If you had to organize a course in which there are ten important themes often covered in literature, and you can choose three books per theme to present a nuanced understanding of each theme, what themes and books would you select?

You don’t have to do all themes and books, don’t worry XD

I’ve just been mulling this over since I’ve been interested in this idea of holy trinities of themes in classic literature. For example, I wanted to get a good overview of dystopian classic literature, and a combination of *1984, Brave New World,* and *Fahrenheit 451* was often hailed as the holy trinity there. Then, I moved on to anti-war literature, and there was no holy trinity being talked about there, but I chose three of the most seemingly-influential classics in that genre with different takes on the theme and came up with the following holy trinity: *Catch-22, Slaughterhouse 5,* and *All Quiet on the Western Front,* and I’m in the process of reading those three.

At first, I was mostly interested in this because it’s simiar to how the AP Literature exam works: there’s a prompt per FRQ which can be thought of as one of my aforementioned themes (rebellion against a system, betrayal, the flaws of idealism, etc.), and you are provided a list of books you can use to make an essay about that book’s portrayal of the prompt.

So, I’m curious what holy trinities you guys would come up with, and which themes you would deem most relevant in literature?

by LogicIsAFacade