The turn of the screw, do you believe in ghosts? ; Turning the screw of interpretation ; Stephen Crane and the literature of war ; The red badge of courage, brave new world ; Stephen Crane, scientist of human behavior ; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, war against patriarchy ; The yellow wallpaper, descent into hell? or free at last? ; Robert Frost and the spirit of New England ; Robert Frost, at home in the metaphor ; Robert Frost and the fruits of the earth ; T.S. Eliot, unloved modern classic ; T.S. Eliot, The waste land and beyond ; F. Scott Fitzgerald's The great Gatsby, American romance ; The great Gatsby, a story of lost illusions? ; Fitzgerald's triumph, writing the American dream ; Ernest Hemingway's The sun also rises, novel of the lost generation ; The sun also rises, spiritual quest ; Ernest Hemingway, wordsmith.

The garden of Eden, female desire unleashed ; The garden of Eden, combat zone ; William Faulkner's The sound and the fury, the idiot's tale ; The sound and the fury, failed rites of passage ; The sound and the fury, signifying nothing? ; Absalom, Absalom! Civil War epic ; Absalom, Absalom! the language of love ; Absalom, Absalom! the overpass to love ; The grapes of wrath, American saga ; John Steinbeck, poet of the little man ; The grapes of wrath, reconceiving self and family ; Invisible man, black bildungsroman.

Invisible man, reconceiving history and race ; Invisible man, "What did I do, to be so black and blue?" ; Eugene O'Neill, great god of American theater ; Long day's journey into night, there's no place like home ; Tennessee Williams, managing libido ; A streetcar named desire, the death of romance ; Death of a salesman, death of an ethos? ; Death of a salesman, tragedy of the American dream ; Toni Morrison's Beloved, dismembering and remembering ; Beloved, a story of thick love ; Beloved, Morrison's writing of the body ; Conclusion to Classics of American literature.