❖ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams):

➢ Themes:
■ Absurdity: things seem to happen randomly, without cause or meaning.
These shifts in point of view often take the seemingly normal and show it
in a new, thought-provoking light. A small yellow fish becomes a useful
means of communication as well as the cause of bloody wars and a proof
against God's existence. An ordinary towel becomes "the most massively
useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." Planet Earth turns out to
be a giant computer with organic components (people) that is run by
mice who are, in fact, bored with the assignment.
■ Intelligence: theme of intelligence—humanoid, animal, alien, and
artificial. Human intelligence was unable to save mankind from
annihilation when the intellectually inferior (but technologically
superior) Vogons showed up. Dolphins, on the other hand, had known
about the impending destruction of Earth for some time and tried to warn
mankind before safely leaving. Other types of intelligence are
characterized by the infinitely curious Ford Prefect, the educated and
adventurous Trillian, and the very clever, but possibly stupid, Zaphod
Beeblebrox. Marvin and Eddie.
■ Power: The characters in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
frequently confront issues of power. For Arthur Dent, this means learning
to accept that he is powerless against humanity’s apathetic bureaucracies
and even more powerless in the face of the alien races he encounters after
earth is destroyed. Adams frames authority and power as abstract and
inaccessible. In the same way that Arthur can do little to stop the state
from destroying his house and building a bypass, he can do nothing to
prevent the Vogon alien race from obliterating earth itself. Worse, he later
learns that the entirety of human life has been an experiment manipulated
by—of all creatures—mice.
❖ Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller):
➢ Themes:
■ Denial: Each member of the Loman family is living in denial or
perpetuating a cycle of denial for others. Willy Loman is incapable of
accepting the fact that he is a mediocre salesman. Instead Willy strives
for his version of the American dream — success and notoriety — even
if he is forced to deny reality in order to achieve it. Willy retreats into the
past and chooses to relive past memories and events in which he is
perceived as successful.
■ American Dream: Willy wants to achieve the American dream. He thinks
that it promises a “well liked” and “personally attractive” man in
business who will indubitably and deservedly acquire the material
comforts offered by modern American life. Willy’s blind faith in his
stunted version of the American Dream leads to his rapid psychological
 decline when he is unable to accept the disparity between the Dream and
his own life.
■ Betrayal: Willy’s primary obsession throughout the play is what he
considers to be Biff’s betrayal of his ambitions for him. Willy believes
that he has every right to expect Biff to fulfill the promise inherent in
him. Whereas Willy feels that Biff has betrayed him, Biff feels that Willy
has betrayed him with his unending stream of ego-stroking lies.
■ Contradiction: The only consistent thing about Willy is his inconsistency.
He calls Biff a lazy bum and then says that he is hard-working. His
inconsistent behavior is the result of his inability to accept reality and his
tendency to manipulate or re-create the past in an attempt to escape the
present. For example, Willy cannot resign himself to the fact that Biff no
longer respects him because of Willy's affair. Rather than admit that their
relationship is irreconcilable, Willy retreats to a previous time when Biff
admired and respected him.
➢ Characters:
■ Willy: An insecure, self-deluded traveling salesman. Willy believes
wholeheartedly in the American Dream of easy success and wealth, but
he never achieves it.
■ Biff: Biff led a charmed life in high school as a football star with
scholarship prospects. He cannot ignore his instincts, which tell him to
abandon Willy’s paralyzing dreams and move out West to work with his
hands. He ultimately fails to reconcile his life with Willy’s expectations
of him.
■ Linda: Willy’s loyal, loving wife. Linda suffers through Willy’s
grandiose dreams and self-delusions. Occasionally, she seems to be taken
in by Willy’s self-deluded hopes for future glory and success, but at other
times, she seems far more realistic and less fragile than her husband.
■ Happy: Happy represents Willy’s sense of self-importance, ambition, and
blind servitude to societal expectations. Although he works as an
assistant to an assistant buyer in a department store, Happy presents
himself as supremely important.
■ Charley: Charley gives Willy money to pay his bills, and Willy reveals at
one point, choking back tears, that Charley is his only friend.
■ Ben: Willy regards Ben as a symbol of the success that he so desperately
craves for himself and his sons.
❖ 12th Night (Shakespeare):
➢ Themes:
■ Love as a cause of suffering: love can cause pain. Many of the characters
seem to view love as a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims
suddenly and disruptively. Orsino depicts love dolefully as an “appetite”
that he wants to satisfy and cannot. At another point, he calls his desires
“fell and cruel hounds.” Olivia more bluntly describes love as a “plague”
from which she suffers terribly.
 ■ Uncertainty of Gender: cross dressing. Viola disguises her identity, the
situation creates a sexual mess: she falls in love with Orsino but cannot
tell him, because he thinks she is a man, while Olivia, the object of
Orsino’s affection, falls for Viola in her guise as Cesario.
■ Love and desire: seem to strike suddenly and unpredictably, and because
they render characters helpless to change their feelings. Olivia is startled
and somewhat dismayed to recognize the desire she feels in response to
Cesario. Viola echoes this sentiment when, finding herself trapped in a
love triangle with Olivia and Orsino, she says that “It is too hard a knot
for me to untie.”
■ Disguise and deception: As a young woman who could be vulnerable to
attack or sexual assault, she is also much safer if she is disguised as a
man. However, Viola quickly learns the cost of maintaining a disguise.
Her intentions and actions are constantly misinterpreted, and she cannot
correct these mistakes without betraying her secret. While disguise and
deception cause serious difficulties for Viola, and even threaten her life
when Orsino falsely believes that Cesario has stolen Olivia away from
him, the play also suggests that disguise can serve a positive purpose as
well.
❖ Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller):
➢ Power:
■
➢ Escapism:
■ He is generally dissatisfied with his life and his surroundings. Whenever
this reaches a peak, he starts day-dreaming → At the beginning he
imagines saving a dog by flying into a building and getting everyone out
before it blows up.
➢ Concept of masculinity: whenever he is in his dreams, Mitty displays
“masculine” traits. He is strong, brave, and respected. In real life he is inept,
forgetful, weak, and passive.
❖ Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro):
❖ Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (Joss Whedon):
➢ Themes:
■ Breaking social conventions: good vs evil things.
■ Power: he wants to get power and take over the world
■ Love: loves Penny.
❖ Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
➢ Themes:
■ Dreams and aspirations: the dream started the entire journey. Author
wants to convey that dreams are a message from the universe.
■ Fate: according to the crystal merchant, everything is already written. It
was his fate to go on the journey and come back to the same spot. Also
his fate to meet Fatima.
 ■ Love: he falls in love with Fatima. She urges him to follow his Personal
Legend and fulfill his dream. Her love was the reason he completed the
journey, fulfilling his Personal Legend.
■ Self-discovery: he experiences his self-discovery and leaves home,
becoming a merchant, despite his parent’s desire to make him a priest.
He discovers that the whole world seems to conspire to stand by him if
he is true in his case when he is transforming the wind into a storm.
❖ Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury):
➢ Themes:
■ Censorship: books were burned because of two factors: factors that lead
to a general lack of interest in reading and factors that make people
actively hostile toward books. The first group of factors includes the
popularity of competing forms of entertainment such as television and
radio. More broadly, Bradbury thinks that the presence of fast cars, loud
music, and advertisements creates a lifestyle with too much stimulation
in which no one has the time to concentrate. The second group of factors,
those that make people hostile toward books, involves envy. People don’t
like to feel inferior to those who have read more than they have.
■ Knowledge Versus Ignorance: Montag, Faber, and Beatty’s struggle
revolves around the tension between knowledge and ignorance. The
fireman’s duty is to destroy knowledge and promote ignorance in order to
equalize the population and promote sameness. Montag’s encounters
with Clarisse, the old woman, and Faber ignite in him the spark of doubt
about this approach. His resultant search for knowledge destroys the
unquestioning ignorance he used to share with nearly everyone else, and
he battles the basic beliefs of his society.
■ Technology: Technological innovation represents the central source of
society’s problems in Fahrenheit 451. Throughout the book, Bradbury
treats technology as inherently anesthetizing and destructive. In the
prehistory of the novel, technology played an important role in the social
decline of reading. As technology improved, it gave rise to new forms of
media, like television and in-ear radios. The televisions in Bradbury’s
future are the size of whole walls, and when installed to form
three-dimensional entertainment spaces called “parlors,” they have a
mesmerizing, immersive effect. Despite being more immersive than
books, television programs feature simplified content meant primarily to
entertain.
■ Dissatisfaction: has close connections to the themes of technology and
censorship. The dystopian society Bradbury represents in the novel arose
in its present form because of technological innovation. Technological
innovation led to the ascendency of television, which in turn led to the
devaluing and, eventually, the censoring of books. As Captain Beatty
explains to Montag, the social history that led to the present state of
affairs had everything to do with ensuring people’s peace of mind by
 keeping them entertained. As long as everyone remains entertained,
they’ll be happy.
❖ Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keys):
➢ Themes:
❖ Modest Proposal (Jonathon Swift):
❖ The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald):
➢ Themes:
■ Old money vs new money:
■ Class: In the monied world of The Great Gatsby, class influences all
aspects of life, and especially love. Myrtle mentions this with regard to
her husband, George, whom she mistook for someone of better
“breeding” and hence greater prospects: “I thought he knew something
about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.” Similarly, Gatsby’s
pursuit of Daisy is bound up with class. Only after amassing a large
fortune does he feel able to make his move. At the end of the book, class
dynamics dictate which marriage survives (Tom and Daisy), which one is
destroyed (George and Myrtle), and which one will never come to be
(Gatsby and Daisy).
■ Love and marriage: Gatsby does everything for Daisy.
■ Betrayal: Daisy leaves Gatsby for Tom again.
■ American dream: Every character in The Great Gatsby draws inspiration
from the American Dream’s promise of wealth and prosperity. At the
same time, the novel itself critiques the notion of the American Dream.