Crash Course Literature Episode Rating Graph

SPOILER ALERT: This video assumes you've read the book. In which John Green continues to explore F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby. In this installment, John looks into the titular Gatsby's purported Greatness. Gatsby's single-minded pursuit of Daisy, his checkered past, and his checkered present all play a role in determining whether he was, in fact, great. Here's a hint: you don't have to be good to be great. It turns out greatness doesn't have much to do with whether you're a good person. Along the way, John explores the relentless forward march of time, the use of poetic language, and ironic titling of novels.

In which John Green explores F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel of the Jazz Age, The Great Gatsby. John introduces you to Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, and the other characters in the novel, and tries to look beyond the surface story to figure out what this thing is ABOUT. Set in the 1920's against a conflicted backdrop of prohibition and excess, The Great Gatsby takes a close look at the American Dream as it existed in Fitzgerald's time. It turns out, it had a lot to do with money and status, and it still does today. John will cover the rich symbolism of the novel, from the distant green light to the pale gold of wealth and decay. Also, Paris Hilton drops by.

This is it! The final episode of CC Literature season 4 is a deeper look at Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Today we'll explore the novel's take on materialism, and we'll talk about whether the novel has a liberal or conservative message. Which matters because people have interpreted the book in various ways. Oh, and we'll explore the balance between making choices based on personal happiness or what's best for one's family. And oh yeah, we'll talk more about terrible Lydia and her disgusting bonnet.

This week on Crash Course Literature, John Green is continuing to talk about Shakespeare's dark, bloody, Scottish play, Macbeth. This time around, we're looking at the play's characters operate, how the play deals with gender, and the Macbeth as an early anti-hero. He's no Walter White, but you can definitely love to hate him. Or hate to love him. Or both!

John Green teaches you about Virginia Woolf's modernist novel, To the Lighthouse. Let's face it. You're not reading To the Lighthouse for the plot. There's not a whole lot of plot, unless you count the tension about the beef stew. You're reading it because it's a pioneering literary work that explores point of view, narrative flow, and the nature of art, among other things. You're going to love it. I mean, part of the story is told from the perspective of a house.

Today on Crash Course Literature, John Green teaches you about The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper tells the story of a woman who is a prisoner in her own home, in the name of caring for her mental health. The narrator stares all day the yellow wallpaper

This week, we're learning about sonnets, and English Literature's best-known purveyor of those fourteen-line paeans, William Shakespeare. We'll look at a few of Willy Shakes's biggest hits, including Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," Sonnet 116, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment," and Sonnet 130, "My mistresses's eyes are nothing like the sun." We'll talk about what makes a sonnet, a little bit about their history, and even a little bit about how reading poetry helps us understand how to be human beings.

This week, we're continuing our discussion of Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.' This is part two of our talk about Huck Finn, and this time we're looking at the metaphors in the book, a little bit about what the metaphors like the Island and the River and the Raft might mean, and why you should pay attention to said metaphors. We'll also look at the ending of the book, which a lot of people (including us) believe isn't up to the standards of the rest of the novel.

In which John Green teaches you about Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This week, we'll talk a little bit about Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who wrote under the name Mark Twain, and how he mined his early life for decades to produce his pretty well-loved body of work. By far the best of Twain's novels, Huckleberry Finn has a lot to say about life in America around the Civil War, and it resonates today with its messages on race, class, and what exactly freedom is.

In which John Green teaches you about Homer's Odyssey. If it was Homer's If Homer was even real. Anyway, that stuff doesn't really matter. John teaches you the classic, by which I mean classical, epic poem, the Odyssey. The Journey of Odysseus as he made his way home after the conclusion of the Trojan War is the stuff of legend. Literally. John will teach you about the double standard in Greek culture, Odysseus as jerk/hero, ancient PTSD, and cycles of violence. Also, there are no yogurt jokes. So think of that as a gift.

In which John continues the discussion of JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. This week John reads the novel with Salinger's life story in mind. John explores how Salinger's war experience, educational background, and romantic life inform the events of Holden Caulfield's life. How did Holden get to be such a whiny, self-absorbed teen? While it's not a great idea to read novels too biographically, Salinger's life surely informed Holden's. Watch on to get an idea just how much.

The Sound! The Fury! Today, we're talking about Shakespeare's Scottish play, Macbeth. So, was Macbeth really predestined to do all the murdering and bad kinging and other terrible stuff? That's the big question in Macbeth, and it's one of the ideas we're going to talk about today, among many. Also, Yoda joins us for the open letter.

In which John Green returns to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to explore the themes of true love, lust, and whether Romeo and Juliet were truly, deeply in love, or they were just a pair of impetuous teens. How exactly did Romeo manage to go from pining for Rosaline to marrying Juliet in 36 hours? Maybe they were impetuous teens who were ALSO deeply in love. John looks into how the structure and conventions of society in medieval Verona led to the star-crossed lovers' downfall. Along the way, you'll learn about courtly love, medieval responsibility to church, family and society, Chipotle burritos as a metaphor for true love, and even learn about literary sex. We may even tie in trapeze artists and Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. You'll have to watch to find out.

In which John Green teaches you about Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction novel, The Handmaid's Tale. John looks at some of the themes in this classic dystopian novel, many of which are kind of a downer. The world of Gilead that Atwood created looks at a lot of the issues that we deal with today, and the very human impulse to return to an imagined golden era, thereby solving all of our modern world's problems. Yeah, it doesn't work like that.

In which John Green kicks off the Crash Course Literature mini series with a reasonable set of questions. Why do we read? What's the point of reading critically. John will argue that reading is about effectively communicating with other people. Unlike a direct communication though, the writer has to communicate with a stranger, through time and space, with only "dry dead words on a page." So how's that going to work? Find out with Crash Course Literature! Also, readers are empowered during the open letter, so that's pretty cool.

In which John Green continues discussing George Orwell's 1984. Today we're talking about what the novel 1984 has to say about what some have called today's surveillance society. We'll also look at the idea that language can be used as a means to control people's thoughts. Can something like Newspeak prevent a person from having certain thoughts? I wish I had the words to express how I feel about that. Luckily, John does have the words.

In which John Green examines Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare. John delves into the world of Bill Shakespeare's famous star-crossed lovers and examines what the play is about, its structure, and the context in which it was written. Have you ever wanted to know what iambic pentameter is? Then you should watch this video. Have you ever pondered what kind of people actually went to see a Shakespeare play in 1598? Watch this video. Were you aware that wherefore means "why?" Whether you were or not, watch this video. In Shakespeare's time, entertainment choices ranged from taking in a play to watching a restrained bear try to fight off a pack of dogs. Today on YouTube, our entertainment choices are just as wide-ranging. So you can either choose to watch the modern equivalent of bear baiting (another cinnamon challenge) or you can be edified and entertained by John and Crash Course.

This week, we’re on to reading Ralph Ellison’s great novel about the black experience in America after World War II, Invisible Man. John will teach you about Ellison’s nameless narrator, and his attempts to find his way in a social order that dehumanizes him and renders him invisible at every turn. Ellison’s novel follows its hero from his childhood in the south to his many attempts to make sense of the world in New York City, and it takes him through, explosions, activism, and riots.

In which John Green examines JD Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye. John pulls out the old school literary criticism by examining the text itself rather than paying attention to the biographical or historical context of the novel (that's for next week). Listen, words matter. The Catcher in the Rye has managed to endure without a movie adaptation because a lot of its quality arises from the book's language. Find out how Holden's voice, his language, and his narrative technique combine to make the novel work. Also, Thought Bubble gives us a quick rundown of the plot, in which Ikea Monkey may or may not appear.

In which John Green concludes the Crash Course Literature mini-series with an examination of the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Sure, John explores the creepy biographical details of Dickinson's life, but he also gets into why her poems have remained relevant over the decades. John discusses Dickinson's language, the structure of her work, and her cake recipes. He also talks about Dickinson's famously eccentric punctuation, which again ends up relating to her cake recipes. Also, Dickinson's coconut cake recipe is included.

In which John Green teaches you about one of the least family-friendly family dramas in the history of family dramas, Oedipus Rex. Sophocles' most famous play sees its main character, who seems like he's got it all together, find out that he's killed his father, married his mother, had a bunch of incest children, and brought a plague down on his adopted hometown. He doesn't take this news well. John touches on all the classic Oedipus themes, including hamartia, fate, and the wrath of the gods, and even gets into some Freud, although Oedipus was notably not a sufferer of an Oedipus complex. In any case get ready for mystery, incest, bird entrails, and self-inflicted blindness. Very dramatic.

In which John Green teaches you about Hamlet, William Shakespeare's longest and most-performed play. People love Hamlet. The play that is, not necessarily the character. Hamlet is a Tragedy with a capital T (I guess I don't have to point that out since you can see clearly in the text that the T was capitalized). By Tragedy, I mean virtually everyone dies at the end. John will talk a little bit about the history of the play and the different versions of it that have appeared in the centuries since it was written. You'll also learn about some of the big themes in the play, get a brief plot overview, and the all-important connections between Prince Hamlet and Simba, the Lion King. Seriously though, The Lion King is totally just a Hamlet musical with animals instead of people.

In which John Green teaches you MORE about Bill Shakespeare's Hamlet. John talks about gender roles in Hamlet, and what kind of power and agency Ophelia and Gertrude had, if they had any at all (spoiler alert: we think they did). You'll also learn about regicide, Ophelia's flowers, and Hamlet's potential motivations. Also, Oedipus comes up again, but we don't buy it.

In which John Green teaches you about Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein. Sure, you know Frankenstein the cultural phenomenon, but how much do you know about the novel that started it all? You'll learn about the Romantic movement in English lit, of which Frankenstein is a GREAT example, and you'll learn that Frankenstein might just be the first SciFi novel. Once again, literature comes down to just what it means to be human. John will review the plot, take you through a couple of different critical readings of the novel, and will discuss the final disposition of Percy Shelley's heart.

In which John Green continues to teach you about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. You'll learn about romantic vs Romantic, the latter of which is a literary movement. John will also look at a few different critical readings of Frankenstein, and you'll learn about Victor's motivations. We'll also look a little bit at the moral limitations of science, if there are any.

In which John Green teaches you about Charlotte Brontë's classic coming of age novel, Jane Eyre. Look, we don't like to make judgment values here, but Jane Eyre is awesome. By which we mean the book is great, and the character is amazing. When Jane Eyre was published in 1847, it was a huge hit. It really hit the controversial balance beautifully, being edgy enough to make news, but still mainstream enough to be widely popular. It was sort of like the Fight Club of its day, but not quite as testosterone-fueled. You'll learn a little about the story, learn about Jane as a feminist heroine, and even get some critical analysis on how Bertha might just be a dark mirror that acts out Jane's emotional reactions.

In which John Green teaches you about Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart. You'll learn about Igboland, a region in modern-day Nigeria, prior to the arrival of the British Empire. Achebe tells the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo villager who has worked his way up from life as a sharecropped and become a respected leader in his community. Okonkwo has a tragic fall and is exiled. And then the trouble starts. British missionaries arrive and change everything. Things Fall Apart has a lot to say about colonization and even something to say about decolonization.

In which John Green concludes teaching you about Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. You'll learn about the historical contexts of Things Fall Apart, including 19th-century colonization and 20th-century decolonization. We're going to learn a little bit about Achebe's childhood between two cultures, cover Okonkwo's sad, sad end, and even learn a little about The Babysitters Club.