ShmoopTube

We were so moved by Angelina Jolie's overseas adoptions that we created a proposal to bring foreign-born children over by the thousands! Think abou...

How do you insult the Soviet Union and get away with it? Make them animals. (No one will ever know.) That was George Orwell's plan, and it worked....

A family goes on a quest to bury their family member. Yeah, sounds simple...except it never is. ‘Cause mom’s dead, and people have issues which...

Written in Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, Beowulf is an epic poem that reflects the early medieval warri...

Welcome to the first world problem pity parade. Strap in.

In The Color Purple, Celie is abused by her father and husband. She leaves her father by marrying Mr. ________, and then leaves Mr. ______, too. Bu...

Crime and Punishment is all about a boy killing for money, literally, and then spending the rest of the book trying to hide it. Although the book c...

She was just a girl who found herself in some unimaginably awful circumstances. If you feel like gaining some valuable perspective on the drama in...

The Grapes of Wrath is one of the longest—ahem, most important books in American literary history. But what's with the title?

In the world of Shakespeare, pretty much everyone either dies or gets married. Hamlet and co. got the short end of that stick.

Talk about an absent parent.

If you suddenly came into a bunch of money, you'd give it all away, right? Yeah, we figured.

Kaffir Boy is the story of a young South African tennis player living under the restrictions of apartheid. He ends up going the self-preservation r...

Life of Pi tells the story of a boy and a tiger trapped on a lifeboat for 227 days... or does it?

Are humans civilized, or are we just savages waiting to come out? William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies tackles that question.

The book is as big as the whale.

Could one of America’s most famous anti-slavery books be racist? Well, the book’s offensive caricatures combined with today’s perspective on...

Anyone who has ever bought anything from IKEA knows this to be true.

We may not always agree with the government, but at least they aren't pigs. We mean that literally. Whether or not you think they're pigs in a figu...

The Great Gatsby is set in and around New York City and Long Island. On the big L.I., there are two areas known as "West Egg" and "East Egg." East...