Contemporary literature 1950-today: Elizabeth Kostova The Historian

The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.As well as numerous settings, both in and out of the East Bloc, Kostova has three basic story lines to keep straight--one from 1930, when Professor Bartolomew Rossi begins his dangerous research into Dracula, one from 1950, when Professor Rossi's student Paul takes up the scent, and the main narrative from 1972. The criss-crossing story lines mirror the political advances, retreats, triumphs, and losses that shaped Dracula's beleaguered homeland--sometimes with the Byzantines on top, sometimes the Ottomans, sometimes the rag-tag local tribes, or the Orthodox church, and sometimes a fresh conqueror like the Soviet Union. "

"This book is very hard to summarize because it consists of three plots woven together, so that you find things out gradually by reading letters (which sometimes describe other people reading letters) describing events which happened years before. It is also six hundred plus pages long. I'll give it a shot, though, by telling the story in chronological order; just keep in mind it loses some of its suspense that way." Plot one: 1930. Benjamin Rossi, a graduate student in history, finds a mysterious book containing only an engraved picture of a menacing dragon. Through diligent research at Oxford and Istanbul, he discovers that Dracula (or rather, the historical figure, Vlad the Impaler, on whom Dracula is partially based) is alive, hiding in a secret tomb somewhere in Europe. However, as Rossi pursues this information, people close to him begin to die of violence and blood loss. He ultimately decides it is too dangerous to push any further, and goes back to his usual life at school. Plot two: mid 1950's. Paul, another graduate student in history, finds a mysterious book containing only an engraved picture of a menacing dragon. He takes it to his mentor, Benjamin Rossi, who shows Paul his book and recounts some of the events in plot one. Then Rossi disappears, leaving only evidence of a violent and bloody fight. Paul becomes convinced that Rossi has been kidnapped by Dracula and taken back to his hidden tomb for some unknown evil purpose. He joins forces with Helen, another student who turns out to be Rossi's illegitimate daughter from a trip Rossi took to Romania in 1930 to search for Dracula's tomb. (Rossi was given a potion to force him to forget this part of the trip, and thus abandoned Helen and her mother.) Paul and Helen, pursued by an "evil librarian" vampire, search museums, monasteries and libraries in Istanbul and Cold War Eastern Europe for clues to the location to the tomb in a frantic attempt to rescue Rossi. They finally find the tomb in Hungary, but too late: Dracula has fled and Rossi has received the three bites which doom him to become one of the Undead compelled to serve the master vampire. (Dracula kidnapped Rossi because of Rossi's intelligence and persistence, intending to force Rossi to become...the curator of Dracula's extensive library.) With terrible grief, Paul and Helen drive a stake through his heart to spare him that awful fate. In the course of plot two we learn: a) Dracula is the one leaving the mysterious books to students, in order to find brave and brilliant scholars; b) Helen is a direct descendent of Dracula; c) Helen has been bitten twice and carries the vampire taint, although she is not yet one of the undead; and d) Paul and Helen fall in love and become the parents of the narrator of plot three. Plot three: mid 1970's. Paul and Helen's eighteen year old daughter narrates. She has been raised by her father; her mother died, apparently of suicide, when she was a baby. She finds her father's dragon book in his study, and her father slowly tells her, through stories and letters, the events of plot one and two. In the midst of this, he leaves abruptly; she learns he is going to an ancient monastery in France to confront Dracula and rescue her mother, who is really alive and has been hunting the vampire all these years. She follows him to help; most of the book unfolds as she reads letters on the long train ride from England to France. She and her father confront Dracula, and are about to be destroyed when Helen arrives and shoots him through the heart with a silver bullet, reducing him to dust. The family is reunited and lives happily for many years.

Contemporary literature 1950-today: Elena Poniatovska Nothing nobody, the voices of the earthquake

On September 19, 1985 at approximately 7:20 A.M., an earthquake registering 7.8 on the Richter Scale shook Mexico. Its epicenter was located off the coasts of Guerrero and Michoacan. Though damage occurred in seven states, most of the death and destruction occurred in Mexico City, which, because of its large population, uncontrolled growth, poverty, and pollution, many thought of as a disaster even before the disaster. An estimated 10,000 died in the quake and its aftermath, many with minimal wounds who had been trapped alive. Nothing, Nobody relates the stories of victims wounded by the failures of their government. It also relates the stories of survivors; those who, by sheer luck, walked away or were rescued and those who participated in rescue efforts.

The voices of the Mexico City earthquake that offer testimony in Elena Poniatowska's Nothing, Nobody sometimes approach cacophony. The reader is constantly challenged to determine who is speaking -- a victim of the earthquake, one of the eighteen writers who assisted Poniatowska with interviews, or the author herself. By offering a multiplicity of viewpoints, Poniatowska risks presenting a view of the world that is incoherent. The seemingly haphazard arrangement of voices and stories, however, reflects the event it relates. Just as the volunteers discovered it did not matter who received credit for the rescue of a survivor, so too, the reader discovers the words, not the attribution, are what count. Most important is survival - of the victims and of their testimony.

In the foreword, translators Aurora Camacho de Schmidt and Arthur Schmidt provide a succinct overview of Mexico City, highlighting its social, economic, political, as well as seismic characteristics. They place the 1985 earthquake within the framework of other recent foundation-rattling events in Mexico, starting with the student massacre of 1968 and including; the oil collapse of 1982, the contested presidential elections of 1988, the passage of NAFTA, the Chiapas rebellion, and the recent political assassinations. This background to the temblor, along with the notes about Poniatowska and popular testimony included in the foreword, make this book a good choice for those wishing to introduce the student to Mexican history and/or testimonial literature. With this book Temple University Press initiates a new series, Voices of Latin American Life, edited by Arthur Schmidt, of which testimonial literature will be a part, and which promises to be "less concerned with being representative than with being authentic" (vii).

Archaeologist Dr. David Pendergast, in a speech delivered December 1, 1989 at Tulane University regarding the archaeology of Spanish contact with the Maya, lamented that neither the written record nor the archeological record can tell us what the Maya were thinking before, during, and after contact. No matter how hard one strives today to understand contact from the mind of the Maya, that knowledge is lost to us. That aspect of the past which Dr. Pendergast cannot reclaim, the authentic voices, is what Poniatowska has undertaken to provide us in relation to the Mexico City earthquake of September 1985.

Elena Poniatowska is not a disinterested vehicle for the transmission of these authentic voices. The choice of speakers and the absence of testimony from government officials reflect a decidedly anti-government point of view. There is no attempt to be representative of all sectors of Mexican society. This is a change from Massacre in Mexico, Poniatowska's book about the 1968 student massacre, in which Poniatowska chose to balance the voices of students with those of newspaper reporters, police officers, and government officials. Explanations and excuses are offered and represented in the account.

There are no excuses nor explanations offered for the failure of the government in Nothing, Nobody. Though geology can be blamed for the quake, only the government is to blame for the loss of life. This is the message Poniatowska presents. Only the government can be blamed for treating the people of Mexico, especially the poor of Mexico City, as if they are nothing, nobody. Only the government can be blamed for corruption, for failing to enforce adequate building codes, for failing to listen to and act upon reports of poor construction, for not planning for such an expected natural disaster, for not responding when it occurred, for telling the world no help was needed, and on and on and on. Only the government, according to Poniatowska, is responsible for the fact that, both before as well as after the quake, the poor of Mexico City are trapped alive with no machinery to save them.

In marked contrast to her treatment of the government response, Poniatowska celebrates the response of the people of Mexico. The people of Mexico were not powerless, "no organization that I know of to date did more than the people themselves" (46). The failure of the government to help was no surprise to the people of Mexico -- there was no disaster plan, outside help was at first rejected because of pride and fear of foreign intervention, there was no coordination of volunteer efforts, and "the government went so far as to prevent citizen action" (75). Nevertheless, the voices of the Mexico City earthquake tell us that, without second thoughts, the people helped each other. There was unity of effort, "there was practically no one who didn't do something" (61).

The people of Mexico are the heroes of Poniatowska's book, especially the poor of Mexico City, not just because of their response to the earthquake, but because of their heroic daily struggle to survive. Though the earthquake raised consciousness about their social problems, "Mexico's social problems go way beyond the earthquake" (85). The question the reader is left with is, will the people of Mexico continue to act heroically, keeping their faith in themselves and their ability to survive against great odds, or will they be like the mother, "who lost faith and suffocated her daughter three days before she was rescued alive

Contemporary literature 1950-today: Frances Hodgson Burnet The secret Garden

Honestly, The Secret Garden has such a straightforward plot that we can almost sum it up as follows: Girl loses parents, girl finds friends, girl finds garden, boy joins girl in garden, boy learns to walk on his own, the end. Actually, that isn't quite as straightforward as we thought; let us explain in a bit more detail.

Mary Lennox is a nine-year-old British girl growing up in colonial India in the care of a sequence of nannies. Since her father is an officer in the British army and her mom is super-busy with the vital business of dinner parties and nice clothes, Mary barely knows her own parents. And since she spends all of her time alone, she's selfish, demanding, and self-absorbed. Her parents die suddenly of cholera, leaving her in the care of her mother's brother, Archibald Craven.

Mary's uncle doesn't care much about her, so he brings her to his huge mansion in England, Misselthwaite Manor, and basically leaves her there, more or less on her own. Mary's maid Martha is a cheerful Yorkshire woman who won't stand for Mary's spoiled tantrums and fits. She tells Mary all about two things that change Mary's life: (1) There is a walled garden on the grounds that has been sealed off since the death of Archibald Craven's wife ten years before; and (2) Martha has a little brother named Dickon who loves gardening and wild things.

Of course, Mary discovers the walled garden (since the title of this book is The Secret Garden). With the help of a local robin (this isn't Mary Poppins, so the robin doesn't actually talk, but it's smarter than your average bird), Mary stumbles on the long-lost key to the garden and opens it up.

With the kindly help of nature-smart Dickon, Mary begins secretly working in the garden to bring its many roses back to life. The exercise and outdoor time improves both her physical and her mental health, and Mary stops being quite so much the spoiled princess that she was at the beginning of the novel.

Ever since she first arrived at Misselthwaite Manor, Mary has been hearing the sound of a crying child late at night. She finally discovers the secret of the Manor (well, besides the Secret Garden) one night: Archibald Craven has a son. The boy, Colin, is even more sheltered and spoiled than Mary. He's been told his whole life that he is sickly, so he believes it—even though there is actually nothing physically wrong with him. Since he gets so little exercise and he spends so much time about his own (imaginary) illnesses, he has a rotten temper and horrible manners.

Now that Mary is around to give Colin some straight talk about his bullying behavior and his needless self-pity, though, he begins to grow out of his selfishness. The two of them (again, with the help of Dickon and his green thumb) decide to work in the Secret Garden together. Colin decides that he is going to make himself better so that when his father arrives back in England, Colin can surprise Archibald with his transformation.

But wait… You may ask: Why does Colin's father spend so little time at home with Colin? There are two important details to this tragedy that you have to know: (1) Archibald has a deformed spine, which has had a huge emotional effect on him; and (2) he was deeply in love with his wife Lilias. Lilias was pregnant with Colin when she fell from a tree in the walled garden, went into labor, and died. That's when the walled garden becomes the Secret Garden: Archibald ordered it sealed up, since Lilias was horribly injured there.

Colin survived this terrible start in life, but Archibald can't stand to look at him. Archibald hates that Colin is all he has left of Lilias, and he also worries that Colin is going to deal with the same physical difficulties with which Archibald struggles. So Archibald has spent most of Colin's life traveling in Europe and leaving Colin in the care of his doctor and housekeeper. It's only with the help of Mary and Dickon that Colin begins to imagine that he might survive, and even thrive, despite his mother's untimely death.

As Colin begins to think less and less about himself and more and more about the Secret Garden and the natural world around him, he realizes that he is not going to die. Colin resolves to spend his life exploring the wonders of Nature. With the strength he gets from this new appreciation for life, Colin slowly learns to walk on his own two feet.

Meanwhile, as Colin's health (and behavior) improves, Archibald has a strange dream in which his deceased wife tells him to go back to the garden. Archibald rushes back home to Misselthwaite Manor at once, only to find that his son has grown into a fine, sturdy young man whom Archibald barely recognizes. As Colin shows his father around the reborn Secret Garden, father and son begin to build a relationship they've never been able to have before.

Contemporary literature 1950-today: William Golding The Lord of flies

When Lord of the Flies opens, a plane carrying a group of British boys ages 6 to 12 has crashed on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean. Oops. (Also, apparently the world is at war. This matters.) With no adults around, the boys are left to fend for and govern themselves. Things start out okay. The boys use a conch shell as a talking stick, and Ralph, one of the older boys, becomes "chief."

And then trouble begins. They're afraid of a "beast" somewhere on the island, and then they decide to build a signal fire using the glasses of a boy named Piggy (who is a portly fellow, and also the most loyal friend to Ralph). But Jack, jealous of Ralph's power, decides the boys should devote their energies to hunting food (namely pigs) instead of maintaining the fire. The longer they're on the island, the more savage he becomes. Meanwhile our other key player, a wise and philosophical boy named Simon, works with Ralph to build shelter

Eventually these latent conflicts become not so latent, and the boys who are supposed to be tending the fire skip out on their duties to kill a pig. The blood and gore of the hunt is all very exciting until they realize that, while they were out being bloodthirsty boys, the fire went out and a ship passed by without noticing them. Jack has also managed to punch Piggy in the face and break one lens of his glasses. Not good.

Right about this time a dead man attached to a parachute blows in Mary-Poppins-style to the island. The mysterious parachuting creature is mistaken for the beast, and the boys begin a massive hunt to kill it. Only Simon (and, let's face it, the audience) is skeptical, believing instead they're really just afraid of themselves. He goes off into the woods to contemplate the situation while Jack and Ralph ascend the mountain and find the beast—but don't stick around long enough to see that it is in fact only a dead man.

Back in the group, Jack decides Ralph shouldn't be chief anymore. He secedes and invites whoever wants to come with him and kill things (like more pigs, and maybe some people if they feel like it). Most of the older kids go with him, and Simon, hiding, watches Jack and Co. hunt a pig. This time, they slaughter a fat mother pig (in a scene described somewhat as a rape), cut off her head, and jam it onto a stick in the ground. Nice.

Simon stares at the head, which he calls "the Lord of the Flies" as it tells him (he's hallucinating, by the way) that it is the beast and that it is part of him (Simon). Simon passes out, gets a bloody nose, and wakes up covered in sweat, blood, and other generally disgusting things. Despite all this, he decides to continue up the mountain to face the beast, i.e. dead guy. Then he vomits and staggers down the mountain.

By now, Ralph and Piggy (both rather ravenous) are attending (with all the other boys) a big feast/party that Jack (decorated like an idol) is throwing. It's all a frenzied reenactment of the pig hunt until Simon, still bloody, sweaty, and covered in puke, stumbles down into the center of the crazed boys. He tries to tell them about the beast, but he is unrecognizable and the boys jab at him with their spears until he's dead. Oops. Simon's body is washed out to sea that night, and the wind carries off the body of the dead parachuting man, while Ralph and Piggy convince themselves they didn't take part in murdering Simon.

It's all downhill from here. Jack's crew attacks Ralph and Piggy and steals Piggy's eyeglasses to make fire on their own. When Ralph and Piggy decide to calmly talk it out with the "savages," Roger pushes a huge boulder off a cliff, killing Piggy. Ralph ends up running for his life, finds out that there's a head-on-stick future planned for him, and at last makes it to the shore of the island where he runs into… an officer of the British Navy. The boys are rescued from their mock war, but we're left with the image of the Navy's "trim cruiser" from the real war of the adult

Modernism 1901-1950: Robert Frost A further range

A Further Range, which earned Frost another Pulitzer Prize and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, contains two groups of poems subtitled “Taken Doubly” and “Taken Singly.” In the first, and more interesting, of these groups, the poems are somewhat didactic, though there are humorous and satiric pieces as well. Included here is “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” which opens with the story of two itinerant lumbermen who offer to cut the speaker’s wood for pay; the poem then develops into a sermon on the relationship between work and play, vocation and avocation, preaching the necessity to unite them. Of the entire volume, William Rose Benet wrote, “It is better worth reading than nine-tenths of the books that will come your way this year. In a time when all kinds of insanity are assailing the nations it is good to listen to this quiet humor, even about a hen, a hornet, or Square Matthew.... And if anybody should ask me why I still believe in my land, I have only to put this book in his hand and answer, ‘Well-here is a man of my country.’” 

Most critics acknowledge that Frost’s poetry in the forties and fifties grew more and more abstract, cryptic, and even sententious, so it is generally on the basis of his earlier work that he is judged. His politics and religious faith, hitherto informed by skepticism and local color, became more and more the guiding principles of his work. He had been, as Randall Jarrellpoints out, “a very odd and very radical radical when young” yet became “sometimes callously and unimaginatively conservative” in his old age. He had become a public figure, and in the years before his death, much of his poetry was written from this stance. 



A further range

• Taken doubly. A lone striker, or, Without prejudice to industry
• Two tramps in mud time, or, A full-time interest
• The white-tailed hornet, or, The revision of theories
• A blue ribbon at Amesbury, or, Small plans gratefully heard of
• A drumlin woodchuck, or, Be sure to locate
• The Gold hesperidee, or, How to take a loss
• In time of cloudburst, or, The long view
• A roadside stand, or, On being put out of our misery
• Departmental, or, The end of my ant Jerry
• The old barn at the bottom of the fogs, or, Class prejudice afoot
• On the heart's beginning to cloud the mind, or, From sight to insight
• The figure in the doorway, or, On being looked at in a train
• At Woodward's gardens, or, Resourcefulness is more than understanding
• A record stride, or, The United States stated
• Taken singly. Lost in heaven
• Desert places
• Leaves compared with flowers
• A leaf treader
• On taking from the top to broaden the base
• They were welcome to their belief
• The strong are saying nothing
• The master speed
• Moon compasses
• Neither out far nor in deep
• Voice ways
• Design
• On a bird singing in its sleep
• After-flakes
• Clear and colder
• Unharvested
• There are roughly zones
• A trial run
• Not quite social
• Provide provide
• Ten mills. Precaution
• The span of life
• The Wrights' biplane
• Assertive
• Evil tendencies cancel
• Pertinax
• Waspish
• One guess
• The hardship of accounting
• Not all there
• In Divés' dive
• The outlands. The vindictives : the Andes
• The bearer of evil tidings : the Himalayas
• Iris by night : the Malverns (but these are only hills)
• Build soil
• To a thinker
• Afterthought. A missive missile.

Modernism 1901-1950: Virginia Woolf The Duchess and the Jeweller

The story “The Duchess and the Jeweler” reflects the English society of writer’s time. It was an age of change. The high-ups were coming down because of their moral decadence and the commoners were coming up.

Once Oliver Bacon was very poor and lived in a filthy, little alley. He worked very hard and used fair and unfair means to become the richest jeweler of the England. He enjoys his present position. He is suffering from inferiority complex. There is a great difference between his present and past condition. He has become so important that each day he receives invitation cards from the aristocracy of the city. He has become very rich, but he is so greedy that he wants more and more wealth.

One day the Duchess of Lambourne comes to sell some fake pearls.  She induces him into buying those fake pearls very cleverly. She uses her daughter Diana as bait. She also invites him to the party where all the aristocracy will be present.

Oliver Bacon buys the fake pearls because he wants to attend the party and spend the weekend with Diana. He loves Diana very much. Besides, he wants to move among aristocratic circles.

He signs the cheque for twenty thousand pounds. The Duchess takes the cheque and leaves. Later, he asks pardon of the picture of his mother.

The Duchess and the Jeweller

Oliver Bacon lived at the top of a house overlooking the Green Park. He had a flat; chairs jutted out at the right angles — chairs covered in hide. Sofas filled the bays of the windows — sofas covered in tapestry. The windows, the three long windows, had the proper allowance of discreet net and figured satin. The mahogany sideboard bulged discreetly with the right brandies, whiskeys and liqueurs. And from the middle window he looked down upon the glossy roofs of fashionable cars packed in the narrow straits of Piccadilly. A more Central position could not be imagined. And at eight in the morning he would have his breakfast brought in on a tray by a man-servant: the man-servant would unfold his crimson dressing-gown; he would rip his letters open with his long pointed nails and would extract thick white cards of invitation upon which the engraving stood up roughly from duchesses, countesses, viscountesses and Honourable Ladies. Then he would wash; then he would eat his toast; then he would read his paper by the bright burning fire of electric coals.

“Behold Oliver,” he would say, addressing himself. “You who began life in a filthy little alley, you who . . . ” and he would look down at his legs, so shapely in their perfect trousers; at his boots; at his spats. They were all shapely, shining; cut from the best cloth by the best scissors in Savile Row. But he dismantled himself often and became again a little boy in a dark alley. He had once thought that the height of his ambition — selling stolen dogs to fashionable women in Whitechapel. And once he had been done. “Oh, Oliver,” his mother had wailed. “Oh, Oliver! When will you have sense, my son?” . . . Then he had gone behind a counter; had sold cheap watches; then he had taken a wallet to Amsterdam. . . . At that memory he would churckle — the old Oliver remembering the young. Yes, he had done well with the three diamonds; also there was the commission on the emerald. After that he went into the private room behind the shop in Hatton Garden; the room with the scales, the safe, the thick magnifying glasses. And then . . . and then . . . He chuckled. When he passed through the knots of jewellers in the hot evening who were discussing prices, gold mines, diamonds, reports from South Africa, one of them would lay a finger to the side of his nose and murmur, “Hum — m — m,” as he passed. It was no more than a murmur; no more than a nudge on the shoulder, a finger on the nose, a buzz that ran through the cluster of jewellers in Hatton Garden on a hot afternoon — oh, many years ago now! But still Oliver felt it purring down his spine, the nudge, the murmur that meant, “Look at himyoung Oliver, the young jeweller — there he goes.” Young he was then. And he dressed better and better; and had, first a hansom cab; then a car; and first he went up to the dress circle, then down into the stalls. And he had a villa at Richmond, overlooking the river, with trellises of red roses; and Mademoiselle used to pick one every morning and stick it in his buttonhole.

“So,” said Oliver Bacon, rising and stretching his legs. “SO . . . ”

And he stood beneath the picture of an old lady on the mantelpiece and raised his hands. “I have kept my word,” he said, laying his hands together, palm to palm, as if he were doing homage to her. “I have won my bet.” That was so; he was the richest jeweller in England; but his nose, which was long and flexible, like an elephant’s trunk, seemed to say by its curious quiver at the nostrils (but it seemed as if the whole nose quivered, not only the nostrils) that he was not satisfied yet; still smelt something under the ground a little further off. Imagine a giant hog in a pasture rich with truffles; after unearthing this truffle and that, still it smells a bigger, a blacker truffle under the ground further off. So Oliver snuffed always in the rich earth of Mayfair another truffle, a blacker, a bigger further off.

Now then he straightened the pearl in his tie, cased himself in his smart blue overcoat; took his yellow gloves and his cane; and swayed as he descended the stairs and half snuffed, half sighed through his long sharp nose as he passed out into Piccadilly. For was he not still a sad man, a dissatisfied man, a man who seeks something that is hidden, though he had won his bet?

The Victorians: Kipling Kim The Jungle Book

Mowgli's Brothers

• "It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening" (1.1) when Father Wolf wakes up. How does he know the precise time? Does he check his watch? His iPhone?
• He's about to go hunt, when Tabaqui the jackal slinks up to cause trouble.
• He says that Shere Khan—"the Big One" (1.8)—has shifted his hunting ground.
• Father Wolf is angry because this tiger will scare away all the game, making it harder for him to hunt.
• Mother Wolf chimes in that the villagers hate "the Lame One" (1.11), and they might get angry enough to set the grass on fire to scare him away.
• Speak of the devil, they all hear Shere Khan roaring up a storm.
• Father Wolf doesn't understand why he does that; all he's doing is scaring everything away. (Singing Katy Perry that loud will do that.)
• Mother Wolf interprets the roar differently: She says the tiger is hunting Man.
• The narrator tells us that it's against the Law of the Jungle to eat Man, so when the young man's cub just walks up to them, Father Wolf gently carries him back to Mother Wolf.
• They're impressed that the man's cub isn't afraid, so they decide to raise him.
• Inside their cave is safe because it's too narrow for Shere Khan to get inside—he sure tries, though, sticking his big furry head in the cave's mouth.
• Mother Wolf yells at him, saying that one day the man's cub will grow up to hunt him. ("Is that a threat?" "No, it's foreshadowing.")
• Shere Khan backs away, swearing to gobble that man cub up someday.
• After the tiger leaves, Mother Wolf names the man's cub Mowgli, which means "little frog" (1.44).
• Later, they take Mowgli to Council Rock to introduce him to the Pack, especially Akela, the great Lone Wolf who leads them.
• When they present Mowgli to Akela, Shere Khan shows up (who invited him?) and says, "the cub is mine" (1.49).
• Akela says that, according to the Law of the Jungle, "if there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must be spoken for by at least two members of the Pack who are not his father and mother" (1.50).
• Baloo the bear and Bagheera the Black Panther speak up for Mowgli; to sweeten the deal, Bagheera promises a fat bull to buy Mowgli's safety.
• Bagheera kills the bull, and Akela agrees to admit Mowgli into the Seeonee Wolf-Pack.
• Now we skip ten or eleven years while Mowgli is taught everything he needs to know by Father Wolf, Bagheera, and Baloo—it's like the text version of a montage.
• By this point, Akela is an old wolf, and Bagheera fears the day is nigh that he will no longer rule the pack.
• He's really worried, because Shere Khan is always lurking around trying to convince the younger wolves that a man-cub has no place with the pack.
• Bagheera tells Mowgli that they have to strike Shere Khan first.
• He advises Mowgli to sneak down to the village and take "Red Flower" (1.89) for Shere Khan. No, he isn't deathly allergic to roses—Red Flower is what they call fire.
• Mowgli creeps to the village and steals a pot-full of red-hot charcoal.
• On the way, he spots Akela try to eat a sambhur, but instead get kicked by it. #huntingfail
• Back in the jungle, Mowgli tends to the Red Flower to keep it burning all night long.
• At the next council meeting, Shere Khan is there, trying to take control of the Pack: "Give me the man-cub, or I will hunt here always, and not give you one bone" (1.119), he says.
• Akela says they are cowardly if they let Shere Khan kill the man-cub, pointing out that "He is our brother in all but blood" (1.127).
• He says he will agree to step down as leader without fighting if they simply let Mowgli go.
• They don't really care, probably because a deer almost took Akela out earlier, and the wolves gather around Shere Khan.
• Bagheera tells Mowgli it is time for them to fight, so Mowgli flings the fire-pot at Shere Khan, setting the grass aflame.
• Mowgli says that he will leave for the village of man, and he promises not to betray the wolves as they have betrayed him.
• For good measure, he whacks Shere Khan in the head with a branch.
• Bagheera tells Mowgli to spare Akela, so he tells the wolves that Akela is free to live as he pleases.
• As the fire closes in, Mowgli leaves with the only creatures who stood by his side: Akela, Bagheera, and a handful of wolves.
• Mowgli starts crying for the first time ever: "Am I dying, Bagheera?" (1.138) he asks.
• Bagheera says they are only tears.
• Mowgli says goodbye to Mother and Father Wolf, then he heads down the hillside, alone, "to meet those mysterious things that are called men"

The Victorians 1832-1901: H.G.Wells The Time Machine

After a dinner party, the Time Traveller argues that time travel is possible. Since the narrator calls him "the Time Traveller," and since it's impolite to argue with your host, we're going to go out on a limb and agree with him. The guests mostly don't believe the Time Traveller, though, not even after he makes a model Time Machine disappear and then shows them the full-scale machine.

The following week, the Time Traveller is a half hour late to his own dinner party. This is not only improper from an etiquette standpoint, but also pretty inexcusable if you have a Time Machine. (We're guessing his Time Machine is not so precise.) The guests are astounded at his disheveled look, so he tells them his story.

The Time Traveller has gone far, far into the future – to the year 802,701. He has no guide there, leaving him to make guesses about what's going on. His Time Machine gets stolen, so he has to stay and find it. He meets the beautiful but dumb Eloi, who are like lazy children. His first theory is that the Eloi have machines that do their work for them so they can sit around and be lazy.

He befriends one of the Eloi, a woman named Weena. In every movie adaptation of this book, the Time Traveller and Weena fall in love, but in the book it's not so romantic. We're not sure exactly what's going on between them, though (check out "Characters: Weena" for more on that).

Then the Time Traveller discovers that there are people who live underground. He goes underground and meets them: the creepy Morlocks. The Time Traveller's second theory is that the Morlocks are the helpful workers who take care of the Eloi. In this theory, the Eloi are descended from the upper class, the Morlocks are descended from the working class, and everyone is happy – although the Morlocks are disgusting. (The Time Traveller compares them to Kentucky cavefish, which we think are kind of cute, but we'll give it to him.)

Then he realizes that the Morlocks do take care of the Eloi, but they also eat them. (In case you're wondering, Eloi tastes like chicken.) The Time Traveller also learns that the Morlocks are sensitive to light and afraid of fire.

The Time Traveller examines an old museum to find a weapon to use against the Morlocks. He finds a club, which works as well in the future as it would work now. But the Morlocks attack. The Time Traveller sets a fire, which gets out of control (doh!). He loses Weena but finds his Time Machine.

He travels even farther into the future, when almost all life has died out. It's kind of a bummer, so he goes home.

And that's his story. No one believes the Time Traveller, except the narrator (sort of). The narrator goes to talk to him the next day, and the Time Traveller says he'll be back with proof. The Time Traveller goes into his lab and disappears. He never comes back.

The Victorians 1832-1901: Oscar Wilde Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the story of one beautiful, innocent young man's seduction, moral corruption, and eventual downfall. We meet our three central characters at the beginning of the book, when painter Basil Hallward and his close friend, Lord Henry Wotton, are discussing the subject of Basil's newest painting, a gorgeous young thing named Dorian Gray. Basil and Henry discuss just how perfectlyperfect Dorian is – he's totally innocent and completely good, as well as being the most beautiful guy ever to walk the earth. Lord Henry wants to meet this mysterious boy, but Basil doesn't want him to; for some reason, he's afraid of what will happen to Dorian if Lord Henry digs his claws into him. 

However, Lord Henry gets his wish – Dorian shows up that very afternoon, and, over the course of the day, Henry manages to totally change Dorian's perspective on the world. From that point on, Dorian's previously innocent point of view is dramatically different – he begins to see life as Lord Henry does, as a succession of pleasures in which questions of good and evil are irrelevant.

Basil finishes his portrait of Dorian, and gives it to the young man, who keeps it in his home, where he can admire his own beauty. Lord Henry continues to exert his influence over Dorian, to Basil's dismay. Dorian grows more and more distant from Basil, his former best friend, and develops his own interests. 

One of these interests is Sybil Vane, a young, exceptionally beautiful, exceptionally talented – and exceptionally poor – actress. Though she's stuck performing in a terrible, third-rate theatre, she's a truly remarkable artist, and her talent and beauty win over Dorian. He falls dramatically in love with her, and she with him. For a moment, it seems like everything will turn out wonderfully. However, this is just the beginning of Dorian's story. Once he and Sybil are engaged, her talent suddenly disappears – she's so overcome with her passionate love for Dorian that none of her roles on stage seem important to her anymore. This destroys Dorian's love for her, and he brutally dumps her. Back home, he notices a something different in his portrait – it looks somehow crueler. In the meanwhile, the distraught Sybil commits suicide, just as Dorian decides to return to her and take back his terrible words.

Sybil's suicide changes everything. At first, Dorian feels horrible – but he rather quickly changes his tune. On Lord Henry's suggestion, Dorian reads a mysterious "yellow book," a decadent French novel that makes him reevaluate his whole belief system. The protagonist of the book lives his life in pursuit of sensual pleasures, which intrigues Dorian. From this moment on, Dorian is a changed man.

Dorian starts to live as hedonistically as his wicked mentor, Lord Henry, does. The only thing that documents this turn for the worst is the portrait, which alarmingly begins to exhibit the inward corruption of Dorian's soul; the beautiful image changes, revealing new scars and physical flaws with each of Dorian's dastardly actions. As years pass, the man in the picture grows more and more hideous, as Dorian himself stays unnaturally young and beautiful. Rumors start to spread about the various people whose lives Dorian has ruined, and his formerly good reputation is destroyed.

On Dorian's 38th birthday, he encounters Basil, who desperately asks his former friend if all the horrifying rumors about him are true. Dorian finally snaps and shows Basil the portrait, in which the horrible truth about his wicked nature is revealed. Basil recoils, and begs Dorian to pray for forgiveness. In response, Dorian murders Basil, stabbing him brutally. He blackmails another of his former friends into disposing of the body.

Dorian retreats to an opium den after dealing with all of the evidence, where he encounters an enemy he didn't know he had – Sybil Vane's brother, James. Through a rather complicated turn of events, James (who's on a mission to punish Dorian for his mistreatment of Sybil) ends up dead. Dorian isn't directly responsible, but it's yet another death to add to Dorian's tally of life-wrecking disasters.

Dorian is relieved that his enemy is out of the way, but this event sparks a kind of mid-life crisis: he begins to wonder if his vile but enjoyable lifestyle is worth it. He actually does a good(ish) deed, by deciding not to corrupt a young girl he's got the hots for, which makes him question his past actions even more. Seeking some kind of reassurance, Dorian talks to Lord Henry, who's not any help at all, unsurprisingly. Dorian even practically admits to murdering Basil, but Henry laughs it off and doesn't believe him.

That night, Dorian returns home in a pensive mood. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he hates his own beauty and breaks the mirror. Again, he vows to be good, but we find out that his various crimes don't really haunt him, because he doesn't consider them his fault. Instead, he selfishly wants to be good so that the painting will become beautiful again. Heartened by this thought, he goes up to see if his recent good deed has improved the painting – in fact, it only looks worse. Frustrated, Dorian decides to destroy the picture, the visible evidence of his dreadful crimes, and the closest thing to a conscience he has. Dorian slashes at the painting with the same knife that killed Basil, trying to destroy the work as he did the artist.

A tremendous crash and a terrible cry alert the servants that something very, very bad has happened – it's even audible outside the house. Finally, they go upstairs to check it out, and are horrified by what they find: a portrait of their master, as beautiful as ever, hangs on the wall, and a mysterious, grotesquely hideous dead man is lying on the floor with a knife in his heart. Upon close examination, the rings on the dead man's hand identify him as Dorian Gray.

The Victorians 1832-1901: Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island

At the start of Treasure Island, Jim Hawkins is living with his mother and father at their inn, the Admiral Benbow. Life is pretty ordinary – Jim's father is sick, which sucks, but other than that, there isn't much going on for him. Until, that is, a sunburned sailor singing, "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!" comes through the front door of the family establishment. This sailor calls himself a captain and demands a room. He proceeds to settle down at the Admiral Benbow Inn, drink a ton of whiskey, and tell terrifying stories about life on the high seas.

One day, after an old shipmate named Black Dog manages to track down the captain, he gets so worked up that he has a stroke. The captain starts hallucinating and raving about his old life as a pirate. Apparently, the captain isn't a captain at all: his name is Billy Bones, and he was second in command to someone named Captain Flint. Jim doesn't have much time to care about the captain's crazy talk, though: his father dies that same night.

The day after Jim's father's funeral, a blind man appears at the Inn looking for the captain. This man is Pew, and he orders that the captain meet his old shipmates at 10 o'clock that night. The blind man leaves, the captain jumps up, and then he falls over dead from a heart attack. After some shenanigans with Pew and a bunch of pirates who try to steal Billy Bones's sea chest, Jim comes away with a packet of papers from Billy Bones. He decides to bring the papers to Doctor Livesey, the local judge.

Jim finds Doctor Livesey at the squire's house (a squire is a local lord). The squire is Mr. Trelawney. Doctor Livesey and Squire Trelawney both agree that Captain Flint is a famous pirate and that Jim's packet of papers must contain a treasure map to Flint's fortune. Squire Trelawney offers to put up the money for a sailing voyage to the island shown on the map, since who doesn't want to go hunting for treasure? So it's decided: Squire Trelawney is going to go to a coastal town in England right away to hire a ship and a crew, and then Doctor Livesey will come down to accompany him on their quest. Jim gets to go, too, as cabin boy.

While Squire Trelawney is looking for a crew for their voyage, he finds a delightful man, an old cook with one leg named Long John Silver who willingly volunteers to help him choose his crew. Squire Trelawney is really impressed by Long John Silver's manner and intelligence, so he basically hands over the hiring duties to him. Squire Trelawney also finds a nice ship, the Hispaniola, and a captain, Captain Smollett. Squire Trelawney asks one of his servants, Mr. Blandly, to stay behind and send another ship after them in August if Mr. Blandly sees no signs of them before then.

And they're off! Jim is having the time of his life, even though he has to work hard. But things take a bad turn one night when Jim climbs down into an apple barrel on deck to get the last piece of fruit and finds himself falling asleep in the dark space. He wakes up to overhear Long John Silver talking to a young sailor, Dick Johnson, trying to persuade Dick to join Long John Silver and his men. Long John Silver knows exactly where the Hispaniola is heading, because he used to be part of Captain Flint's crew as well!

Jim realizes that the crew is just biding its time until they reach the island, when the sailors plan to rise up against Captain Smollett, kill all the non-pirates, and steal Captain Flint's treasure. As soon as the coast is clear, Jim climbs out of the barrel and runs and tells Captain Smollett, Doctor Livesey, and Squire Trelawney what he has overheard.

When the Hispaniola arrives at the island (check out this map to get a sense of what it looks like), the mood of the crew is clearly growing ugly. But they don't actively mutiny (remember, the crew doesn't have the map, and they also don't have Captain Smollett's sailing skills). Captain Smollett offers them all a round of drinks and sends two-thirds of the crew onto the island to stretch their legs. When the crew is ashore, he and Doctor Livesey ambush the remaining six sailors (including Israel Hands, one of the leaders of the sailors) and lock them below decks. Then they go ashore to find a better place to set up headquarters, a place with fresh water (which the ship doesn't have) that can still be defended. They find an abandoned fort and set up there after a brief fight with a group of surprised crewmen.

Jim, meanwhile, has slipped ashore with the pirates and gone off exploring on his own. He is totally astonished to find a man on the island, Ben Gunn, who sailed with Captain Flint. Ben was marooned on the island three years earlier, so he's a little nutty, but he agrees to help Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livesey in exchange for a thousand British pounds, freedom, and some cheese. As Jim and Ben talk, they hear the sounds of a fight. Jim hurries through the forest to find that his friends have taken control of an old fort on the island. So he slips into the fort to tell them what he has discovered about Ben Gunn.

After a battle with the pirates, Jim sees Doctor Livesey head into the forest to consult with Ben Gunn. Jim hatches his own plan: he's going to find the tiny boat Ben Gunn mentioned to see if it might be helpful to them. Jim knows that he wouldn't be allowed to do this if he asked, but he slips away from the fort anyway and goes off to explore.

Jim finds the little boat and suddenly gets another great idea: he's going to set theHispaniola adrift from its anchor so that the pirates can't control the ship. Jim rows out to the ship, cuts the line attaching it to its anchor, and watches it get caught in the current. There are only two men aboard the ship, Israel Hands and a man named O'Brien. The two are in the middle of a furious fight when the Hispaniola starts to move, so they don't react quickly enough to stop Jim.

Jim eventually manages to get on board the Hispaniola again. He sees that Israel Hands has murdered O'Brien, but he has also been badly injured. Israel Hands isn't strong enough to steer the ship by himself, so he and Jim strike a deal to bring the ship around to the secluded North Inlet of the island to beach it safely. Once they arrive at the North Inlet, Israel Hands tries to murder Jim, but Jim gets in a lucky shot, and Israel Hands falls dead into the sea below. Jim climbs down from the ship, wades to shore, and climbs back up to the fort.

It's now the middle of the night and too dark to see what is going on, so Jim is completely surprised to find the pirates, and not his friends, waiting at the fort. Long John Silver prevents the other pirates from killing Jim. Long John Silver is playing a complicated game: first of all, Long John Silver is confused. He can't figure out why Doctor Livesey and everyone just abandoned the fort, nor can he work out why Doctor Livesey gave Long John Silver the treasure map. But Long John Silver is dealing with dissatisfaction from his own pirate crew, who are angry that they haven't found the treasure and now the ship is gone. Long John Silver is sure the pirates are going to rise up against him if he shows his confusion or any sign of weakness. So he keeps Jim close to him – he wants Jim to stand as witness that he saved Jim's life if he ever comes to trial.

Doctor Livesey comes by the fort as part of their truce and treats the injured and sick pirates. Jim manages to get word to him that Long John Silver seems to be flipping sides and that Jim has beached the Hispaniola on the north end of the island. Doctor Livesey warns Long John Silver that there will be trouble if he goes to look for the treasure, and then Doctor Livesey heads off into the forest.

Long John Silver uses the treasure map to lead Jim and the remaining pirates (Dick Johnson, Tom Morgan, George Merry, and two more guys) to the place marked on the map. They find that the treasure has already been dug up! That's why Doctor Livesey was willing to give them the map – it isn't worth anything anymore. With this disappointment, the pirates turn on Long John Silver. They're about to charge, when suddenly three shots ring out from the forest. It's Doctor Livesey, Abraham Gray, and Ben Gunn. Knowing that the pirates were going to look for the treasure with Jim in tow, the three men decided to follow them through the forest to rescue Jim (and Long John Silver, since he helped save Jim's life). Three pirates survive the ambush (Dick Johnson, Tom Morgan, and a third) and run off into the forest.

And that's pretty much it. All that is left is wrapping up. It was Ben Gunn who dug up the treasure and moved it to his cave, two months before the Hispaniola even arrived at the island. They all carry the treasure back to the beached Hispaniola, leave some supplies for the pirates they are planning to abandon on the island (check out "What's Up With the Ending?" for more on this morally gray choice), and sail away. The only men left on the Hispaniola are Doctor Livesey, Squire Trelawney, Jim Hawkins, Abraham Gray, Ben Gunn, and Long John Silver. Long John Silver slips away from the ship as soon as they dock at a nearby port to restock their crew and supplies. Ben Gunn gets his thousand pounds as a reward for his help and then spends it all and winds up a beggar again. Abraham Gray, the loyal sailor, saves his money and starts a good life. And everyone else gets plenty of treasure. The end!