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Okonkwo, the novel’s main character, is a member
of the Igbo (formerly known as Ibo, as in the novel)
people of Nigeria. Traditionally, the Igbo lived
in villages based on lineage; the male heads of
household were all related through their fathers.
A prosperous man typically had two or three
wives, each living in her own hut within the family
compound. Because of their proximity to West
African ports, many Igbos were taken by European
and African slave traders. In 1807, the British
Parliament outlawed the slave trade, and British
merchants began trading in palm oil and other
goods. British missionary and military presence
increased in the decades that followed, and Britain’s
control of Nigeria was formalized at the Berlin
Conference of 1884–1885. Things Fall Apart takes
place during this early period of British colonization.
(Nigeria became an independent nation in 1960.)

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After their two older sisters died of tuberculosis
while away at school, the four remaining Brontë
children grew up at home with only each other
for companionship. Their intense fantasy worlds
provided the raw material for a number of
novels, among them Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and
Emily’s Wuthering Heights. These novels provide
a window into the hardships and lack of choices
faced by single women without means. At the
time of its publication, Jane Eyre thrilled and
scandalized Victorian readers by portraying Jane as
insubordinate and passionate and by denouncing
the hypocrisy and cruelty of clerics.

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In the 1840s, French newspapers first published
The Count of Monte Cristo in serialized form. These
episodes were later released as a book. The novel
takes place during the Bourbon Restoration, a time
of political instability in France. The story unfolds on
the cusp of an important historical event during the
Restoration: Napoleon’s Hundred Days. Napoleon,
who had been banished to an island in the
Tyrrhenian Sea, escaped and made his way to Paris,
intent on reinstating himself as emperor. King Louis
XVIII briefly renounced the throne—for a hundred
days—and Napoleon ruled for a second time, from
March 20 to July 8, 1815.

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In the 1700s, most people in Ireland and England
did not own land; they were struggling to eke out a
living and keep from starving. For the vast majority
of families, getting a good education for their
children was out of reach. Deadly diseases, such as
smallpox and bubonic plague, were easily spread
and killed thousands. The two main political parties,
the Tories and the Whigs, spent more time arguing
with each other in Parliament than they did solving
problems and easing people’s sufferings.

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Goldman frames The Princess Bride as an
abridgement of a longer work by S. Morgenstern,
an American immigrant from the fictional country of
Florin. The frame is narrated by a fictionalized version
of Goldman—he mentions his real-life works, but
invents other details of his personal life, including a
fictitious family. This narrator recalls his father, also
from Florin, reading the book to him when he was
ten and recovering from pneumonia. Only later
did he discover that his father had left out lengthy
sections of history and political satire and told him
only “the good parts.” Desiring to bring the book that
inspired his own love of reading to a wider audience,
the narrator publishes an abridged version.

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Written in contemporary language, the novel
Grendel is a retelling of the Old English epic poem
Beowulf from the point of view of the monster
Grendel. In a surprising and humorous turn, Grendel
is an intelligent, sensitive, and philosophical being,
as well as a bloodthirsty and murderous beast. The
novel shares some of the plot of Beowulf, including
Grendel’s attacks on Hrothgar’s mead hall and
the climactic fight between Grendel and Beowulf.
The book also provides interesting backstories
for Grendel and Hrothgar and other humans in
the original tale. Grendel melds an ancient epic
tradition—with its values of heroism and duty—with
a thoroughly modern portrayal of an outsider, in an
exploration of what it means to be human.

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The setting of The Bluest Eye draws on Morrison’s
own memories of growing up in Lorain, Ohio,
during the 1940s. Her idea for the story is based on
a childhood friend who said that her unanswered
prayers for blue eyes proved the nonexistence
of God. According to Morrison, although Lorain
didn’t have formal segregation laws during the
1940s, people of the community had unofficial
understandings about racial divisions—that is,
invisible lines that most people observed. For
example, only “to go” purchases by black people
were truly welcome at the local ice cream parlor;
sitting down to eat there was discouraged. As the
country recovered from the effects of the Great
Depression, coal, iron-ore, steel, and manufacturing
industries provided jobs for many laborers in Lorain.
The city’s location on Lake Erie at the mouth of the
Black River (about 25 miles west of Cleveland) also
made it an ideal Midwestern shipping center.

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Crystal City—Rivera’s birthplace and where he
taught for a time—was once called “the Spinach
Capital of the World.” In the 1960s and 1970s, this
farming community played a big role in the civil
rights movement of Mexican Americans/Chicanos
across Texas. Although the city had a largely Mexican
American population, its government and school
board were mainly controlled by its Anglo minority.
In 1969–1970, students in Crystal City staged a
walkout to protest the school board’s discriminatory
practices. After a protracted effort, the students’
demands were finally met, leading to similar efforts
throughout the state.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God shines a light on the
devastation of the Okeechobee hurricane of 1928.
In the years before the hurricane, the government
had drained parts of the Everglades, creating the
“muck” that Hurston describes. It was there that
black workers, many from the Caribbean, worked
the sugar cane plantations. On the evening of
September 16, 1928, the hurricane came ashore
and forced the waters of Lake Okeechobee over a
dike. Between 2,500 and 3,000 people died as a
result of the hurricane, the majority of them African
American and Afro-Caribbean. Just as Hurston
recounts in the novel, black men were forced to
recover and segregate the dead, burying whites in
marked graves and blacks in unmarked mass graves.

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In 1947, Bradbury wrote a short story called “Bright Phoenix,” which contained an idea for a longer story, “The Fireman.” In 1953, Bradbury expanded this longer story into the novel Fahrenheit 451 and published it along with two of his other stories. The novel became enormously popular and was made into an acclaimed movie in 1966. Fahrenheit 451 was first published during an era in which many Americans greatly worried about the spread of communism. U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy took advantage of this “Red Scare” to create a climate of fear and distrust by leading a reckless investigation into suspected communist infiltrators. In so doing, McCarthy caused lasting harm to many, including actors, writers, and others connected with the Hollywood film industry, which Bradbury so admired

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Before the battles of Lexington and Concord— considered the start of the American Revolution (1775–1783)—events throughout the colonies had created conditions ripe for revolution. Back in 1763, the Seven Years’ War (also called the French and Indian War) had ended; to pay for the war, the British government passed tax acts that American colonists considered unfair. When British troops moved into Boston in 1768 to enforce these tax acts, many colonists simmered. Two years later, confrontations with British troops resulted in the Boston Massacre, leaving five colonists dead. Committees of Correspondence were formed, and the First Continental Congress met in 1774. These and other events helped unify the colonies’ response to British policies, set the stage for the “shots heard ’round the world” at Lexington and Concord, and created a sense of national identity that proved pivotal in 1776.

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During the early 1900s in Mexico, widespread
dissatisfaction over President Porfirio Díaz’s policies,
which favored wealthy landowners, sparked the
Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). Like many other
Mexican families at this time, Galarza’s family moved
to the United States as violence, social instability,
and economic uncertainty spread. However,
Mexican immigrants faced hardships in the United
States as well—decent housing and steady work
was hard to find, and employers often abused their
power over workers, resulting in low wages and in
dangerous and unhealthy working conditions

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Karl Marx believed that the overthrow of the rulers
by the workers was inevitable and would lead to
an ideal classless society in which everyone would
contribute to the common good and benefit equally.
Sparked by Marx’s ideas and by the devastating
impact of World War I—millions of soldiers dead and
the economy in ruins—Russian workers, led by a
small educated class, overthrew Czar Nicholas II and
his government in 1917. They established a social
democracy. Power struggles continued until 1929,
when Joseph Stalin became dictator. George Orwell
opposed Stalin’s cruel and oppressive methods
for gaining and holding power. Animal Farm is an
allegory of Russia’s political history beginning with
the Russian Revolution and ending in about 1943.

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This play is set in the 1950s, a time when the
civil rights movement was beginning to gain
momentum. Hansberry’s characters echo trends
of that time, with Mama Younger (like Rosa Parks)
making the powerful decision to push back against
a society that views her as less than equal. Although
African Americans were barred from living in certain
neighborhoods and working in some professions at
that time, more and more people refused to comply
with these unjust restrictions. They paved the way
for changes that would introduce greater equality,
reshaping American society

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After the Civil War, many African American
leaders began advocating for new approaches
to overcoming the racism that African Americans
continued to face. Early in the 1900s, Marcus Garvey
proposed that African Americans seek economic
independence and return to Africa, their ancestral
home. After World War II, civil rights leaders such
as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Medgar
Evers advocated a different approach: economic
boycotts, voter registration, and protest marches.
The Nation of Islam, founded in 1930, promoted
another approach, one of economic and political
independence and Black nationalism. In the 1950s
and 1960s, through the efforts of Elijah Muhammad
and Malcolm X, the Nation’s influence grew. After
Malcolm X’s assassination (1965) and the death
of Elijah Muhammad (1975), the Nation of Islam
underwent several re-organizations.

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The novel’s protagonist is a practitioner of India’s
predominant religions: Hinduism, Islam, and
Christianity. Other widely practiced religions in India
are Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. Hinduism,
one of the world’s oldest religions, is a polytheistic
religion. Most of the world’s Hindus live in India. The
country has the world’s second largest population of
Muslims. Islam was introduced to India in the 1700s;
Muslims follow the teachings of Muhammad. The
Constitution in India dictates that it is a secular state.
The novel refers to agnostics and atheists, who either
don’t believe in or doubt the existence of a God.

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Brave New World is a work of dystopian literature.
It is a dark satire of economic and social trends
in Huxley’s time set in a futuristic world state
technocracy. At the time Huxley wrote his novel,
there was ongoing debate over eugenics, or the
practice of controlling the human gene pool by
encouraging reproduction by those with desirable
traits and restricting reproduction by those with
undesirable traits. In two essays published in the
mid-1930s (“What Is Happening to Our Population?”
and “Are We Growing Stupider?”) Huxley expressed
support for increasing birthrates of intellectual elites
and sterilizing the “mentally inferior.” While he clearly
exaggerates genetic engineering in his novel for
satirical effect, it is unclear whether he disapproves of
such technology altogether

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Frankenstein is set in the latter part of the 18th
century, at the end of the Enlightenment and
the beginning of the Romantic period. In the
novel, the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason
and scientific investigation is represented by
Frankenstein’s obsession with science, while
Romanticism’s emphasis on human passion and
feeling is represented by his creature’s longing for
companionship. Reading about ancient theories of
alchemy and the search for the elixir of life sparks
Frankenstein’s ambition to create life from inanimate
matter, which his contemporaries deem impossible.
The novel’s subtitle, The Modern Prometheus,
compares Frankenstein to the mythical Greek hero
who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity.
Some myths also credit Prometheus with creating
humans out of clay

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The Thief is a fantasy set in the fictional countries Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia. The landscape for these countries was inspired by Greece, andTurner models a lot of her fantasy on the area and its mythology. The descriptions of the cities and temples reflect ancient Greek architecture. Although her system of gods and goddesses is fictional, Turner drew upon the Greek gods and other mythologies.For example, the Greeks believed Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth, were the parents of the Titans.In The Thief, this is reflected in the myth the magus tells about the Sky and Earth creating the gods.

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The Holocaust refers to the systematic killing of six
million European Jews between 1933 (the year Hitler
became Chancellor of Germany) and 1945 (the year
marking the end of World War II in Europe) by the
Nazis and their collaborators. It also refers to the
Nazis’ persecution and murder of millions of others,
including Roma, or gypsies; people with disabilities;
some Slavic groups; homosexuals; political
opponents; and religious dissidents. By the end of
the war, Hitler had overseen the murder of about
one-third of the world’s Jews. Most of Night takes
place during the final year of the Holocaust.

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Romiette and Julio is a contemporary retelling
of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The author
establishes several parallels with the play. For
example, 16-year-old Romiette (Romi) Cappelle
comes from a well-off family, much like 14-year old Juliet Capulet. Her best friend, Destiny, is loyal
and trusted, like Shakespeare’s nurse. Romiette’s
mother, Lady Cappelle, is concerned about
Romiette’s well-being, just as Lady Capulet frets
about Juliet’s future in the play. Julio Montague, the
16-year-old protagonist in the novel, is headstrong
and passionate, like his counterpart Romeo
Montague. Julio’s best friend, Ben, is loyal and
funny, like Romeo’s best friend Benvolio. As in the
play, the lovers come from different backgrounds:
Julio is Mexican American, while Romiette is
African American. A school gang opposes their
interracial relationship. The conflict mirrors
Shakespeare’s conflict between two warring
families whose feud ends in the deaths of their
children. Unlike Shakespeare’s tragedy, Draper’s
novel ends in hope.

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In the 1930s, when Lee’s story takes place, African
Americans often worked for white landowners as
field hands or for town-dwelling whites as servants.
Discriminatory laws, segregation, and a strict
social code governed interactions between the
races. Under “Jim Crow” laws, African Americans
and whites used separate drinking fountains and
restrooms, sat in different parts of a bus, attended
separate schools, and were forbidden to intermarry.
In some places, African Americans were denied
legal representation. Whites sometimes took the
law into their own hands by lynching accused
African Americans.

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Frederick Douglass published the first of three
autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass: An American Slave, in 1845 at the age of 27.
His aim was to provide an incontrovertible firsthand
account of the brutal treatment of enslaved people.
The book became an overnight bestseller. While still
enslaved, Douglass had educated himself in the use
of rhetoric by reading and studying sermons and
the speeches of great orators such as Socrates and
Napoleon.

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Maya Angelou lived much of her childhood in
the Deep South during the Great Depression. Jim
Crow laws were enforced, segregating African
Americans and whites. Violence toward African
Americans, including lynchings, was common.
Although circumstances were worse in small towns
in the South, like Stamps, African Americans faced
prejudice, discrimination, and violence throughout
the country