ENGLISH III (AP) SUMMER READING You must keep in mind that AP courses introduce high school students to college-level material. Therefore, many of the required texts will include material intended for college-level students that include objectionable language and adult situations. Also, students in an AP course are expected to do their own work. Relying on a plot summary such as Spark Notes instead of reading the primary text is considered cheating and will not be tolerated in an AP course. As you read, keep a response journal in which you thoughtfully respond to quotes and/or interesting passages: Write down several quotes/passages from each chapter; Then write what each means to you; What, do you think, might each mean to the author? Also write notes about the author's use of language: Is the author's language clear and simple, or is it abstract and elaborate? Why might the author choose this style of language? What, do you think, is the author's purpose/goal for writing this text? Your response journal is due on the first day of class. It will be graded on its scope and depth. Also, be prepared for a test and/or project on each text you've read. DRAMA (Choose 1): Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller The story revolves around the last days of Willy Loman, a failing salesman, who cannot understand how he failed to win success and happiness. Through a series of tragic soul-searching revelations of the life he has lived with his wife, his sons, and his business associates, we discover how his quest for the "American Dream" kept him blind to the people who truly loved him. A thrilling work of deep and revealing beauty that remains one of the most profound classic dramas of the American theatre. " A Doll's House, by Henrik Ibsen Ibsen's best-known play displays his genius for realistic prose drama. An expression of women's rights, the play climaxes when the central character, Nora, rejects a smothering marriage and life in "a doll's house." The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams Few plays have explored the byways of the human heart as poignantly and poetically as Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. In this touching play, we meet the embattled Wingfield family: Amanda - faded southern belle, abandoned wife, dominating mother, who hopes to match her daughter with an eligible "gentleman caller," Laura - lame and painfully shy, she evades her mother's schemes and reality by retreating to a world of make-believe; Tom - sole support of the family, he eventually leaves home to become a writer but is forever haunted by the memory of Laura. A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams The play reveals to the very depths the character of Blanche du Bois, a woman whose life has been undermined by her romantic illusions, which lead her to reject—so far as possible—the realities of life with which she is faced and which she consistently ignores. The pressure brought to bear upon her by her sister, with whom she goes to live in New Orleans, intensified by the earthy and extremely "normal" young husband of the latter, leads to a revelation of her tragic self-delusion and, in the end, to madness." FICTION: CHOICE #1 (Choose 1): Native Son, by Richard Wright Widely acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written on race and class divisions in America, this powerful novel reflects the forces of poverty, injustice, and hopelessness that continue to shape out society. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison Toni Morrison is perhaps the most celebrated contemporary American novelist. Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, Morrison powerfully evokes in her fiction the legacies of displacement and slavery that have been bequeathed to the African-American community. Morrison was born in Ohio, educated at Howard University and Cornell University, and is now a member of the faculty of Princeton University. Her most widely read novel is perhaps Beloved (1987), which won the Pulitzer Prize and was recently adapted for film. Song of Solomon (1977), however, is perhaps the most lyrical of her novels, following Milkman Dead as he struggles to understand his family history and the ways in which that history has both been damaged by and transcended the horror of slavery. All of Morrison's fiction, from her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), to last year's Paradise Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. (1998), explores both the need for and the impossibility of real community and the bonds that both unite and divide African-American women. Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution. Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremony that defeats the most virulent of afflictions -- despair. FICTION: CHOICE #2 (Choose 1): Catch 22, by Joseph Heller Arguably the best novel to come out of World War II, in which Heller strips away the veneer of martial glory to expose its insanity, and gives our language a new paradoxical phrase to describe mankind at the mercy of its own institutions. Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots, Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its insistence on human dignity. All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy With the 1998 publication of Cities Of The Plain, Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed Border trilogy is now complete. The first and most admired book of the series is McCarthy's National Book Award-winning All The Pretty Horses. In highly evocative prose that puts the reader firmly in the saddle, All The Pretty Horses follows the progress of laconic 16-year-old Texan John Grady Cole, his pal Lacey Rawlins, and the mysterious young sharp shooter Jimmy Blevins as they ride across the border into Mexico in search of adventure. =============== During the school year students in AP English III will read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Though students will have access to school copies of these novels, it is highly advisable that they purchase their own copies to annotate.