Literary Themes for Students:
(War and Peace) – (Race and Prejudice) – (The American Dream)
(Author List)
A
Achebe, Chinua
Things Fall Apart – (War and Peace) p. 519
Alexie, Sherman
“What you Pawn I will Redeem” – (Race and Prejudice) p. 515
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits – (War and Peace) p. 286
Alvarez, Julia
In the Time of the Butterflies – (War and Peace) p. 323
Angelou, Maya
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – (Race and Prejudice) p. 307
B
Bowden, Mark
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War – (War and Peace) p. 95
Brooks, Gwendolyn
Blacks – (Race and Prejudice) p. 128
Brown, Dee
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West – (Race and
Prejudice) p. 140
C
Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Nunez
Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition – (The American Dream) p. 153
Cather, Willa
O Pioneers! – (The American Dream) p. 412
Chopin, Kate
The Awakening – (Race and Prejudice) p. 114
Cisneros, Sandra
The House on Mango Street – (Race and Prejudice) p. 279
Colbert, Stephen
White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner 2006 Speech – (The American Dream) p. 494
Conrad, Joseph
Heart of Darkness – (Race and Prejudice) p. 267
Cooper, James Fenimore
The Last of the Mohicans – (War and Peace) p. 364
Crane, Stephen
The Red Badge of Courage – (War and Peace) p. 439
D
Dickens, Charles
A Tale of Two Cities – (War and Peace) p. 494
Dos Passos, John
The Big Money – (The American Dream) p. 93
Dreiser, Theodore
Sister Carrie – (The American Dream) p. 466
Du Bois, W. E. B.
The Souls of Black Folk – (Race and Prejudice) p. 456
E
Ellison, Ralph
“King of the Bingo Game” – (Race and Prejudice) p. 333
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Self-Reliance – (The American Dream) p. 453
F
Faulkner, William
Absalom, Absalom! – (The American Dream) p. 27
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
The Great Gatsby – (The American Dream) p.264
Forbes, Esther
Johnny Tremain – (War and Peace) p. 350
Forester, E. M.
A Passage to India – (Race and Prejudice) p. 398
Frank, Anne
The Diary of a Young Girl – (War and Peace) p. 185
The Diary of a Young Girl – (Race and Prejudice) p. 199
Franklin, Benjamin
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin – (The American Dream) p. 79
Frazier, Charles
Cold Mountain – (War and Peace) p. 154
Frost, Robert
“Mending Wall” – (The American Dream) p. 346
G
Gaines, Ernest J.
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman – (Race and Prejudice) p. 86
Grass, Gunter
The Tin Drum – (War and Peace) p. 535
H
Haley, Alex
The Autobiography of Malcolm X – (Race and Prejudice) p. 101
Hansberry, Lorraine
A Raisin in the Sun – (Race and Prejudice) p. 412
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
“My Kinsman, Major Molineux” – (The American Dream) p. 386
Heller, Joseph
Catch-22 – (War and Peace) p.124
Hemingway, Ernest
For Whom the Bell Tolls – (War and Peace) p. 227
Hersey, John
Hiroshima – (War and Peace) p. 274
Homer
Iliad – (War and Peace) p. 300
Houston, James D.
Farewell to Manzanar – (Race and Prejudice) p. 227
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki
Farewell to Manzanar – (War and Peace) p. 213
Farewell to Manzanar – (Race and Prejudice) p. 227
Hughes, Langston
Montage of a Dream Deferred – (The American Dream) p. 371
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” – (Race and Prejudice) p. 374
Hunt, Irene
Across Five Aprils – (War and Peace) p. 55
I
J
James, Henry
Daisy Miller – (The American Dream) p. 181
Jefferson, Thomas
The Declaration of Independence – (The American Dream) p. 209
Joseph, Chief
“I Will Fight No More Forever” – (War and Peace) p. 337
K
Kerouac, Jack
On the Road – (The American Dream) p. 400
Keneally, Thomas
Schindler’s List – (War and Peace) p. 451
Kennedy, John F.
John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address – (The American Dream) p. 291
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon – (Race and Prejudice) p. 241
King Jr., Martin Luther
“I Have a Dream” – (Race and Prejudice) p. 294
Kingston, Maxine Hong
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts – (War and Peace) p. 563
Knowles, John
A Separate Peace – (War and Peace) p. 466
Kovic, Ron
Born on the Fourth of July – (War and Peace) p. 109
Kushner, Tony
Angels in America – (Race and Prejudice) p. 72
L
Lee, Harper
To Kill a Mockingbird – (Race and Prejudice) p. 470
Lee, Marie G.
Finding My Voice – (The American Dream) p. 236
Levi, Primo
“A Good Day” – (Race and Prejudice) p. 256
Lewis, Sinclair
Main Street – (The American Dream) p. 330
Lowell, Amy
“Patterns” – (War and Peace) p. 416
M
Malcolm X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X – (Race and Prejudice) p. 101
Malory, Thomas
Le Morte D’Arthur – (War and Peace) p. 378
Mathabane, Mark
Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa – (Race
and Prejudice) p. 320
McCrae, John
“In Flanders Fields” – (War and Peace) p. 312
McMurtry, Larry
Lonesome Dove – (The American Dream) p. 317
McPherson, James Alan
Elbow Room – (The American Dream) p. 222
Miller, Arthur
Death of a Salesman – (The American Dream) p. 195
Mitchell, Margaret
Gone with the Wind – (War and Peace) p. 242
Momaday, N. Scott
House Made of Dawn – (The American Dream) p. 277
Myers, Walter Dean
Autobiography of My Dead Brother – (The American Dream) p. 66
N
Neihardt, John G.
Black Elk Speaks – (The American Dream) p. 110
O
O’Brien, Tim
“The Things They Carried” – (War and Peace) p. 507
O’Connor, Flannery
“Everything That Rises Must Converge” – (Race and Prejudice) p. 214
O’Flaherty, Liam
“The Sniper” – (War and Peace) p. 481
P
Paine, Thomas
Common Sense – (War and Peace) p. 169
Common Sense – (The American Dream) p. 168
Paton, Alan
Cry, The Beloved Country – (Race and Prejudice) p. 186
Q
R
Remarque, Erich Maria
All Quiet on the Western Front – (War and Peace) p. 69
Rivera, Tomas
…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him – (The American Dream) p. 56
Roth, Henry
Call It Sleep – (The American Dream) p. 125
S
Satrapi, Marjane
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood – (War and Peace) p. 424
Shakespeare, William
Henry V – (War and Peace) p. 257
The Merchant of Venice – (Race and Prejudice) p. 345
Silko, Leslie Marmon
Ceremony – (Race and Prejudice) p. 156
Sone, Monica
Nisei Daughter – (Race and Prejudice) p. 385
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Uncle Tom’s Cabin – (Race and Prejudice) p. 484
Sun-Tzu
The Art of War – (War and Peace) p. 81
T
Taylor, Mildred D.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry – (Race and Prejudice) p. 426
Tennyson, Alfred
“The Charge of the Light Brigade” – (War and Peace) p.141
Tolstoy, Leo
War and Peace – (War and Peace) p. 548
Toomer, Jean
Cane – (The American Dream) p. 138
Twain, Mark
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – (Race and Prejudice) p. 55
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – (The American Dream) p. 41
U
Updike, John
Rabbit, Run – (The American Dream) p. 440
V
W
Walker, Alice
The Color Purple – (Race and Prejudice) p. 172
Whitman, Walt
“O Captain! My Captain” – (War and Peace) p. 405
“Song of Myself” – (The American Dream) p. 481
Wiesel, Elie
Night – (War and Peace) p. 393
Wilder, Laura Ingalls
Little House on the Prairie – (The American Dream) p. 302
Wilder, Thornton
Our Town – (The American Dream) p. 427
Winthrop, John
“A Model of Christian Charity” – (The American Dream) p. 359
Wollstonecraft, Mary
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman – (Race and Prejudice) p. 499
Woolf, Virginia
A Room of One’s Own – (Race and Prejudice) p. 441
Wright, Richard
Native Son – (Race and Prejudice) p. 360
X
Y
Yeats, William Butler
“Easter 1916” – (War and Peace) p. 200
Z
Updated 2015