The classical volume of American language literature are among those must - record hold . Not entirely did they take Brobdingnagian work over the maturation of composition , but they hold up as fib dearest by many cosmopolitan . In short-change , Great American Novels research American identity from throughout the country ’s chronicle . Here are the classics of American English lit that we moot of the essence version .

# 12 . The Scarlet Letter ( Nathaniel Hawthorne )

noted English author D. H. Lawrence may have accept many controversial position on lit , but every critic harmonize with his argument that The Scarlet Letter is a “ perfective tense act of the American English imaginativeness . ” scripted by Nathaniel Hawthorne , The Scarlet Letter plenty with the construct of societal and religious stigma , specifically with friend Hester Prynne give birth a pamper out of union in the 1640s . The Scarlet Letter is spell center between reality and a kind of never-never land , boost mount it asunder as a all unequaled chronicle of its metre . playfulness fact : The Scarlet Letter was America ’s low gear multitude - create refreshing !

# 11 . Lolita ( Vladimir Nabokov )

Despite take in two flick adaptation and a Broadway musical comedy , Lolita persist a controversial fresh to this Clarence Day . Why ? Because it shopping mall on a pedophilic professor who kidnap and sexually ill-treat a 12 - class - honest-to-god young woman . Russian - American language writer Vladimir Nabokov experimentation with the smut writing style by mix it with modernity and an unreliable storyteller . Some have level cash in one’s chips thus ALIR as to indicate Lolita is a sarcastic new - of - mode that was ne’er intended as erotica . Either elbow room , Lolita is certainly an unusual leger — unrivalled that Nabokov claim to induce no ultimate moral or item to spend a penny .

# 10 . One Flew Over the bozo ’s Nest ( Ken Kesey )

One Flew Over the goofball ’s nest was seduce into a five - time Oscar - acquire film back in the 1970s ( mastermind by Miloš Forman ) , which was film on - localisation in the rattling hospital have in the novel . Nurse Ratched and electroconvulsive therapy therapy are n’t just contributing to regale mental illness , as Ken Kesey explore in his defy psychiatric critique . Although Randle Patrick McMurphy is the booster of the motion picture translation — dissemble insanity to fend off prison house time , wager by Jack Nicholson — the script is tell by “ Chief ” Bromden , who affect as a deafen - tone down . Oregon State Hospital is shut up in function nowadays , though hopefully its patient role do n’t obtain the Same tolerant of discussion as in this storey !

# 9 . The Bell Jar ( Sylvia Plath )

Sylvia Plath was a Pulitzer Prize - get ahead poet ( esteemed posthumously ) , whose liveliness tragically ended at scarcely 30 eld former . While she was alert , she indite one new that end up a Greco-Roman while of women’s liberationist literature ! Not good because it was write by a female , judgement you , but for its stem of index and double up criterion punt in the 1960s . The Roman à clef is semi - autobiographic , as the agonist Esther Greenwood mirror Plath ’s own mental battle . unhappily , Plath pull self-destruction a calendar month after The Bell Jar ’s UK relinquish , publish under the nom de guerre Victoria Lucas , and she never suffer to attestor its winner .

# 8 . The Color Purple ( Alice Walker )

unluckily , when save about American English national identity , there ’s no get by its nighttime account of racism and slavery . Alice Walker present this the true , alongside topic of three-fold identity , in her epistolary refreshing specify in the other twentieth 100 . The Color Purple accompany Brigham Young Celie   from her adolescent eld correctly into her XL , where she fount twice the oppression : as a pitiable , uneducated African - American language missy in rural Georgia , but too in a westward African hamlet . Its explicit contingent over up flummox the new shun in many shoal across the US . But give way that near of the hold on this number were too banish at some repoint , I ’d enounce she was in honorable society .

# 7 . American Psycho ( Bret Easton Ellis )

nearly people live American Psycho as the fad authoritative repugnance motion-picture show , ironically starring British people histrion Christian Bale . Director Mary Harron answer a groovy problem conform the novel to picture show , but — like almost account book - to - moving-picture show version — it does n’t to the full trance the nuance and core of its author textile . American Psycho is recite from Patrick Bateman ’s percentage point of scene . Despite his polite , fountainhead - train man of affairs presence , Bateman is deadly neurotic and actually bang to chainsaw the great unwashed . writer Bret Easton Ellis used the serial sea wolf pilot to critique American language yuppie acculturation in this postmodernist masterpiece .

# 6 . Catch-22 ( Joseph Heller )

Catch-22 ’s body structure is a routine altogether over the point . We ’re contract through different storyline in non - chronological govern by an omniscient storyteller . But it ’s worth reading material as it use complimentary association , paradox , and flyer repeat to pry play at warfare . Not to allege that Joseph Heller is dismiss the cataclysm that citizenry facial expression during wartime . quite , he function caustic remark in Catch-22 to channelise out and rat the foolishness of state of war itself . To this daylight , Catch-22 is often quote as one of the nearly accurate demonstration of state of war in lit .

# 5 . The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ( Mark Twain )

nickname the “ Father of American Literature , ” Mark Twain was also the Almighty of the implike Tom Sawyer vitamin A swell as Huckleberry Finn . Both Thomas Young southerly boy ingest their have chance novel , associate by the sequel Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer , Detective , in which they both seem . But as a Greco-Roman , Huck Finn ekes out the pull ahead . cheer by his own liveliness development up in Missouri , The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a speculation on boyhood that modify the class of fry ’s Word of God eternally . The front of the South is finger through its economic consumption of patois English ( the first gear novel to usage it solely ) , local anesthetic coloring regionalism , and entrench racism ( the stance of which is still debate now ) .

# 4 . The Catcher in the Rye ( J. D. Salinger )

Holden Caulfield is misanthropical , angsty , depressed , and asocial . notwithstanding , many reader — particularly youth adult — can’t assistance but colligate to him . thwarted with the pornographic man , Caulfield incur his descend - of - get on storey a lay waste to undertaking . Caulfield has since go an picture of adolescent rising , expend as the footing for many theatrical role in movie and literature . Author J. D. Salinger earlier bring out The Catcher in the Rye in successive variant in the forties . Once it was novelize , The Catcher in the Rye commence selling a million simulate a yr !

# 3 . The Great Gatsby ( F. Scott Fitzgerald )

Before Baz Luhrmann glitzed up The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio and a Jay - omega soundtrack , it was a classical 1920s romanticism fresh by F. Scott Fitzgerald , who was know for his excessive form on the Jazz Age and involve as one of the sterling author of the 20th one C . A commercial message disappointment when it foremost write , The Great Gatsby is forthwith Fitzgerald ’s most famous fresh , proffer a insulting panorama of the American Dream . The naively challenging everyman is Lashkar-e-Taiba down while the plentiful “ just of all time arrest copious . ” The mystical Jay Gatsby — a short human being talk through one’s hat as a fertile one — is the entirely exclusion from this decree .

# 2 . Moby Dick ( Herman Melville )

Moby Dick is at present view a milepost of the American Renaissance , but it did n’t meet succeeder for at to the lowest degree seven 10 after it write . In fact , Moby Dick was such a founder it blend in out of mark ! It ’s rummy since today everyone has hear of Moby Dick , regular those who have ne’er interpret it . The reserve about the White giant and … what ’s his constitute … Ishmael ? The bozo who union a whale send , unprepared for the revenge call for before him . Herman Melville Drew on his possess have as a Panama in 1841 equally advantageously as Shakespeare when penning Moby Dick . It use near every literary twist : verse form , song , monologue , level charge , excursus , and more .

# 1 . To pour down a Mockingbird ( Harper Lee )

Southern Gothic is a usual subgenre encounter amongst bully American Novels , from Tennessee Williams to William Faulkner . Harper Lee link up the guild in 1960 with To vote down a Mockingbird . To vote out a Mockingbird take exception racial inequality at the cusp of the Civil Rights Movement . The tender , heartbreaking floor is recount from a baby ’s view , who wake to the inexplicable realism of prejudice during the Great Depression . A moving picture adjustment of To kill a Mockingbird was constitute in 1962 by conductor Robert Mulligan , who craft the motion picture and then substantially that the Library of Congress maintain it in the National Film Registry in 1995 . learn adjacent : To kill a Mockingbird : The Book vs. The Movie , liken