Books on the Wall blog posts covering classic literature, classical authors, and everything in between.
Today we take a look into a great American classic and present a very brief Moby-Dick summary. Skip the “What is Moby-Dick About?” section, though, if you don’t want any spoilers. Who wrote Moby-Dick? Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick, which was published in late 1850 as a three-part series called The Whale in Britain and as a single volume called Moby-Dick; or, The Whale in the United States. Born in New York City in 1819, Herman Melville was the third of eight children in a wealthy merchant family. After his father suddenly died, Melville’s family lost its financial stability, and Melville moved around […]
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Today’s quote comes from Walden, one of Henry David Thoreau’s most famous works. First published in 1854, Walden is a literary reflection on Thoreau’s purposeful time in solitude in the woods near his family home. Walden is often viewed as the seminal work in American transcendentalist philosophy, contemplating themes like solitude, self-reliance and simplicity. To read the whole work, along with Civil Disobedience, check out our full-text Walden poster.
Continue ReadingMore commonly known simply as Romeo and Juliet, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is one of William Shakespeare’s most famous works. The play follows the lives and deaths of Romeo and Juliet, two young star-crossed lovers from feuding families in Verona. Romeo and Juliet’s love is one of the most beloved, and tragic, in all of classic literature. But though it’s possibly the most famous love story ever written, many of its quotes are difficult to remember and hard to place within the larger context of the story. Who said “But loft! What light through yonder window breaks?” Besides […]
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The relationships between the characters in Wuthering Heights change drastically throughout the novel. Rejected as child and refused by his love, Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights as a man set on revenge. Through the novel, he manipulates nearly all of the characters around him—including his own son—and subjects them to both petty and disastrous cruelties. As Healthcliff fulfills his plans for revenge, he entangles himself more and more with the Earnshaws and the Lintons, always keeping his ultimate goal in mind: ownership of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. By taking both estates—the calm, cultivated Thrushcross Grange and the wild, tumultuous Wuthering Heights—Heathcliff would […]
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Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is set in the West Egg, a fictional neighborhood on Long Island. The novel follows narrator Nick Carraway as he becomes entangled in the drama of the West Egg socialites including, above all, the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby. Through grand affairs, intrigue and tragedy, The Great Gatsby explores the opulence, morality, society and decline of both the Roaring Twenties and the American Dream. Though many original reviewers condemned the novel as a decline from earlier works like This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned, it is The Great Gatsby that has continued to solidify F. Scott Fitzgerald’s place in […]
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Written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pen name Lewis Carroll in 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (more commonly called Alice in Wonderland) is a whimsical tale of a child exploring a fantasy land where nothing is ever as it seems, where logic is fallacy and where making sense won’t get you anywhere. Though a children’s story at heart, the dreamlike absurdity of the Alice in Wonderland characters, plot and language can be appreciated at any age. Alice, the child of a wealthy Victorian family, exemplifies logic, order and etiquette. Despite her age and child-like demeanor, Alice believes that there are rules and features […]
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