# High School English Literature **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 1, 2004, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890 "2004-03-01T12:15:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/1 "2004-03-01T12:15:53Z")
Just curious as to which works are assigned in High School now. My High School English Lit. classes included: _Alas Babylon To Kill a Mockingbird Crime and Punishment 1984 Animal Farm Julius Caesar Romeo and Juliet The Crucible Our Town Fahrenheit 451 The Scarlet Letter_ ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/2 "2004-03-01T14:18:42Z")
This is a recollection of several high school English classes, in the late 1970s- Siddhartha Crime & Punishment Tale of Two Cities Animal Farm The Scarlet Letter Those I liked… and now the three worst books I had to read for school- Giants in the Earth Main Street An American Tragedy ---
**Author:** ![Caprese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9a28c/32.png) [@Caprese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caprese)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/3 "2004-03-01T15:57:03Z")
I went to high school in the 70’s, and read many of the selections posted. I have a kid who is a freshman in high school. Here is what he’s reading: Maus Julius Caesar Kindred The Color of Water Homer’s Odyssey Inherit the Wind Siddhartha The Green Mile There’s more but that’s all I can think of right now. ---
**Author:** ![Kizarvexius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/da6949/32.png) [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/4 "2004-03-01T16:52:16Z")
I went to high school in the mid-late eighties. Our list included the following (in no particular order). The Grapes of Wrath Of Mice and Men The Good Earth Animal Farm The Chocolate War Romeo and Juliet Julius Caesar MacBeth Hamlet R.U.R. Oedipus The King Flowers For Algernon The Scarlet Letter The Jungle The Crucible Death Of A Salesman Catcher In The Rye Billy Budd Heart of Darkness Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man ---
**Author:** ![Alto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Alto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alto)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/5 "2004-03-01T19:16:45Z")
In the late 70s, we read: The Pearl The Old Man and the Sea Cannery Row 1984 Animal Farm The Scarlet Letter To Kill a Mockingbird Julius Caesar (by the way, you do know why all high school students get to rid this particular one–it’s the only Shakespeare play with no sex.) My personal theory, developed after we were assigned THE PEARL for the third year in a row, is that all books assigned in high school are required to be depressing and despairing. ---
**Author:** ![Doomtrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/0ea827/32.png) [@Doomtrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doomtrain)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/6 "2004-03-01T20:04:42Z")
I remember reading (late 90s)… Lord of the Flies Candide Some of The Inferno A Modest Proposal The Scarlet Letter Julius Caesar The Crucible Death Of A Salesman Catcher In The Rye Antigone The Tempest Cat’s Cradle Leaves of Grass The only one I enjoyed was Candide. They make kids read bleak, depressing books, then wonder why they don’t read. ---
**Author:** ![Grasshopper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f19dbf/32.png) [@Grasshopper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grasshopper)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/7 "2004-03-01T20:50:08Z")
High School 1996-2000. Let’s see what I can remember. Freshman Year Lord of the Flies To Kill a Mockingbird The Diary of Anne Frank I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings When Legends Die Julius Caesar Antigone Sophomore Year The Crucible The Grapes of Wrath Huckleberry Finn Walden Junior Year The Once and Future King Tess of the D’Urbervilles Ethan Frome (ick!) The Importance of Being Ernest MacBeth Senior Year Les Miserables The Fountainhead The Iliad 1984 Their Eyes Were Watching God Hamlet The Catcher in the Rye Flowers for Algernon ---
**Author:** ![tachyon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/50afbb/32.png) [@tachyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tachyon)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/8 "2004-03-01T21:14:48Z")
I’m probably missing some, but this is from 1996-2000 as well. A Separate Peace Great Expectations Romeo and Juliet A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Into Thin Air The Prince and the Pauper MacBeth Le Morte D’Arthur Canterbury Tales A Modest Proposal Alice in Wonderland Gulliver’s Travels Night All Quiet on the Western Front Les Miserables Oedipus Hamlet The Color Purple ---
**Author:** ![hroeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9adbd/32.png) [@hroeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hroeder)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/9 "2004-03-01T21:16:00Z")
What schools did you people go to? 8 novels in 9 months? i don’t believe it. I might believe an excerpt. But I can’t believe even the best private schools had that heavy of a reading list. I taught English, on the college level, and the only course I’d see that kind of reading in was The Novel. There we did a book a week. But even in College Lit. . .sophomore level course, there was never a novel a month. . . ---
**Author:** ![tachyon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/50afbb/32.png) [@tachyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tachyon)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/10 "2004-03-01T21:29:54Z")
> [@hroeder](#): > > What schools did you people go to? > > 8 novels in 9 months? i don’t believe it. I might believe an excerpt. But I can’t believe even the best private schools had that heavy of a reading list. > > I taught English, on the college level, and the only course I’d see that kind of reading in was The Novel. There we did a book a week. But even in College Lit. . .sophomore level course, there was never a novel a month. . . Just your average suburban public school… Perhaps I should have made it clear that Night and All Quiet on the Western Front were both required readings in my History class, not English. And Alice in Wonderland (plus one other book I can’t recall) were a part of our summer readings. So that makes it around 5 or so books in one year of English. I’m sure that seems a bit more reasonable. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/11 "2004-03-01T22:59:13Z")
1994-1998 my high school assigned _The Old Man and the Sea The Red Badge of Courage Les Miserables Siddhartha The Jungle Great Expectations Death of a Salesman Raisin in the Sun The Crucible Wuthering Heights Beowulf_ …plus the Holy Trio of Shakespeare: _Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar_. Another English class read _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. When I was student teaching at another high school in 2001-2002, my class read _Julius Caesar The Song of Roland Night All Quiet on the Western Front Gilgamesh Utopia_ ---
**Author:** ![Tamryne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3e96dc/32.png) [@Tamryne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamryne)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/12 "2004-03-01T23:23:55Z")
High school sophmore checking in. Im in the AP class, so while we don’t read harder books per say, but more of them. Freshman: A Tale of Two Cities Great Expectations Mythology Romeo and Juliet Animal Farm Sophomore: To Kill a Mockingbird A Seperate Peace Brave New World Much Ado About Nothing Julius Caesar Lord of the Flies thats all I remember right now, prolly gonna have a lot more this year ---
**Author:** ![Lsura](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@Lsura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lsura)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/13 "2004-03-01T23:54:00Z")
High school 1987-1991 and these are what I remember reading during that time (as far as what years…I don’t really remember). The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman Lord of the Flies Great Expectations Catcher in the Rye On the Road One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest The Jungle Brave New World 1984 Frankenstein Space Romeo and Juliet Beowulf Grendel The Handmaid’s Tale Canterbury Tales Don Quixote Antigone Tess of the D’Urbervilles The Once and Future King The Scarlet Letter An American Tragedy This includes the summer reading that I remember along with what was read during the school year. ---
**Author:** ![Iacob\_Matthew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Iacob\_Matthew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iacob_Matthew)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/14 "2004-03-02T00:16:46Z")
The English isn’t very interesting, really, and a few books we just blew through in two or three periods because the curriculum required them, no test/writings. Aside from the old standby of _Catcher in the Rye_, probably the favorite book I’ve ever read for school, there’s not much that kept my mind. Here’s the few highlights (for 2000-2004)- _The Remains of the Day_, by Kazuo Ishiguro Odeipus Rex & Antigone _Ender’s Game_ Orson Scott Card (Well, interesting to a sophomore who’s never read much and has a way-too-low opinion of people who actually do know better. It seemed moderately bland and incredibly sloppy the second time I tried to read it, though.) Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and R&J Homer’s “Oddessy” _Watership Downs_, Richard Adams _All the King’s Men_ Robert Penn Warren (or is it Warren Penn?) The Books for history were much more memorable. _A World Lit only by Fire_ _Taipan_ _One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_ _Guns of August_ _Candide_ _The Prince_ AND _Sun Tzu’s Art of War_ in one double-print book. ---
**Author:** ![JessEnigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/cdc98d/32.png) [@JessEnigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JessEnigma)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/15 "2004-03-02T00:19:38Z")
> [@hroeder](#): > > What schools did you people go to? > > 8 novels in 9 months? i don’t believe it. I might believe an excerpt. But I can’t believe even the best private schools had that heavy of a reading list. From sophomore year on in my high school, the advanced English classes read books during the summer. (And now, even the freshmen have summer reading.) That would definitely account for a portion of my list. I was in high school from 1999-2003 and these are the plays & novels/extremely long short stories that I can remember: - Romeo and Juliet - Great Expectations - Cold Mountain - Death of a Salesman - The Crucible - The Glass Menagerie - Inherit The Wind - Lord of the Flies - Pride and Prejudice - Murder in the Cathedral - Alice in Wonderland (for a term paper - I was the only one who read it) - Hamlet - Macbeth - Beowulf - Canterbury Tales - The Things They Carried - Mama Day - One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - A Doll’s House - Billy Budd - Oedipus Rex - Othello - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Waiting For Godot - Henry V - The Cherry Orchard - The Death of Ivan Ilyich - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - The Importance of Being Earnest - two stories from Dubliners ---
**Author:** ![Grasshopper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f19dbf/32.png) [@Grasshopper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grasshopper)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/16 "2004-03-02T00:36:58Z")
> [@hroeder](#): > > What schools did you people go to? 8 novels in 9 months? i don’t believe it. . . I went to just a normal, suburban high school, but all my classes were Honors/AP, and I ought to have specified that my list included summer reading as well. For example, my senior year, Les Mis and The Fountainhead (the biggies) were both summer reading. That’s down to six novels over nine months. 1984 and The Catcher in the Rye are both fairly easy reads; I would guess we spent about two-three weeks each on those. The only other tough book from my senior year was The Iliad, and so we went a bit more slowly through it. If I recall correctly, though, it’s still fairly short, about 150 pages, so it didn’t take that long to get through. Otherwise, all I can say is (my senior year especially), I had some pretty intensive English classes in high school. ---
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/17 "2004-03-02T01:17:45Z")
High School 2001-2004 (3.5 Months left), all MYP/IB English classes. A random sampling, not an exclusive list of what we’ve read since freshman year: Romeo and Juliet The Metamorphosis A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Great Expectations All Quiet on the Western Front Animal Farm The Scarlet Letter\*\* Siddhartha\* A Tale of Two Cities Things Fall Apart God’s Bits of Wood A Midsummer Night’s Dream Hamlet One Day in the LIfe of Ivan Denisovich Chronicle of a Death Foretold\* The Stranger\*\* One Hundred Years of Solitude\*\* The Invisible Man Jane Eyre To Kill a Mockingbird Julius Caeser The Oedipus Trilogy Candide\* The Things They Carried Master Harold and the Boys A Seperate Peace July’s People - is stuff we’ve read this year. \*\* is stuff that was summer reading for this year. ---
**Author:** ![percypercy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@percypercy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/percypercy)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/18 "2004-03-02T01:30:56Z")
1995-1999 Let’s see if I can divide the books into years. Freshman Aenied (summer I think) Illiad Odyssey Great Expectations Oedipus Rex Antigone Oedipus at Colonnus Sophomore Moby Dick (just selections, most of which I didn’t read either. Sixteen year old girls don’t really have an abiding interest in whaling) Scarlet Letter The Crucible Death of a Salesman (and a few other things, but god help me if I can remember them. It was the American literature year. Junior 1984 Brave New World Beowulf(not sure if you want to count that though) Frankenstein (summer) Pride and Prejudice (summer) Wuthering Heights Return of the Native Heart of Darkness Senior Brothers Karmazov Crime and Punishment Death of Ivan Ilyich and other stories A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Selections from Dubliners All Quiet on the Western Front (History) Shakespeare through the years we read these plays, I gave up on trying to figure out when we read what. Othello Hamlet Romeo and Juliet The Tempest Merchant of Venice Julius Caesar In Junior and Senior years, we also read poetry out of what we all called “The Tome”. It’s a huge anthology of poetry collected by the teachers at my high school over the years and printed up for the students. I’m actually a little sad. I was one of the first years to get a tome in two halves. My sister has the massive full size tome. It’s almost an honor to get one. -Lil ---
**Author:** ![elliot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/858c86/32.png) [@elliot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elliot)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/19 "2004-03-02T03:02:32Z")
I’m horrible at remembering things but this year we’ve read so far: City of Glass Waiting for Godot Hamlet Oedipus and Antigone All Quiet on the Western Front The French Liutenant’s Woman Left to go we have Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours We also spend time prepping for an AP exam, which is about the least interesting thing I’ve ever done. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890/20 "2004-03-02T04:19:38Z")
(1996-2000) **9th Grade:** _Great Expectations Romeo and Juliet The Name of the Rose Things Fall Apart The Odyssey_, but only about half of it. **10th Grade:** _A Separate Peace Antigone Julius Caesar Of Mice and Men_ **11th Grade:** _The Grapes of Wrath The Scarlet Letter Beloved The Great Gatsby Huckleberry Finn As I Lay Dying_ **12th Grade:** _Tess of the d’Urbervilles Their Eyes were Watching God A Doll’s House Hamlet Macbeth Canterbury Tales_ [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-school-english-literature/231890.md?page=2)