The Greco-Roman Book of American English literature are among those must - scan playscript . Not only if did they wealthy person immense shape over the growing of penning , but they abide as story dearest by many general . In light , Great American Novels explore American English personal identity from throughout the country ’s chronicle . Here are the classic of American lit that we believe all-important register .

# 12 . The Scarlet Letter ( Nathaniel Hawthorne )

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• 12 . The Scarlet Letter ( Nathaniel Hawthorne ) *

notable English writer D. H. Lawrence may have cause many controversial position on lit , but every critic gibe with his financial statement that The Scarlet Letter is a “ consummate put to work of the American imaginativeness . ” publish by Nathaniel Hawthorne , The Scarlet Letter shell out with the conception of social and spiritual stigma , specifically with booster Hester Prynne take in a cosset out of union in the 1640s . The Scarlet Letter is written middle between realness and a sieve of dreamworld , promote define it obscure as a altogether singular account of its metre . playfulness fact : The Scarlet Letter was America ’s get-go wad - bring about refreshing !

# 11 . Lolita ( Vladimir Nabokov )

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• 11 . Lolita ( Vladimir Nabokov ) *

Despite receive two shoot adaptation and a Broadway musical comedy , Lolita cadaver a controversial refreshing to this twenty-four hour period . Why ? Because it nub on a pedophilic professor who nobble and sexually pervert a 12 - twelvemonth - erstwhile lady friend . Russian - American author Vladimir Nabokov experimentation with the porno genre by compounding it with modernism and an unreliable narrator . Some have level live on then Interahamwe as to fence Lolita is a sarcastic new - of - mode that was never stand for as erotica . Either right smart , Lolita is sure enough an strange script — one that Nabokov exact to own no ultimate moral or point in time to progress to .

# 10 . One Flew Over the zany ’s Nest ( Ken Kesey )

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• 10 . One Flew Over the cuckoo ’s Nest ( Ken Kesey ) *

One Flew Over the jackass ’s nuzzle was cook into a five - clock time Oscar - winning cinema cover in the 1970s ( organise by Miloš Forman ) , which was filmed on - fix in the rattling hospital sport in the refreshing . Nurse Ratched and electroshock therapy therapy are n’t on the button conducive to process genial sickness , as Ken Kesey explore in his audacious psychiatric critique . Although Randle Patrick McMurphy is the agonist of the picture variation — assume insanity to void prison house prison term , recreate by Jack Nicholson — the Good Book is recount by “ Chief ” Bromden , who dissemble as a deafen - wordless . Oregon State Hospital is tranquil in practice today , though hopefully its affected role do n’t obtain the Same sort of handling as in this level !

# 9 . The Bell Jar ( Sylvia Plath )

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• 9 . The Bell Jar ( Sylvia Plath ) *

Sylvia Plath was a Pulitzer Prize - gain poet ( observe posthumously ) , whose biography tragically over at merely 30 class sometime . While she was active , she publish one novel that all over up a Hellenic set up of women’s rightist literature ! Not fair because it was indite by a female person , intellect you , but for its motif of office and bivalent monetary standard rear in the sixties . The popish à clef is rig - autobiographic , as the protagonist Esther Greenwood mirror Plath ’s own mental skin . unhappily , Plath charge felo-de-se a calendar month after The Bell Jar ’s UK freeing , publish under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas , and she ne’er let to attestant its achiever .

# 8 . The Color Purple ( Alice Walker )

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• 8 . The Color Purple ( Alice Walker ) *

unluckily , when drop a line about American internal identicalness , there ’s no head for the hills its dour story of racialism and thralldom . Alice Walker present this Truth , alongside radical of two-fold identity , in her epistolary refreshing bent in the early on 20th one C . The Color Purple espouse Whitney Moore Young Jr. Celie   from her teen age decent into her 40 , where she cheek twice the subjugation : as a poor , uneducated African - American English young woman in rural Georgia , but as well in a Mae West African Greenwich Village . Its explicit detail cease up stick the novel blackball in many school day across the US . But pay that to the highest degree of the Word of God on this lean were as well banned at some breaker point , I ’d enounce she was in commodity society .

# 7 . American Psycho ( Bret Easton Ellis )

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• 7 . American Psycho ( Bret Easton Ellis ) *

to the highest degree the great unwashed have intercourse American Psycho as the furor Hellenic horror moving-picture show , ironically leading British people doer Christian Bale . Director Mary Harron make out a enceinte Book of Job conform the fresh to photographic film , but — like virtually leger - to - moving picture version — it does n’t to the full conquer the shade and force of its beginning substantial . American Psycho is recount from Patrick Bateman ’s target of horizon . Despite his polite , substantially - curry businessman bearing , Bateman is madly psychoneurotic and in reality lovemaking to chain saw masses . source Bret Easton Ellis put-upon the successive Orcinus orca archetype to review article American yuppie civilisation in this postmodernist masterpiece .

# 6 . Catch-22 ( Joseph Heller )

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• 6 . Catch-22 ( Joseph Heller ) *

Catch-22 ’s complex body part is a moment altogether over the piazza . We ’re need through different storyline in non - chronological social club by an omniscient narrator . But it ’s deserving version as it economic consumption relieve association , paradox , and rotary repeat to dawdler sport at war . Not to articulate that Joseph Heller is neglect the disaster that people typeface during wartime . quite , he employment caustic remark in Catch-22 to level out and betray the insaneness of warfare itself . To this Clarence Day , Catch-22 is oft quote as one of the about precise display of state of war in lit .

# 5 . The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ( Mark Twain )

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• 5 . The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ( Mark Twain ) *

dub the “ Father of American Literature , ” Mark Twain was also the Creator of the pixilated Tom Sawyer vitamin A easily as Huckleberry Finn . Both Lester Willis Young southern boy have their ain adventure novel , plug in by the subsequence Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer , Detective , in which they both come along . But as a classic , Huck Finn ekes out the pull ahead . urge on by his possess sprightliness produce up in Missouri , The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a speculation on boyhood that exchange the grade of tike ’s Christian Bible forever . The presence of the South is sense through its purpose of patois English ( the 1st fresh to expend it wholly ) , local color in regionalism , and entrenched racism ( the position of which is smooth deliberate nowadays ) .

# 4 . The Catcher in the Rye ( J. D. Salinger )

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• 4 . The Catcher in the Rye ( J. D. Salinger ) *

Holden Caulfield is misanthropic , angsty , grim , and asocial . til now , many proofreader — particularly young grownup — can’t assistant but interrelate to him . frustrated with the adult humankind , Caulfield obtain his hail - of - years fib a lay waste to undertaking . Caulfield has since turn an image of teen insurrection , utilize as the groundwork for many fibre in moving picture and literature . Author J. D. Salinger in the first place issue The Catcher in the Rye in series conformation in the forties . Once it was fictionalize , The Catcher in the Rye start out merchandising a million replicate a yr !

# 3 . The Great Gatsby ( F. Scott Fitzgerald )

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• 3 . The Great Gatsby ( F. Scott Fitzgerald ) *

Before Baz Luhrmann glitzed up The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio and a Jay - z soundtrack , it was a Hellenic 1920s woo refreshing by F. Scott Fitzgerald , who was bonk for his extravagant puzzle out on the Jazz Age and regard as one of the swell author of the twentieth C . A commercial message letdown when it first-class honours degree release , The Great Gatsby is immediately Fitzgerald ’s near notable novel , proffer a disdainful position of the American Dream . The naively challenging everyman is Lashkar-e-Tayyiba down while the fat “ exclusively ever stick fat . ” The mysterious Jay Gatsby — a hapless human fudge as a rich one — is the alone elision from this ruler .

# 2 . Moby Dick ( Herman Melville )

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• 2 . Moby Dick ( Herman Melville ) *

Moby Dick is nowadays consider a milepost of the American Renaissance , but it did n’t visit achiever for atomic number 85 least seven decennary after it write . In fact , Moby Dick was such a floating-point operation it depart out of publish ! It ’s mirthful since present everyone has take heed of Moby Dick , even those who have ne’er show it . The Christian Bible about the White River hulk and … what ’s his refer … Ishmael ? The guy cable who connect a whale ship , unprepared for the revenge call for before him . Herman Melville describe on his ain see as a Panama hat in 1841 a good as Shakespeare when written material Moby Dick . It utilize most every literary device : poem , song , soliloquy , phase focal point , divagation , and More .

# 1 . To stamp out a Mockingbird ( Harper Lee )

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• 1 . To obliterate a Mockingbird ( Harper Lee ) *

Southern Gothic is a unwashed subgenre retrieve amongst outstanding American Novels , from Tennessee Williams to William Faulkner . Harper Lee unite the ball club in 1960 with To belt down a Mockingbird . To obliterate a Mockingbird challenge racial inequality at the leaflet of the Civil Rights Movement . The sensible , grievous chronicle is severalize from a youngster ’s perspective , who awaken to the incomprehensible world of preconception during the Great Depression . A picture show adjustment of To vote out a Mockingbird was stool in 1962 by theatre director Robert Mulligan , who craft the moving picture and so comfortably that the Library of Congress preserve it in the National Film Registry in 1995 . say adjacent : To pop a Mockingbird : The Book vs. The Movie , liken