Junior Theme
Junior English
Mr. Wukas
Starting the Junior Theme Process
The great bête noir of New Trier’s English program is the Junior Theme. I assure you that
any fretting over this project is a waste of time. It’s just a research paper about American
literature. You read a couple of books, you research the writer and his times, you slap it all
together in an argument, and you’re done. Piece of cake.
The attached book list shows options for your initial Junior Theme text. It is not exhaustive,
so if you do not find anything of interest on this list, you are welcome to seek other choices so
long as they are American literature—and approved by me.
Our class will have a library information day on Monday, November 25.
You will pick your first book by Friday, December 6.
Please talk to parents and friends, read reviews, go to the bookstore or library to look at the
books, read a few pages etc., as you consider your choice of topic and book. Please choose
carefully and wisely, as you will be spending much of third quarter learning about your book and
thinking about it. If you choose poorly, you will have a rough time on this paper.
I will pick your second book based on your interests and suggestions in order to help guide
you to one that will make for a good comparison and an overall successful paper. I promise that I
will recommend an exciting, accessible second book that will help you in your Junior Theme.
You will begin reading your choice of novels for the Junior Theme. You cannot begin this
project too soon, so I’d start reading this month. An early start gives me the opportunity to
provide you with introductory material to help you begin the Junior Theme process.
As you begin reading your first book, you are not expected to know which direction you will
take your paper; however, you can begin some of the preliminary work by annotating well as you
read. Regardless of your paper topic, all engaged readers look for certain concepts or ideas in any
given work of literature. For example, you need to look for certain clues as to how the author
characterizes his major figures of the novel. Look for any key information including notable
physical descriptions, behavior, perception from others and direct commentary from the author.
Note any changes in the character(s) throughout the story. These issues should provide you
significant points for discussion.
In addition, search for larger truths and statements the author might be making in the work.
Look for repetition of ideas, images, phrases, etc. Pay attention to any patterns that might arise as
these will give you ideas about the author’s ideas. Note any conflicts (internal or external) that
the character(s) may be experiencing. How are these conflicts resolved? What larger statement
might the author be making about the individual, society?
Annotation is a must. You must annotate while reading your books, so I strongly encourage
you to do this as you read and not afterwards. I will be checking your annotations the first day of
third quarter as major grades, so please keep this in mind.
And just so we’re all on the same page, you need to be acquainted with some necessary
vocabulary: primary and secondary source. Whenever these terms come up in class, you need to
have a thorough understanding of their meaning. Your primary sources are the novel you choose
for your junior theme and the second novel I select for you. Your secondary sources are pieces
about your primary sources, its era, or author of your novels, often written by someone who has
earned a certain amount of authority on the subject (i.e. college professors, historians, book and
magazine editors). These works help explain the meaning of the book or aid in placing the novel
into a larger context. Such works include academic journals, newspaper and magazine articles,
speeches, lectures, or, if you are lucky, an interview with the author of your work.
You also need to start compiling a bibliography, but not yet. I’ll tell you when you need to
start worrying about this step. It’s relatively simple, especially in light of the opportunities that
technology offers you. You can literally sit at home and compile an impressive list of useful and
credible sources by accessing online materials through the library website and read actual
secondary sources to assist in your reading of the text as you read.
And for the record, the Wikipedia is never a source. You might go there for some
background, but you may not cite it in your research bibliography.
READING LIST BY CATERGORY
The War Experience
The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)
Cold Mountain (Charles Fraser)
Killer Angels (Michael Shaara)
Civil War
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)
World War I
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)
Spanish Civil War
The Naked and the Dead (Norman Mailer)
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
Flags of Our Fathers (James Bradley)
The Good War (Studs Terkel)
Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
World War II
Going After Cacciato (Tim O’Brien)
The Things They Carried (Tim O’Brien)
In Country (Bobbie Ann Mason)
Paco’s Story (Larry Heineman)
A Rumor of War (Phillip Caputo)
Home Before Morning (Lynda Van Devanter)
Close Quarters (Michael Herr)
Dispatches (Michael Herr)
Vietnam War
Ghosts of War (Ryan Smithson)
The Yellow Birds (Kevin Powers)
War (Sebastian Junger)
The Unforgiving Minute (Craig Mullaney)
Iraq/Afghanistan
The Muckraker Tradition/Satire and Social Criticism
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (Stephen Crane)
The Jungle (Upton Sinclair)
Storming Heaven (Denise Giardina)
Downsize This! (Michael Moore)
The Pit (Frank Norris)
Silent Spring (Rachel Carson)
The Monkey Wrench Gang (Edward Abbey)
A Civil Action (Jonathan Harr)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Mark Twain)
Pudd’nhead Wilson (Mark Twain)
Women in Conflict with Society’s Expectations
The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton)
Main Street (Sinclair Lewis)
A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams)
The Color Purple (Alice Walker)
The Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedan)
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
A Lost Lady (Willa Cather)
The Second Shift (Arlie Russell Hochschild)
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
Work (Louisa May Alcott)
The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
My Name Is Mary Sutter (Robin Oliveira)
The Chaperone (Laura Moriarty)
A Northern Light (Jennifer Donnelly)
The Wild West
The Oregon Trail (Francis Parkman)
The Oxbow Incident (Arthur Van Tilburg Clark)
Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry)
Centennial (James Michener)
A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (Isabella Bird)
Undaunted Courage (Stephen Ambrose)
The Bad Land (Jonathan Raban)
A River Runs Through It (Norman MacLean)
Where the Bluebird Songs over Lemonade Springs (Wallace Stegner)
The Wilderness Experience
Giants in the Earth (Ole Rolvaag)
The Oregon Trail (Francis Parkman)
My Antonia (Willa Cather)
Walden (Henry David Thoreau)
Young Men and Fire (Norman MacLean)
O Pioneers! (Willa Cather)
Baseball: The All-American Sport
The Natural (Bernard Malamud)
Bang the Drum Slowly (Mark Harris)
Only the Ball Was White (Robert Peterson)
Iowa Baseball Confederacy (W.D. Kinsella)
Shoeless Joe (W.D. Kinsella)
Selected Essays (Thomas Boswell)
You Know Me Al (Ring Lardner)
The 1920s Expatriate Generation
The Selected Writings (Gertrude Stein)
Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Only Yesterday (Frederick Lewis Allen)
A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway)
This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
The Immigrant Experience
My Antonia (Willa Cather)
Giants in the Earth (Ole Rolvaag)
The Prairie
The Jungle (Upton Sinclair)
Studs Lonigan (James Farrell)
Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
’Tis: A Memoir (Frank McCourt)
Chicago/New York
Call It Sleep (Henry Roth)
Lost in Translation (Eva Hoffman)
Jewish Immigration
The Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston)
The Joy-Luck Club (Amy Tan)
Chinese Immigration
Hunger of Memory (Richard Rodriguez)
Caramelo (Sandra Cisneros)
Chicano Immigration
Early 20th Century
Ragtime (E.L. Doctorow)
The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)
The Cider House Rules (John Irving)
Post-World War II and Pre-Vietnam America
Wait Until Next Year (Doris Kearns Goodman)
The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (Sloan Wilson)
Rabbit Run (John Updike)
Deliverance (James Dickey)
All My Sons (Arthur Miller)
The Manchurian Candidate (Richard Condon)
The Beatnik Experience
The Dharma Bums (Jack Kerouac)
On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Tom Wolfe)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey)
The Chicago Experience
The Jungle (Upton Sinclair)
Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser)
Studs Lonigan (James T. Farrell)
American Hunger (Richard Wright)
Native Son (Richard Wright)
The Man with the Golden Arm (Nelson Algren)
Chicago: City on the Make (Nelson Algren)
The House on Mango Street (Sandra Cisneros)
The Coast of Chicago (Stuart Dybek)
I Sailed with Magellan (Stuart Dybek)
Racial Tension and Identity
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
Black Boy (Richard Wright)
Native Son (Richard Wright)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)
Blues for Mister Charlie (James Baldwin)
Coffee Will Make You Black (April Sinclair)
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
Black Like Me (John Howard Griffin)
The Help (Kathryn Stockett)
Beloved (Toni Morrison)
The Human Stain (Philip Roth)
The Confessions of Nat Turner (William Styron)
African-American Concerns
Southern issues
Laughing Boy (Oliver LeFarge)
Native-American Concerns
House of Dawn (N. Scott Momaday)
Yellow Raft in Blue Water (Michael Dorris)
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Sherman Alexie)
The Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston)
The Joy-Luck Club (Amy Tan)
Obasan (Joy Kogawa)
Snow Falling on Cedars (David Guterson)
Native Speaker (Chang-Rae Lee)
Typical American (Gish Jen)
Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei (David Mura)
The Bonesetter’s Daughter (Amy Tan)
Kitchen God’s Wife (Amy Tan)
Asian-American Concerns
Southern Issues
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
Light in August (William Faulkner)
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Flannery O’Connor)
The Optimist’s Daughter (Eudora Welty)
A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams)
All the King’s Men (Robert Penn Warren)
Cold Mountain (Charles Frasier)
Mississippi: An American Journey (Anthony Walton)
The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
The Help (Kathryn Stockett)
The Summer We Got Saved (Pat Cunningham Devoto)
The Confessions of Nat Turner (William Styron)
Family
Bee Season (Myla Goldberg)
The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
We Were the Mulvaneys (Joyce Carol Oates)
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint (Brady Udall) – Family
My Name is Mary Sutter (Robin Oliveira)
Last Night in Twisted River (John Irving)
Science Fiction/ Fantasy/ Cyberpunk
Cat’s Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)
Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
Neuromancer (William S. Gibson)
Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)
American Gods (Neil Gaiman)
Feed (M.T. Anderson)
Brain Jack (Brian Falkner)
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
A Friend of the Earth (T.C. Boyle)
Brother (Cory Docktorow)
Postmodernists & Contemporary
Humboldt’s Gift (Saul Bellow)
Away (Amy Bloom)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon)
Wonder Boys (Michael Chabon)
White Noise (Don Delillo)
Underworld (Don Delillo)
What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (Dave Eggers)
The Hours (Michael Cunningham)
Everything is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Jonathan Safran Foer)
The World According to Garp (John Irving)
Breathing Lessons (Anne Tyler)
The Accidental Tourist (Anne Tyler)
The Hours (Michael Cunningham)
Empire Falls (Richard Russo)
Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)
The Ghost Writer (Philip Roth)
Sabbath’s Theater (Philip Roth)
The Human Stain (Philip Roth)
Cathedral (Raymond Carver)
Where I'm Calling From (Raymond Carver)
What I Lived For (Joyce Carol Oates)