bedford Massachusetts. The two then go to Nantucket where they board the Pequod, a ship made with the bones and teeth of a sperm whale and led by Captain Ahab. Captain Ahab announces to the Pequod that his missing leg is due to the attack of a violent sperm whale, Moby Dick, and devotes his life to killing the whale. He nails a gold doubloon to the ship and announces it as a prize for the man who first sees Moby Dick. The Pequod travels through Africa and encounters other whaling ships such as the Jeroboam, led by the disillusioned fortune teller, Captain Gabriel. A cabin boy Pip jumps out of the Pequod and into the ocean, causing him to go insane and become a prophet jester. The Pequod also encounters the Samuel Enderby, led by Captain Boomer who also encountered Moby Dick and lost his arm. Queequeg then falls ill and dies whilst Fedallah, the leader of Ahab’s harpoon crew predicts three prophecies; that Ahab will not die until he has seen the three “hearses” of the sea, one will be “not made by mortal hands,” and that the other must be made of wood from America. All three prophecies prove to be true when a typhoon hits the Pequod, and a member on the ship, Starbuck, predicts it to be an omen. Ahab finally finds Moby Dick and fails at attacking it, accidentally killing Fedallah in the process. On the third day, Moby Dick attacks the Pequod, killing Ahab and the ship crew, leaving only Ishmael alive. Ishmael escapes the whirlpool by floating on top of his friend Queequeg's coffin until the ship Rachel finds him and rescues him.
To Kill a Mockingbird
Author: Harper Lee
Time period: 1960
Language: English
Scout Finch lives with her brother Jem and father Atticus Finch in Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. A boy named Dill visits Maycomb for the summer, whom Scout and Jem befriend. Dill becomes fascinated by the Radley Place, a house on their street inhabited by Nathan Radley and Arthur (“Boo”) Radley. Later Scout attends school for the first time and collects gifts left for her and Jem in a knothole of a tree on the Radley Property, believing it to be for them. Dill returns the following summer where Scout and Jem continue speculating about Boo's presence and act out his story. The three sneak onto the Radley Property and Nathan Radley shoots at them, causing Jem to lose his pants whilst trying to escape, only for them to be mended and hung on the Radley fence upon his return. Meanwhile Atticus defends a Black man named Tom Robinson who was accused of raping a white woman in court. The dismay of Maycomb’s racist community makes Jem and Scout subject to abuse from other children. The next summer Dill returns along with Atticus’ sister, Alexandra. Tom Robinson’s trial begins and while he is placed in jail, a mob gathers to lynch him but is stopped by Scout when she questions a man in the mob about his son. During his trial Atticus provides clear evidence of the accusers, Mayella Ewell and her father Bob to be lying. However despite Tom’s clear innocence he is still convicted by the white jury and later shot to death, the situation becoming a traumatic memory for Jem. Bob Ewell feels that Atticus and the judge made a fool out of him and breaks into the judge’s house, menaces Tom’s widow, and attacks Scout and Jem on their way home from a Halloween party. Boo Radley intervenes and saves the children, stabbing and killing Ewell in the process. Scout later sympathizes with Boo and feels grateful for his kindness, embracing her father’s advice to not view the world through prejudice and hatred.
The Great Gatsby
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Time period: Modernism
Language: English
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Nick Carraway is from Minnesota and was educated at Yale before he moved to the West Egg district of Long Island where he meets his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, who lives in a large Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every weekend. Nick is invited to dinner in East Egg with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom. Nick then begins a relationship with Jordan Baker, who tells Nick about Tom’s affair with Myrtle Wilson, who lives in an industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City called the Valley of Ashes. Intrigued by this information, Nick goes to New York City for a party with Tom and Myrtle in the apartment that Tom keeps for his affair with Myrtle, unbeknownst to Daisy. Myrtle taunts Tom about Daisy at the party, leading him to break her nose. Nick is then invited to one of Gatsby’s parties along with Jordan Baker, where he meets Gatsby himself and is nicknamed “old sport.” At the party, Jordan is spoken to by Gatsby alone, who later reports to Nick that Gatsby is in love with Daisy and that Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle is only an attempt to impress her. Gatsby requests Nick to arrange a reunion between him and Daisy, which Nick executes by inviting Daisy for tea. After the reunion, Daisy and Gatsby begin their affair and Tom grows suspicious. After he sees Gatsby stare at Daisy longingly, Tom grows outraged and confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, where he asserts to Daisy that Gatsby is a criminal. When Nick, Jordan and Tom drive past the valley of ashes, they find Gatsby’s car and Myrtle dead. The three rush back to Long Island where Nick learns from Gatsby that it was Daisy who drove the car and killed Myrtle, but Gatsby insists on taking the blame. Tom then tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that Gatsby murdered Myrtle with his car. Outraged and assuming that Gatsby had an affair with Myrtle, George shoots Gatsby in his mansion pool and later shoots himself. Nick then stages a funeral for Gatsby and moves back to the Midwest out of disgust for the moral decay of the luxurious lives of the East Coast. Nick concludes that Gatsby’s dream of a romantic relationship with Daisy was corrupted by his pursuit of wealth and money and that the American dream, just like Gatsby’s dream, is dead.
The Raven
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Time period: 1845, American Romanticism
Language: English
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“Once upon a midnight dreary” in a “bleak December,” the poem follows a sorrowful narrator who mourns the loss of his beloved Lenore. When he tries to distract himself by reading “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,” he hears a tapping at his chamber door. Upon investigating the sound, the poem’s title figure, a raven, appears perched on a “pallid bust of Pallas” above the door.
The raven that only answers with the word “nevermore,” intensifies the narrator’s despair after every question he asks. The narrator visualizes “Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor” and begs for “nepenthe,” a drug to forget his suffering. He questions the raven about the possibility of reuniting with Lenore in the afterlife, asking, “is there balm Gilead?” and whether he will ‘clasp a sainted maiden,” in “the distant Aidenn.” The raven’s repetition of “nevermore” keeps crushing his hopes, leaving him to lament on and imploring the raven to “get back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore.”