The Smart Student's Guide to the GRE Literature in English Test

The Smart Student's Guide to the GRE Literature in English Test

By Martin Asiner

Copyright 2012 Martin Asiner

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Table of Contents

What is on the Test

One Hundred Fifty Literary Works You Must Know

Phrase Name Matching

Novels

Short Stories

Poetry

Canterbury Tales

Shakespeare

Drama

Myth

Non Fiction Prose

African American Literature

Literary Theory

Literary Terms

Periods of American Literature

British Kings and Queens

Periods of British Literature

Mini GRE Test

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What is on the Test

The people at ETS have a vested interest in making sure the scores on this test are kept deliberately low. One way they do this lies in their deceptive and useless way of breaking down its contents. It does the test taker little good to recognize that the literary-historical scope of the test follows the distribution below:

Literature to 1660 (including Milton) is 25—35%

British Literature 1660—1925 is 30—40%

American Literature through 1925 is 10—15%

Literature in English after 1925 is 20—25%

Continental, Classical, and Comparative Literature is 5—10%

History and Theory of Literary Criticism is 5—10%

A far more useful statistic is to know how much of the test is based solely on advanced and high-level reading skills for which NO previous knowledge of literature is required. Out of the standard 230 questions, usually 68 to 70 questions or 30% are of this type. The remainder require previous knowledge of the full spectrum of English, American, and selected classical and European works. The guide that is now in your eager hands is dedicated to this 70%. This page is for the 30%.

Common sense tells you that to answer questions based solely on high order reading skills is both time-consuming and complex. Since each of the 230 questions is of equal weight, it seems prudent to answer as many of the 70% section as quickly as you can. Once you can identify a question as being as 30% or a 70% question, then a viable strategy is to skip over all 30% questions and not return to them until you have answered as many of the 70% questions as you can. And let’s face it, as far as the 70% is concerned, either you know the answer or you don’t. It is not likely that a rereading of an incredibly boring prose tract will enable you to identify the author as Carlyle at his dreariest.

The following is a list of ‘buzz words’ that will immediately allow you to identify any question as being a member of the time-consuming 30%. When you see any of these phrases, skip that question to return to it later.

The author makes his point by means of

The sentence that most likely precedes (follows) is

Which of the following parodies

The closest paraphrase is

The definition of the obscure term (XXX) is

The best translation of (probably an Anglo-Saxon phrase) is

Which best describes the preceding line?

The view of Critic X on Theme Y is

The correct term that completes the line is

The same or similar grammatical structure is

The main idea of the preceding is

The best ism that applies is

The grammatical use of (XXX) is

The emotion of the speaker is

The best conclusion that you can draw is

The missing line that best fits is

The author’s attitude toward the subject discussed is

Which of the following is the closest restatement of

The tone of the author is best described as

The passage is characterized by a series of

Which of the following is syntactically parallel with

The closest synonym/antonym for (XXX) is

The subject/object of (XXX) is

In line X, word Y modifies

In line X, a (XXX) is a

In context, (XXX) in line Y means

The closest restatement of the passage is

The passage precedes/follows a proposal to

The passage shows Character X to have been a

The passage suggests/implies/concludes that

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Two Hundred Thirty Questions in 170 Minutes

The GRE in English test has 230 questions and the time you have to answer them is 170 minutes. On the average, this gives you about 45 seconds per question. The questions are arranged in no logical order, with easy and hard ones lumped together. Further, the GRE in English has two broad categories of questions—reading comprehension and previous knowledge—and these two types are similarly mixed. I have devised a strategy that will allow you to maximize your score so that your all-important percentile ranking numbers will approach the sought after 90th percentile level.

First, be aware that you need not answer the 230 questions consecutively. Since each question counts as much as any other, you can feel free to answer them in any order that suits you. Common sense tells you that questions that require advanced and high order reading skills (main idea, inference, conclusion, style, grammatical analyses) almost certainly will require more time to slog through than those that are fact based. Which question do you think will go faster: one that asks you to identify the main idea of a passage or one that requires you to identify the author of that passage? In the former case, you might spend precious minutes on that one very lengthy passage only to find that you have no idea what the main idea is. In the latter case, a quick scan of key words can lead to the correct name of the author. The first step, therefore, in acing the GRE in English is to distinguish those questions that are reading comprehension based from those that are fact based. On the previous page of this guide is a list of buzz words that alert you to this distinction. Beginning with the very first question of the test, place a check mark next to each question that in your opinion is a reading comprehension based question—and then SKIP THAT QUESTION. Yes, skip it and go on to the next question. You will find that when you have completed the test, you ought to have more or less 70 checked items. You will not even attempt to answer these questions until you first have completed the fact based ones.

The remainder of the test will be fact based, probably about 160 questions. As you determine that it is indeed a fact based question, you must scan with lightning speed both the passage and the answers to decide if you can correctly identify the answer. Using all the parts of this guide, you ought to know within less than five seconds whether you know the answer. Perhaps you recognize a key name, or a phrase name matching, or you simply recognize the passage and hence the author; then you need not even read the passage. You merely fill in the oval on the answer sheet with the correct answer. Not only would you then have the right answer, but you would have saved precious time to be used on the truly difficult questions. Thus, on your first pass through the test, you will take both of two actions: you will check off the reading comprehension questions and answer only those fact based questions that are easy’ for you. Assume that by the end of this first pass, you have checked off 70 questions and have answered thirty more. It is very likely that you will have gotten all thirty answers correct. Realistically, you are not likely to find more than thirty in the easy’ category. You will perhaps have used fifteen minutes for the first pass. Now you are ready for the second pass.

On your second pass, I urge you to guess aggressively so that you will answer every one of the fact based questions. For you to understand the logic of this astounding statement, forget the warning of ETS not to guess. I do not recommend truly haphazard and random guessing. I recommend educated and guided guessing. For most questions of the fact based type, you will not need to guess at all. Your course work in school and careful study from guides like this one should well prepare you for questions of this type. Even on the toughest of fact based questions, you ought to be able to eliminate at least one answer as clearly wrong. This would narrow the odds to even. A wrong answer results in minus one fourth of one point from the raw score. A correct answer adds one complete point. Thus, guessing from one out of four should, in the long run, result in neither loss nor gain. However, if you can judiciously eliminate two possibilities, then guessing from one out of three will add a few extra points to the raw score. And if you can eliminate three possibilities, then your percentile ranking will soar in a gratifyingly upward spiral.

By the end of the second pass, assume the following hypothetical numbers. You have answered thirty "easy’ questions from the first pass and got them all right. Of the 130 fact based questions (160–30), you got 110 right and 20 wrong with zero omitted. Of the 20 wrong, perhaps you guessed on half. In any event, the penalty for guessing incorrectly is 20/4 or 5 points. These 5 points are subtracted from the 110 to give you 105 which are added to the 30 from the first pass to result in a grand total of 30+105 or 135. This raw score of 135 translates to scaled score of 570, which in turn becomes a percentile ranking of the 64th percentile. This 64th percentile is no great score but you have not yet even tackled the reading comprehension questions yet. How much time remains will vary from one person to another, but most likely you will have at least thirty minutes left to handle the remaining 70 reading comprehension based questions.

The third pass is reserved for the reading comprehension based questions. Here you should not guess at all unless you can successfully eliminate obviously incorrect choices. What is interesting is that you do not need to be an English literature major to do well here. In fact, any college graduate ought to do reasonably well. The passages tend to be literature based but the questions are not. The types of reading comprehension questions fall into three broad categories:

(a) Advanced reading skills

(b) Grammatical analyses

(c) Literary vocabulary

Each of the three falls into the hard and time consuming category. That is why you do them last. If you remember your SAT, then you know about main idea, supporting detail, inference, and conclusion. The GRE in English advanced reading skills section includes some new types of higher order reading questions: parodies, paraphrases, definitions of obscure terms, preceding line questions, subsequent line questions, missing lines, and author’s tone and attitude. The questions on grammar ask you to read a lengthy, tangled, and excessively convoluted poem (most often from Milton’s Paradise Lost) from which you must determine that excerpt’s controlling verb, direct object, or indirect object. Sometimes, ETS sneaks in questions on syntactical parallelism, transitive and intransitive verbs, poetic inversion, and antecedents. The best way to prepare for this type of mind-boggling mental assault is to be sure that you know the definitions of the above so that you can apply them to practical application. By the way, syntactical parallelism usually involves connecting the targeted phrase to the correct answer in terms of the former’s usage as a prepositional phrase or an adjective’s following its noun rather than preceding it (such as chains adamantine rather than the more expected adamantine chains). As for literary vocabulary, you have to know all the technical mumbo-jumbo terms listed in the section on literary terms. Again by the way, there is a high probability that you will see a verse form whose structure will be that of a Spenserian stanza (eight lines of iambic pentameter followed by an alexandrine). Be sure to know what that is all about.

By the end of the third pass, assume the following results on the 70 reading comprehension questions: 30 right 8 wrong and 32 omitted. The number wrong (8) is divided by 4 to get the penalty of 2, which is then subtracted from 30 to get 28. Remember the raw score of 135 from our previous calculations? Now we add 28 to 135 to get a final raw score of 163, which translates to a scaled score of 640, which in turn becomes a final percentile score of 86%. Not bad, but still slightly short of the magical 90%. But if you can get 86%, then with more obsessive plugging, you can boost your score a few more points to get that 90%.

The remainder of this guide is dedicated to the 70% of the test that focuses on previous knowledge of literature. ETS would have you believe that all you need to do to prepare yourself is to review your Nortons. Don’t believe it. Although it is true that the Nortons are an indispensable aid to your preparation, it is also true that for every Norton based question there is at least one non-Norton based one. To write this guide, I read every commercially available study guide for the GRE in English. Further, I examined dozens of college literary anthologies and made a list of what each contained. Finally, I took several actual GRE in English tests. From all that, I was able to compile a doable and readable list of works and authors that is likely to appear on any GRE in English test. I tell you that if you learn most of what this guide contains, there is no doubt that your ability to improve your performance on this test will be greatly enhanced.

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One Hundred Fifty Literary Works You Must Know

(Listed in Order of Frequency of Appearance on the GRE in English Test)

1) Martin Asiner John Milton, Paradise Lost

2) Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

3) William Shakespeare, King Lear

4) Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock

5) Beowulf

6) Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

7) William Shakespeare, The Tempest

8) Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus

9) Thomas Grey, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

10) Henry David Thoreau, Walden

11) Edmund Spenser, The Fairie Queene I, II, III

12) Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

13) Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

14) William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

15) William Shakespeare, Macbeth

16) Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

17) Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

18) Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal

19) George B. Shaw, Arms and the Man

20) Plato, The Republic

21) John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

22) William Shakespeare, Othello

23) Ben Jonson, Volpone

24) Homer, The Iliad

25) Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

26) Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

27) James Joyce, Ulysses

28) William Congreve, The Way of the World

29) Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

30) John Dryden, All for Love

31) F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

32) William Shakespeare, Hamlet

33) E. M. Forster, Howard’s End

34) John Milton, Lycidas

35) Homer, The Odyssey

36) Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare

37) George Lord Byron, Don Juan

38) John Milton, Comus

39) Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

40) Everyman

41) Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

42) William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads

43) Percy B. Shelley, Ozymandias

44) Samuel Richardson, Pamela

45) William B. Sheridan, The Rivals

46) Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

47) Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

48) T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

49) William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I

50) William Shakespeare, As You Like It

51) Samuel Johnson, Rasselas

52) Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

53) Herman Melville, Moby Dick

54) Aristotle, The Poetics

55) Charles Dickens, Hard Times

56) Percy Bysshe Shelley Ode to the West Wind

57) E. M. Forster, A Passage to India

58) Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes

59) Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

60) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

61) Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde

62) T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent

63) William Thackeray, Vanity Fair

64) Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calendar

65) William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

66) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

67) William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily

68) Edmund Spenser, Amoretti

69) Feodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

70) Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gently into that Good Night

71) John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

72) Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

73) John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

74) Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants

75) Samuel Johnson, Lives of Cowley, Milton, Pope

76) T. S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi

77) Robert Browning, My Last Duchess

78) Sir George Etheridge, The Man of Mode

79) Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam

80) Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

81) Cervantes, Don Quixote

82) James Joyce, Dubliners

83) Jane Austen, Emma

84) George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

85) George Eliot, Adam Bede

86) Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener

87) Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

88) John Milton, Samson Agonistes

89) Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

90) Moliere, Tartuffe

91) James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson

92) Eugene O'Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra

93) Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

94) Samuel Butler, The Way of all Flesh

95) Richard Wright, Native Son

96) Sophocles, Antigone

97) Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness

98) Sir Patrick Spens

99) Nathanial Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

100) George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

50 Other Literary Works You Might Want To Know

1) Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

2) William Wycherly, The Country Wife

3) Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

4) Jonathan Swift, A Description of a City Shower

5) Robert Frost, Design

6) Francois Villon, The Ballad of the Dead Ladies

7) John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

8) C. Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to his Love

9) Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

10) William Shakespeare, Richard II

11) Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews

12) Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders

13) Sylvia Plath, The Mirror

14) Sir Walter Raleigh, The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

15) John Keats, Ode on Melancholy

16) Emily Dickinson, I Could Not Stop for Death

17) Oliver W. Holmes, The Chambered Nautilus

18) Virgil, The Aeneid

19) Fanny Burney, Evelina

20) Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

21) John Keats, Endymion

22) John Milton, Areopagitica

23) Voltaire, Candide

24) Joseph Heller, Catch-22

25) Arthur Miller, The Crucible

26) James Joyce, The Dead

27) Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

28) Charles Dickens, Bleak House

29) William Godwin, Caleb Williams

30) Arthur Miller, All my Sons

31) George Meredith, The Egoist

32) Anne Finch, Adam Pos’d

33) Robert Burns, Ae Fond Kiss

34) Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

35) H. L. Mencken, The American Language

36) John Donne, An Anatomy of the World

37) Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

38) Robert Browning, The Bishop Orders his Tomb

39) James Fennimore Cooper, The Deerslayer

40) Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poetry

41) William Butler Yeats, The Dolls

42) Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

43) Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a University

44) John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera

45) Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

46) Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance

47) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

48) Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler

49) Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College

50) Edgar Allen Poe, The Philosophy of Composition

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Phrase Name Matching

If you see the phrase on the left it probably matches the name on the right

All art is useless / Art for Art’s Sake: Oscar Wilde

Bastard Tragedy / True Comedy: Goldsmith Essay on the Theater

Bulgaria / Chocolate soldier: Shaw (Arms and the Man)

Christchurch: Hardy (Jude the Obscure)

Cloistered Virtue: Milton (Areopagitica)

The Dial (magazine: Boston 1840 – 1844): Emerson, Fuller, Very, Thoreau

Dear Boy: Lord Chesterfield (letters to his son)

Diary entry (1650—1670): Pepys

Discordia Concors: Samuel Johnson

Dissociation of sensibility: TS Eliot

Dread (repeated): Kierkegaard

Existence unveiled itself: Sartre

False Wit: Addison (Spectator) or Herbert’s (Easter Wings)

FANCY IMAGINATION BODY: Coleridge

Flat and Round / Muddle: Forster

Genius and Taste: Hazlitt Genius and Common Sense

God’s Plenty: Dryden on Chaucer

Graveyard School: Gray, Parnell, Blair, Young

Great Men: Carlyle (On Heroes and Hero Worship)

Greatest wits / Sanest writer: Lamb (Sanity of True Genius)

Greatest happiness principle: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism)

Gusto: Hazlitt (On Gusto)

Hard, gemlike flame: Pater (The Renaissance)

Harlequin, pantelone: commedia dell’arte

He has a leg: Meredith (The Egoist)

Hellenism, Hebraism: Arnold (Culture and Anarchy)

Heresy of the didactic: Poe (The Poetic Principle)

Heterogeneous ideas yoked by violence: Samuel Johnson (On Metaphysical Poets)

I’m ever so ‘umble: Dickens (Great Expectations: Uriah Heep)

The imitative poet: Plato

Inigo Jones: masque

In the best of possible worlds: Voltaire (Candide)

Labyrinths, libraries, duplicate worlds: Borges

Duplicate selves / Tlon: Borges

Laleham: Julian Huxley

Liberal Education, University / interposition: Newman (Idea of a University)

Life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short: Hobbes (Leviathan)

Live!: Henry James (The American: Lambert Strether)

Man alive, body alive, body knows: D. H. Lawrence

Man Thinking: Emerson (The American Scholar)

Menaechmi: Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors

Natural Imperfection of things: Reynolds (Discourse # 13)

Nature red in tooth and claw: Tennyson (In Memoriam)

Negative capability: Keats

Newgate: Defoe (Moll Flanders) or Gay (Beggar's Opera)

Objective Correlative: Eliot (used to denigrate Hamlet)

Orientalism: Edward Said

Ossian: James McPherson (plagiarist)

Pleasures of the Imagination: Addison: (Spectator)

Pragmatic(ally): William James

Probable Impossibility: Aristotle (Poetics)

Promiscuously read: Milton Areopagitica

Proper function of a University: Newman (The Idea of a University)

Protoplasm: Huxley (On the Physical Basis of Life)

Repair the Ruins: Milton (On Education)

Roman a clef: Peacock (Nightmare Abbey)

Roman a clef: Huxley (Point Counter Point)

Salvation Army: Shaw (Major Barbara)

Sign of health is unconsciousness: Carlyle (Characteristics)

Small square and two inches of ivory: Austen

Social compact: Rousseau

Spontaneous overflow of emotion: Wordsworth

Strong Poet, precursor, clinamen: Harold Bloom (Freudian Critic)

Sublime: Longinus and Edmund Burke

Sweetness and Light: Arnold (Swift’s Battle of the Books)

THE WOMAN: Miller Death of a Salesman

True standard of taste and beauty: Hume (Standard of Taste)

True wit: Pope

Venice glass / ornaments / polishings: Ruskin

Volkssprache: H. L. Mencken (The American Language)

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Novels

The GRE in English questions on novels are probably the most difficult for the test taker to prepare for. In the section of this guide on novels is a listing of approximately 200 novels, a daunting read for anyone. And to make matters worse, I could have doubled or even tripled it. However, based on the specific novels that were asked on previous tests, that are covered in typical college courses on the novel, and are generally accorded the exalted status of ‘classic,’ these 200 novels ought to cover most of the novels you need to know. I wonder how many on this list you have actually read. In my case, the number is perhaps less than half.

The questions on novels fall into two categories: reading comprehension and fact based. The former type consists of time consuming inquiries of the sort you first saw on the What is on the GRE in English Test at the beginning of this guide. Again I recommend that you skip over these questions until your third pass through the test. I truly do not believe that 170 minutes is enough time for even the speediest of readers to intelligently respond to all the reading comprehension questions on the test. You can omit many of them and still get a score in excess of the 90th percentile.

You need to focus first on the stand alone or fact based questions. This usually means identifying the name of the novel or its author. ETS usually phrases these fact based questions in the following ways:

You will be given a mini plot summary. Sometimes this summary is just a phrase or two.

You will be given a quote, most often the beginning or ending of the novel.

You will be given a rambling excerpt from the novelist who discusses his own work.

You will be given a favorite theme or two of the author.

One of the most useful ways to determine the name of a novel or its author is the use of names, usually those of characters or places. Sometimes a key phrase name (see previous list) will prove helpful. All this presupposes that you know the general plot, character names, locations, themes, and unique writing style for each author. Besides the list of novels on the next page, you may wish to check the following sources for ready made plot summaries:

Monarch notes/Cliff’s notes/Baron Book notes

The many Magill plot summaries found in libraries

Internet summaries (Classic Grade Savers/Pink Monkey Notes/Spark Notes)

Here are a few typical fact based novel questions:

In his novels _________________________writes of an England whose primary characteristic is one of an easy going life with attention paid more to character development and local color than to explorations of the origins of human passion and in depth emotional nuances.

The missing author’s name is

(a) George Meredith

(b) George Eliot

(c) Anthony Trollope

(d) Tobias Smollett

(e) Evelyn Waugh

The sham culture of Hollywood star worship is found in

(a) Slaughterhouse 5

(b) Day of the Locust

(c) Delta Wedding

(d) From Here to Eternity

(e) The Golden Notebook

A New England novel that is an allegory of free will and has at its base snake worship was written by

a) Henry James

b) Sinclair Lewis

c) Katherine Anne Porter

d) Nathanial Hawthorne

e) Oliver Wendell Holmes

DON’T PEEK!!!

The answers to the three questions are C, B, and E

Novel Titles

Author's Last Name: Novel: First/last/memorable lines/themes/plot summaries

Amis: Lucky Jim: Jim Dixon, inept college teacher, rages at phoniness/injustice

Austen: Pride and Prejudice: 'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man

Austen: Persuasion: Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth reunite and face false values

Austen: Emma: Emma plays matchmaker to others; marries George Knightly

Austen: Northanger Abbey: ‘No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy

Austen: Mansfield Park: Fanny Brice is rejected then accepted by the Bertram family

Austen: Sense and Sensibility: Poor Dashwood sisters Marianne and Elinor find love

Baldwin: Go Tell it on the Mountain: Grimes faces religious crises at Temple of Fire

Balzac: Pere Goriot: Two stories: Goriot sacrifices all for his children; Rastignac is poor

Balzac: Eugenie Grandet: Rich daughter foolishly gives money to a scoundrel

Bellow: Adventures of Augie March: ‘I am an American, Chicago Born'

Bellow: Henderson, The Rain King: Rich man goes to Africa. lives with tribe, learns

Bellow: Herzog: Moses Herzog, a Jew, spends much of the novel in flashbacks of sex

Bronte: Jane Eyre: Jane governess to Rochester, loves him, but he has insane wife in attic

Bronte: Wuthering Heights: Heathcliff loves Cathy Earnshaw who marries Edgar Linton

Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress: Christian travels from City of Destruction to Celestial City

Butler: Erewhon: Narrator has his illusions of utopia stripped by a brutal dystopia

Butler: The Way of All Flesh: Pontifex overcomes parental repression to find happiness

Camus: The Plague: Dr. Rieux stops plague in Algeria; allegory of need to cooperate

Camus: A Happy Death: Patrice travels to Algeria to live so as to know how to die

Camus: The Stranger: ‘Today Mother died, or perhaps yesterday’; Meursault kills Arab

Carroll: Alice in Wonderland: Alice descends into hole; has adventures with Red Queen

Cather: Death Comes for the Archbishop: Two priests die valiantly helping Navahos

Cather: My Antonia: Antonia, poor but hardworking: ‘She was a rich mine of life’

Clemens: Huckleberry Finn: Huck and Jim escape father on raft; have adventures

Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans: Hawkeye saves Cora and Alice from evil Indian

Cooper: The Deerslayer: Natty Bumpo tries to save Judith and Hetty from Indians

Conrad: Lord Jim: Jim a noble Englishman tries to live down one act of cowardice

Conrad: Nostromo: Two men try to save a silver mine from South American rebels

Conrad: The Heart of Darkness: Marlow seeks Kurtz, a brutal trader, finds him dying

Conrad: The Secret Sharer: Ship captain aids Legget, his psychological double, from law

Crane: The Red Badge of Courage: Henry finds courage during American Civil War

Crane: Maggie: Good girl forced to become a whore, commits suicide

Defoe: Moll Flanders: ‘My true name is so well-known in the records at Newgate'

Dickens: Great Expectations: Pip becomes a ‘gentleman’; saved by criminal Magwitch

Dickens: David Copperfield: David survives brutal step-father; becomes fine young man

Dickens: Oliver Twist: Orphan Oliver grows up in squalid poverty in London

Dickens: Hard Times: Tom and sister Louisa have been raised as unfeeling pragmatists

Dickens: Pickwick Papers: Pickwick and friends tour England; haphazard plot

Dickens: Bleak House: Jarndyce family waits in vain to inherent money in a lawsuit

Dickens: Our Mutual Friend: Jew Riah lives in corrupt London with a superficial society

Dickens: Martin Chuzzlewit: Hero is fired by Pecksniff, goes to USA, returns home

Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby: Hero becomes teacher in a brutal school for boys

Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov: Son kills father; brother takes blame; all suffer

Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment: ‘On an exceptionally hot evening early in July'

Dostoyevsky: The Idiot: Evil Yepanchin family turns benevolent, Myshkin becomes idiot

Dreiser: An American Tragedy: Hero wants to marry ‘up’ so he kills pregnant girlfriend

Dreiser: Sister Carrie: ‘When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago'

Dreiser: The Financier: Cowperwood steals money, jailed, released, becomes rich again

Dreiser: The Titan: Cowperwood in a sequel dumps his wife for a younger woman

Durrell: Alexandria Quartet: Novels of pre-WWI: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea

Eliot: Adam Bede: Adam loves Hetty, who loves another; she dies; he marries Dinah

Eliot: Silas Marner: Silas loves gold; adopts baby Eppie; raises her as his own

Eliot: Middlemarch: Dorothea marries Casaubon; Lydgate marries Rosamond; all suffer

Eliot: The Mill on the Floss: Siblings Maggie and Tom Tulliver argue; both die in flood

Ellison: Invisible Man: Black man loses innocence; meets Ras the Destroyer

Faulkner: As I Lay Dying: Addie Bundren’s body is carried by family to be buried

Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury: Stream of consciousness tale of degenerate Compsons

Faulkner: Sanctuary: Popeye rapes Temple Drake, who winds up in a Memphis brothel

Faulkner: Light in August: Hero is accused of being black, murders woman, is lynched

Faulkner: Absalon, Absalon: Sutpen builds big house on ‘land primed for fatality’

Fielding: Tom Jones: Tom is a kind foundling who loves Sophia; son of Squire Allworthy

Fielding: Joseph Andrews: Novel is a satire of Richardson’s Pamela

Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby: Nick sees how wealth destroys Daisy and Jay Gatsby

Fitzgerald: Tender is the Night: Dick Diver marries his patient Nicole who uses him up

Flaubert: Madame Bovary: Unhappy wife has numerous affairs; dies

Forster: A Passage to India: English woman falsely accuses Indian Dr. Aziz of rape

Forster: Howards End: Schlegel vs. Wilcox family battle for Howards End

Forster: Where Angels Fear to Tread: Lilia Herriton dies in childbirth; baby dies too

Forster: A Room with a View: Lucy Honeychurch marries George; has fling with Cecil

Galsworthy: The Forsyte Saga: Multi-generational tale; unfeeling but rich Jolyan Forsyte

Galsworthy: The Modern Comedy: Further saga of Forsyte clan

Golding: Lord of the Flies: Ralph and Piggy try to keep marooned boys civilized

Goldsmith: Vicar of Wakefield: Primrose a kind man struggles to keep his family intact

Greene: The Power and the Glory: Whisky priest preaches in a land that prohibits priests

Greene: A Burnt out Case: Querry finds his honor among Belgian lepers

Greene: Brighton Rock: Thug Pinkie marries Rose to ensure her silence of his crimes

Hardy: Return of the Native: Clym returns to Egdon Heath with slut wife Eustachia Vye

Hardy: Mayor of Casterbridge: Henchard abandons family and suffers for many years

Hardy: Jude the Obscure: Jude wants to be 'educated' but society deters him; he suffers

Hardy: Tess of D’Urbervilles: ‘On an evening in May, a middle-aged man was walking'

Hardy: Far From the Madding Crowd: Poor shepherd Gabriel loves rich Bathsheba

Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter: Hester Prynne has a baby by Rev Arthur Dimmesdale

Hawthorne: The Marble Faun: Count Donatello kills the man who stalks Miriam

Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises: Brett dumps Jake for Spanish bullfighter

Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms: Hero joins Italian army in WWI gets girl pregnant

Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea: Old fisherman hooks huge marlin that sharks eat

Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls: Hero blows up bridge during Spanish Civil War

Holmes: Elsie Venner: Elsie is 1/2 snake and 1/2 woman; allegory of free will

Howells: The Rise of Silas Lapham: Silas finds honor after losing money

Homer: The Iliad: In Trojan War Greeks take Troy; Achilles kills Hector

Homer: The Odyssey: Odysseus spends many years returning to Greece after Trojan War

Huxley: Brave New World: Dystopia based on scientific caste system

James: The Ambassadors: Man goes to Paris to ‘rescue’ Chad Newsome from 'evil' lady

James: The American: Newman loves a noble Frenchwoman but her family is haughty

James: Daisy Miller: Innocent Daisy Miller dates trash in Rome; dies of malaria

James: The Golden Bowl: Rich Maggie marries a prince; poor Charlotte marries Adam

James: The Portrait of a Lady: Independent Isabel marries and remains with cruel Gil

James: Turn of the Screw: Ghost story; housekeeper works in haunted house

James: The Bostonians: Lawyer Basil saves Verena Tarrant from radical feminists

James: What Maisie Knew: Girl’s parents divorce; marry others; fool around

James: The Tragic Muse: Art meets politics in story of three people: Nick, Peter, Miriam

James: Washington Square: Rich Catherine Sloper dumps gigolo Morris Townsend

James: The Europeans: Baroness Eugenia Munster goes to the US to find a rich husband

James: The Spoils of Poynton: Treasures of rich Poynton house burn with owner’s hopes

James: The Princess Casamassima: Hyacinth becomes anarchist. Commits suicide

James: Roderick Hudson: Sculptor suicides in Switzerland after girlfriend marries rival

James: The Aspern Papers: Editor cheats woman of priceless papers; she burns them

James: The Wings of the Dove: Kate asks poor lover to woo rich and dying Milly Theale

Jones: From Here to Eternity: Robert E Lee Prewitt is harassed because he refuses to box

Joyce: Portrait of the Artist: Kunstlerroman of Stephen Dedalus, suffers to be an artist

Joyce: Ulysses: One day in the life of Leo and Molly Bloom in Dublin

Joyce: Finnegan’s Wake: One day in the life of Humphrey Earwicker and wife in Dublin

Lawrence: Women in Love: ‘Ursula and Gudrun Brangwan sat one morning'

Lawrence: The Rainbow: ‘The Brangwans had lived there for generations'

Lawrence: The Plumed Serpent: ‘It was the Sunday after Easter, and the last bullfight'

Lawrence: Sons and Lovers: ‘The Bottoms' succeeded to 'Hell Row'

Lawrence: Lady Chatterley's Lover: She gets pregnant with gamekeeper Oliver

Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird: Innocent negro tried for rape of white woman

Lessing: The Golden Notebook: Writer Anna struggles with crises; women’s lib book

Lewis: Main Street: Carol marries Dr. Will Kennecott and hates her dull life and town

Lewis: Babbitt: Hero lives in dull Zenith; tries to spice up his life with affair

Lewis: Arrowsmith: Dr. tires of making money; tries to help find a cure for a plague

Mailer: The Naked and the Dead: American soldiers fight Japs during WWII; flashbacks

Malamud: The Assistant: Frank Alpine robs Morris Bober then, converted, works for him

Malamud: The Natural: Baseball allegory; player seeks redemption after comeback

Mann: The Magic Mountain: Hans has tuberculosis, stays in sanitarium in Switzerland

Mann: Buddenbrooks: Rise and fall of the rich BB family from 1835 to their end in 1877

Marquez: 100 Years of Solitude: 'Many years later, as he faced the firing squad'

Maugham: Of Human Bondage: Dr. Carey has clubfoot, loves slutty Mildred Rodgers

Maugham: The Moon and Sixpence: Strickland, an artist, neglects duty for art

Melville: Moby Dick: ‘Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long'

Melville: Billy Budd: Christ-like Budd tormented by harsh law of sea

Meredith: Ordeal of Richard Feverel: Father brutalizes son, ends son’s marriage

Meredith: The Egoist: Egoist Willoughby Patterne is jilted by Constantia, Clara, Laetitia

More: Utopia: Raphael Hythloday tells More about a land of perfection

Nabokov: Lolita: Humbert Humbert is seduced by twelve year old Delores Haze

Norris: The Octopus: Lyman Derrick betrays farmers to railroad

O’Connor: Wise Blood: Hazel Motes founds Church Without Christ; blinds himself, dies

O’Connor: The Violent Bear it Away: Religious fanatic Tarwater baptizes, kills child

Orwell: 1984: Smith tries to be free in totalitarian Oceania; Big Brother is watching

Orwell: Animal Farm: Animal fable of Russian Revolution: Napoleon = Stalin

Porter: Ship of Fools: Spaniards and Jews on ship Vera return to Nazi Germany in 1931

Porter: Old Mortality: Miranda seeks to escape the past with help of Cousin Eva

Porter: Noon Wine: Royal hires Olaf as worker; then kills to protect him

Porter: Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Miranda gets sick, recovers; fiancée Adam Barclay, no

Proust: Swann’s Way: Proust seeks enlightenment with Swann; despairs then hopes

Pynchon: V: Benny Profane seeks alligators in NYC sewers; Herbert seeks female deity

Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49: Oedipa Mass finds secret ancient communication symbol

Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow: Lt. Slothrop investigates Nazi V2 rocket attacks on London

Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho: Orphan Emily in Gothic tale of imprisonment

Richardson: Clarissa: Epistolary novel of Clarissa hounded by Lovelace; seduced; dies

Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye: Caulfield grows up; learns life is hard but fun

Sinclair: The Jungle: Rudkus marries Ona, works in corrupt Chicago meat stockyards

Smollett: Humphrey Clinker: Epistolary novel: Bramble meets a preaching naïve HC

Smollett: Roderick Random: Picaresque Scot goes to sea, travels, finds long lost father

Smollett: Peregrine Pickle: Picaresque Brit goes to sea, jokes, is a tolerable scamp

Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath: Joads battle drought and crooks during Depression

Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men: Retarded Lenny and intelligent George try to get jobs

Steinbeck: East of Eden: Adam marries whore, has two sons who re-enact Cain and Abel

Sterne: Tristram Shandy: nominal hero born late in novel; disappears from story

Swift: Gulliver’s Travels: LG visits Lilliput, Brobdignag, Laputa, land of Houyhnhnms

Thackeray: Vanity Fair: Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley try to avoid poverty

Tolstoy: War and Peace: No free will. Historical determinism rules heroine Natasha

Tolstoy: Anna Karenina: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy'

Trollope: The Warden: Rev. Harding battles Dr. Bold for well-paying church sinecure

Trollope: Barchester Towers: Horny Mr. Slope seeks control of diocese, fails, is fired

Updike: Rabbit, Run: Angstrom abandons pregnant wife who accidentally drowns baby

Updike: Rabbit, Redux: Hero returns to wife who temporarily leaves him for Charlie

Updike: Rabbit is Rich: Hero back with wife; both now have money, problems with son

Voltaire: Candide; Satire on optimism of Leibniz. Candide seeks love of Cunegonde

Vonnegut: Cat’s Cradle: Journalist learns of Ice-9, a chemical that can freeze all water

Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse 5: Billy Pilgrim is kidnapped by outer space Tralfamadore;

Walpole: The Castle of Otranto: Gothic tale of tyrant usurper Manfred

Warren: All the King’s Men: Stark seeks power in Southern USA as crooked governor

Waugh: Decline and Fall: Paul Pennyfeather is blamed for slave trade dealings of Margot

Waugh: Men at Arms: Crouchback joins English army in WWII; has fun with Apthorpe

Waugh: Black Mischief: Black Emperor Seth modernizes Azania in Africa

Waugh: Brideshead Revisited: Ryder involves himself with aristocratic Marchmains

Waugh: Vile Bodies: Adam Fenwick-Symes wants riches to marry Nina; fails in both

Waugh: A Handful of Dust: Lady Brenda Last cheats on spouse Tony with John Beaver

Welty: Delta Wedding: Dabney Fairchild plans her marriage to Troy Flavin

West: Day of the Locust: Hackett exposes the sham culture of Hollywood star worship

West: Miss Lonelyhearts: Hero writes advice column for newspaper, suffers turmoil

Wharton: The Age of Innocence: Newland marries May but loves Ellen Olenska

Wharton: The House of Mirth: Lily seeks rich husband; commits suicide to avoid debt

Wharton: Ethan Frome: Ethan marries whiny Zenobia, loves cousin Mattie, both crippled

Wilder: Bridge of San Luis Rey: Five people die in bridge collapse; monk questions God

Wilson: Anglo-Saxon Attitudes: Historian Middleton unearths archaeological forgery

Wolfe: Look Homeward, Angel: Eugene raised in North Carolina; suffers crises

Woolfe: Mrs. Dalloway: Clarissa ‘sees the truth’ while Septimus ‘sees the insane truth’

Woolfe: To the Lighthouse: I: The Window II: Time Passes III: The Lighthouse

Wright: Native Son: Bigger Thomas kills and learns that killing validates his existence

Zola: Nana: Nana is a cruel whore who drives her men to ruin and suicide

Zola: Germinal: Life in a mining community results in a coal strike

Zola: Therese Raquin: Therese and lover murder husband Camille; ghost haunts them

*****

Short Stories

The GRE in English questions on short stories is among the easiest for the test taker. The section of this guide on short stories lists approximately 110 stories. As with the section on novels, this number could have been expanded very much higher; however, the number of stories actually used in past tests plus the usual anthologized ones are on this list. There are few enough stories so that you may read them all. The kind of questions for short stories is very much like those of the novel: reading comprehension and fact based. Be prepared for quoted excerpts as the most likely fact based question.

A typical question might be:

He felt something strike his chest—his body was being thrown swiftly through the air, on and on, immeasurably far and fast, while his limbs gently relaxed. Then, because the picture-making mechanism was crushed, the disturbing visions flashed into black, and Paul dropped back into the immense design of things.

The author is

(a) John Steinbeck

(b) Joseph Conrad

(c) William Faulkner

(d) Willa Cather

(e) Ring Lardner

The name ‘Paul’ might help. His death might help. The story is Paul’s Case and the answer is (c) Willa Cather.

How about this one?

His last word—to live with, she insisted. Don’t you understand I loved him—I loved him—I loved him!

I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

The last word he pronounced was—your name.

When the first speaker says the last word he pronounced was—your name, this speaker

(a) wants to torment the other speaker with a lie

(b) wants to placate the other speaker with a lie

(c) wants to torment the other speaker with the truth

(d) wants to placate the other speaker with the truth

(e) does not know if this is true or not

The author is:

(a) John Steinbeck

(b) Joseph Conrad

(c) Willa Cather

(d) William Faulkner

(e) Ring Lardner

The answer to the first question is (b). Marlow wishes to placate Kurtz’s woman with a soothing lie.

The answer to the second is (b). Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness.

Short Story Titles

Aiken: Silent Snow, Secret Snow: Paul represses his trauma with fantasies of living snow

Algren: A Bottle of Milk for Mother: Polish mugger is arrested for murder in Chicago

Anderson: I’m A Fool: Young man likes horses and lying. Loses girl with lies

Anderson: I Want to Know Why: Boy loves horses; idolizes trainer who disappoints him

Baldwin: Sonny’s Blues: Ex-con Sonny finds personal salvation in jazz and the blues

Benet: By the Waters of Babylon: Post WWIII chief's son struggles to regain lost culture

Bierce: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: Soldier dreams of escaping hanging

Cather: Paul’s Case: Troublemaker student Paul steals money; killed by oncoming train

Cather: Neighbor Rosicky: Czech Rosicky immigrates to US as a farmer; he loves land

Conrad: The Secret Sharer: Captain hides Leggat accused of murder; later frees him

Conrad: Heart of Darkness: Marlowe sails to seek the diabolical Kurtz: 'The Horror!'

Crane: The Open Boat: Survivors of sunk ship suffer in lifeboat; fight nature

Crane: The Blue Hotel: Crazy Swede likes to start fights, gets killed in a brawl

Crane: The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky: Sheriff gets married; faces gunfighter

Dostoevsky: The Grand Inquisitor: Satan tempts Jesus with unanswerable questions

Faulkner: Barn Burning: Boy accused of barn burning but his father really did it

Faulkner: That Evening Sun Go Down: Nancy fears her husband Jesus will kill her

Faulkner: Turnabout: WW II military officers befriend English recruit

Faulkner: The Bear: Ike hunts huge bear; allegory of man's destruction of nature

Faulkner: Spotted Horses: Conman Snopes fleeces gullible Henry Armstid with horses

Faulkner: A Rose for Emily: Respected town matriarch Emily Grierson dies; corpse found

Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited: American fails to get custody of daughter Honoria in Paris

Fitzgerald: Winter Dreams: Dexter Green (Gatsby) futilely pursues Judy Jones (Daisy)

Forster: The Celestial Omnibus: Two take a magic omnibus ride to Allusion Heaven

Forster: The Road from Colonus: Old Lucas wants to stay in Greece; daughter objects

Garland: Under the Lion's Paw: Poor Haskins is ripped off by crooked moneylender

Hawthorne: The Great Stone Face: Who resembles the GSF? Many pretenders appear

Hawthorne: Rappacini’s Daughter: Guasconti loves poison-blooded Rappacini's daughter

Hawthorne: Young Goodman Brown: Brown sees his wife and neighbors engage in orgy

Hawthorne: The Minister’s Black Veil: Father Hooper wears a black veil; frightens flock

Hawthorne: The Maypole of Merrymount: Puritan punishes pagan lovers of the Maypole

Hawthorne: My Kinsman, Major Molineaux: Robin seeks kinsman; finds him tarred

Hawthorne: The Birthmark: Georgiana has a birthmark; husband lethally removes it

Hawthorne: The Celestial Railroad: Satire on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; fantasy

Hemingway: Soldier’s Home: Krebs returns from WWI as a bitter, disillusioned man

Hemingway: The Three Day Blow: Nick engages in useless talk to hide inner tensions

Hemingway: Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber: Cowardly FM dies on safari

Hemingway: The Snows of Kilimanjaro: Bitter writer dies in Africa; finds wife useless

Hemingway: In Another Country: In WWI Italy wounded soldiers have physical trauma

Hemingway: Hills Like White Elephants: Two Americans in Mexico discuss abortion

Hemingway: Big Two-Hearted River (Parts I and II): Nick hunts but needs to think

Hemingway: The Undefeated: Aging bullfighter returns to arena and is gored

Hemingway: The Killers: Killers enter diner; tell Nick they will kill Ole Anderson

Hemingway: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place: A bar is a refuge for those who fight 'nada'

Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Ichabod Crane meets the Headless Horseman

Irving: Rip van Winkle: Rip sleeps 20 years; awakens to a post-Revolutionary America

Irving: Devil and Tom Walker: Tom makes a deal with devil: money for his soul

Jackson: The Lottery: Mrs. Hutchinson 'wins' a lottery; is ritually stoned to death

James: The Tree of Knowledge: Man loves woman; her untalented son wants to be artist

James: Daisy Miller: Innocent DM lives 'fast' life in Italy; fate punishes her with disease

James: The Altar of the Dead: Stransom internally memorializes death of his betrothed

James: The Turn of the Screw: Governess protects wards from ghosts of previous servants

James: The Real Thing: Family 'sells' their supposed class and breeding image on canvas

James: The Beast in the Jungle: John fears loss of unknown, which is love of May

James: Washington Square: Gigolo Morris plots to seduce heiress who dumps him

James: The Jolly Corner: Man returns to America; imagines himself in an 'alternate' life

James: In the Cage: Female operator lives through telegrams that she sends/receives

Joyce: Ivy Day in the Committee Room: Two men discuss the death of Irish leader Parnell

Joyce: Clay: Maria symbolizes All Irish Women; dutifully goes about her daily business

Joyce: Araby: Boy is isolated from an adult world whose inhabitants don't act nobly

Joyce: The Dead: Gabriel feels isolated from society and wife; he learns of her past love

Joyce: Eveline: Woman loves Frank; too paralyzed by inaction to leave her unhappy life

Joyce: A Little Cloud: Chandler (envious) and Gallagher (pompous) meet

Joyce: The Boarding House: Mr. Doran has affair with Polly, daughter of landlady

Kafka: A Hunger Artist: Man starves himself as a passion: allegory of artist or athlete?

Kafka: The Metamorphosis: Gregor wakens from sleep transformed