THE GREATEST ENGLISH LITERATURE

All you need to know about great literary works

While earning my bachelor's degree in English literature I ran into a reoccurring theme:  death, death and more death!  To be a great work of literature, it seems there has to be death.   (Okay, I'm purposely overgeneralizing, here, but there is some truth to it.)  Thus this (I hope) humorous look at great literary works!

Romeo and Juliet  By William Shakespeare	People fall in love, then die.
The Glass Menagerie  By Tennessee Williams	Everyone is so miserable they wish they were dead.
All Quiet on the Western Front  By Erich Maria Remarque	Men experience the horror of war and every single character dies.
The Scarlet Letter  By Nathaniel Hawthorne	Two men fight over Hester and then die.
Macbeth  By William Shakespeare	Macbeth kills people and then dies.
The Great Gatsby  By F. Scott Fitzgerald	Myrtle dies, Wilson kills Gatsby and then commits suicide.
Great Expectations  By Charles Dickens	A convict helps Pip become educated and then dies.
The Red Badge of Courage  By Stephen Crane	A soldier spends the whole book whining about how afraid he is to die.
Huckleberry Finn  By Mark Twain	Huck pretends to be dead so he can have adventures.
Tom Sawyer  By Mark Twain	Injun Joe chases Tom until he dies.
Antigone  By Sophocles	Everyone inbreeds and dies.
Our Town  By Thorton Wilder	Everyone dies, but the play goes on anyway.
A Doll's House  By Henrik Ibsen	Nora decides she'd rather die than stay with her husband.
Moby Dick  By Herman Melville	Ahab chases a whale and dies.
War of the Worlds  By H.G. Wells	The Martians kill a bunch of people and then fall over dead.
A Christmas Carol  By Charles Dickens	Scrooge is visited by dead people.
Dante's Inferno	All about where you might go when you die.
Don Quixote  By Miguel de Cervantes	An old guy goes crazy and dies.
Hound of the Baskervilles  By Arthur Conan Doyle	Holmes must find out why someone died.
Phantom of the Opera  By Gaston Leroux	A guy can sing beautifully but looks like he's dead.
The Awakening   By Katie Chopin	A woman learns to think for herself and then dies.
Beowulf  Ancient European Legend	The hero rips off the monster's arm and it dies.
Lord of the Flies  By William Golding	A bunch of kids degenerate into wild behavior and some of them die.
War and Peace  By Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy	A book so long that by the time you finish it, you'll be dead.
The Fall of the House of Usher  By Edgar Allan Poe	It turns out the guy's sister isn't as dead as he thought!
The Tell-Tale Heart  By Edgar Allan Poe	The murderer is afraid his victim isn't really dead.
White Fang  By Jack London	People have a hard time believing that if they hang around with a wolf they won't end up dead.
The Canterbury Tales  By Geoffrey Chaucer	People travel to visit a place where a famous guy died.
Hamlet  By William Shakespeare	Hamlet talks to himself, goes nuts and pretty much everyone dies.
A Night to Remember  by Walter Lord	The Titanic sinks and lots of people die.
Fuenteovejuna  By Lope de Vega	The evil Commander insults the women's honor until the townpeople get fed up and kill him.
Wuthering Heights  By Emily Brontë	Heathcliff is bitter and lonely and over 60% of the cast dies.  (Yes, I actually calculated this.)
Jane Eyre  By Charlotte Brontë	No one can be happy until the crazy lady in the attic dies.
The Odyssey  By Homer	It turns out Odysseus isn't dead and he comes back to kill the people who were cozying up to his wife.
Much Ado About Nothing By William Shakespeare	Hero pretends to be dead, while Benedick thinks he would die of embarassment if he told Beatrice how he really feels about her.
The Color Purple By Alice Walker	Celie struggles to find happiness until her father dies and she inherits property.
1984 By George Orwell	Anyone who criticizes the government will probably end up dead.
Treasure Island By Robert Louis Stevenson	A bunch of men end up dead while looking for treasure.
The Jungle Book By Rudyard Kipling	Mowgli is raised by animals after his parents die.
Walden By H.J. Thoreau	Better think for yourself and appreciate the little things or when you die you won't have lived.
pretty much any poem by Emily Dickinson	Death, death and more death.
Les Miserables By Victor Hugo	Life sucks and nearly everyone dies.
Grapes of Wrath By John Steinbeck	Better move west or we'll all die.
Richard II by William Shakespeare	Henry Bolingbroke plots against Richard II, and once he has the crown, orders his death.
Richard III by William Shakespeare	A whole bunch of people die as Richard III tries to secure his claim to the throne of England.
Othello by William Shakespeare	Iago gets jealous, Othello gets suspicious, and most of them die.
As You Like It by William Shakespeare	People cross-dress and hang out in the forest, and because it's a comedy they all get married instead of dying.
All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare	Helena stops the king from dying, lets her husband think she's dead, and eventually they all live happily ever after.
Henry V by William Shakespeare	Henry conquers France and a bunch of people die.
The Winter's Tale By William Shakespeare	A bunch of people are thought to be dead, but really aren't.
A Midsummer Night's Dream By William Shakespeare	If Hermia doesn't marry Demetrius she'll probably be killed, but she runs off with Lysander. A bunch of fairies complicate things by playing pranks, and, surprisingly, no one actually dies.
Measure For Measure By William Shakespeare	People are in danger of dying because sleeping around is illegal.
Antony and Cleopatra By William Shakespeare	The title characters are involved in political intrigue and eventually end up dead.
King Lear By William Shakespeare	An old king fights with his three daughters and they all end up dead.
Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 By William Shakespeare	Prince Hal parties with Falstaff until he finally grows up and starts helping to kill people to secure his claim on the throne.
Heart of Darkness By Joseph Conrad	As Marlow sails up the Congo everyone tells him how great this guy Kurtz is, but as soon as they meet, Kurtz dies.
Njal's Saga By an unknown thirteenth century author	Old Icelandic people sue each other, marry and get into fights where lots of people die.
Mrs. Dalloway By Virginia Woolf	Rich British people sit around and whine until a shell-shocked WWI vet jumps out a window and dies.
Season of Migration to the North By Tayeb Salih	A stranger comes to the village and dies, after which his wife and her second husband kill each other and the narrator thinks about committing suicide.
Sister Carrie By Theodore Dreiser	Carrie comes to the big city and uses a couple men to get rich and famous, but one of them dies penniless, and in the end Carrie seems destined to die alone.
What Maisie Knew By Henry James	A little British girl would be better off if her parents were dead instead of divorced, since they use her as a pawn and make her life miserable.
Le Morte d'Arthur By Sir Thomas Malory	The story of how King Arthur of Camelot dies.

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