Crap like this is the basis of our declining education IMO. Orwell and most of the books are appropriate, but it’s amazing how much time is wasted on crap like Catcher in the Rye, Death of a Salesman, and Catch 22. Kids don’t need to learn liberal-psychotic crap, which is exactly what it is. I had to suffer through all of that, when if properly motivated I could have easily had a bachelor’s degree in a useful science by the time I was 18. I wasn’t old enough to know that was when I was forced to waste my precious life reading it and answering stupid questions, etc. Notice Victor Hugo or Winston Churchill isn’t on the list? Same old recycled crap!
The three tomes you noted as liberal-psychotic were part of high school English curriculum in the 80s. Says a lot, doesn’t it?
Catch 22 is an operating manual for today’s government.
Vonnegut was/is a Marxist. Nothing more.
Arthur Miller clearly hated capitalism and resented the blacklist(s) so he thought he’d have an elitist pop at the working class.
Catcher is an entertaining tale as far as it goes and somewhat unique in the age/perspective of the narrator but it’s also very much of its age and badly dated.
Beowulf is in an archaic form of our language. Whoopee. A 1927 Ford is archaic but I don’t want to drive one every day. Set archetype for heroic saga etc. etc. It’s still tedious.
Night - one of those testimonies that deserves to be heard but Wiesel was highly annoying in subsequent interviews and appearances.
Gatsby - overhyped. Another not-so-veiled attack on capitalism with self-aggrandizement of academics thrown in. Can we assume Fitzgerald thought the Depression was an improvement over the Roaring 20s?
Mockingbird - finally, a solid story and characters. However, most kids never have a chance to read it and instead are beat over the head with the book in order to fully grasp its ‘message.’ Lefties can’t resist the dignified black/white trash cliches.
Catch 22 was brilliantly written comedy.