1.The Minister’s Black V eil--Hawthorne,人物：Hooper
总结：A universally beloved minister appears in church one Sunday wearing a small black veil which hides his face from the forehead to the mouth. Everyone is made uneasy by this.
After he has worn it for several Sundays a delegation from the congregation go to his home to ask him to remove it, or at least explain why he is wearing it. But intimidated胁迫by the veil, they are afraid to raise the subject.
His bride-to-be then declares she will speak to him about it. When he will not discuss the matter with her she says she is afraid to marry him unless he lifts the veil at least once, or tells her why he must refuses. He will not but begs her to marry him anyway, instead of condemning them each to a lonely life. He continues to wear the veil throughout a lonely life. Everyone avoids him but his sermons布道become even more impressive and many people are brought to a state of grace by them.
“black veil”symbolizes the cover used to keep one’s guilt as a secret.
Themes: light vs. dark integrity vs. hypocrisy free will vs. conformity openly sin vs. guilt 2.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—Mark Twain人物：Huck, Jim
Themes: 1.Huck’s quest for freedom and Jim’s quest for anti-slavery
2. Society vs. individual
3. H uck’ birth and rebirth
4. Huck’s loneliness and isolation
人物性格分析：Huck is always practical and natural, exhibiting good common sense. Huck is extremely adaptable. Huck is also very shrewd and possesses a good inventive ability. His sympathy for other human beings, his shrewdness and ingenuity, his basic intelligence, his good common sense and his basic practicality.
3.An American Tragedy-- Theodore Dreiser 人物：Clyde Griffths
总结：Clyde thinks money and success will bring him happiness. When a pregnant girlfriend threatens to destroy this dream, he plans to kill her. At the last moment, he changes his mind, but the girl dies accidentally anyway. Since Clyde has decided not to kill her, is he really responsible for her death? This becomes the main question during the trial审判. The trial itself is not really fair. The newspapers stir up public anger against him. In the end, Clyde is executed. Clearly, Dreiser believes that Clyde is not really guilty. Dreiser calls his novel a tragedy, and in certain ways it is similar to classical Greek tragedy. It concentrates on a single individual, who gives it unity; and his individual is eventually destroyed by forces which he cannot control.
4.The Hairy Ape—Eugene O’Neill 人物：Yank
全文总结：Yank, the ape-like seaman, attempts to rise to a higher level. Yank’s initial crisis is seeing himself unfavorably in the mirror of the society girl when she calls him a filthy beast. After this incident, and throughout the play, he struggles to find out exactly who and what he is. Ultimately he tries to find meaning and purpose in the animal world by freeing a caged gorilla, but this final effort fails also. In the end, Yank dies, without ever finding his place of belonging. The general feeling is one of despair: Man is rootless in an indifferent and impersonal universe. Summary of Act VIII: The next day Yank goes to the monkey house at the zoo. The gorilla’s brute strength impresses him and he speaks to the animal as a friend. He describes the feelings he had in the park, watching the sun rise on the sea. At last he understood Paddy’s nostalgia for the old life, but he knew he could never belong to it. This realization led him to seek out the gorilla. Yank says
the gorilla is lucky to belong to one world while he belongs to neither heaven nor earth. Identifying himself with the animal, Yank frees him to get even with the men who have put him in the cage. The gorilla picks him up, crushes him and throws him into the open cage. When the door has slammed shut on him and the gorilla has gone the dying Yank calls out mockingly to imaginary spectators to step right up and have a look at the one and only--- Hairy Ape. He dies, having pronounced this final judgment on himself. In a stage note the playwright suggests that perhaps Yank at last belongs.
5.A Farewell to Arms—Ernest Hemingway 人物：Henry, Catherine Barkley, Emilio
Writing features:
Dialogue
Interior monologue// stream of consciousness
Understatement
Themes
The Grim Reality of War
The Relationship between Love and Pain
Feelings of loss
Summary:The novel tells about the war experience and the love story of an American lieutenant, Henry, during the World War I. Henry serves in the Italian ambulance crops, and
fall in love with an English nurse, Catherine. Although in civilian clothes, he is suspected,
and forced to flee with Cat to Switzerland. They go to Lausanne for the birth of their child,
but the baby is stillborn and Cat dies in childbirth. Henry is left alone in a strange land; his dream of leading a decent life broke into smithereens. So the novel is both farewell to war,
and a farewell to love.
6.Autobiography-- Benjamin Franklin
Summary:It is probably the first autobiography in American literature. It is an interesting record of a man rising to wealth and fame from a state of poverty and obscurity. It’s a record of self-examination and self-improvement. He wrote it at 65.。
