Death of a Salesman, Wuthering Heights, and a Clockwork Orange

There is nothing quite like a book the reader never wants to put down. To achieve this a novel must have interesting characters, a dilemma, and convey a lesson. Wuthering Heights, A Clockwork Orange, and The Death of Salesmen each contain these three main elements. All these books keep the reader interested.

A Clockwork Orange does the best at fulfilling the readers interests. This novel has well developed characters. Even though the main character, Alex, commits horrible acts of violence to innocent people, the reader still feels he can relate to him. After Alex is put in jail for murder, he has to undergo an experimental new form of discipline called Ludovico's Technique. This approach causes Alex to link his love for music to terrible acts of violence; every time he hears music he begins to feel sick and must stop listening to the music. This dilemma causes the reader to feel sorry for Alex and be mad at the government that would do such a horrible thing to a young man. A Clockwork Orange also teaches a very important idea that human choice is very important. The reader understands this when the forcefulness of Ludovico's Technique does not work for Alex.

The second best book to contain the three main elements is The Death of Salesmen. Like A Clockwork Orange, the characters are easy to relate to. The main character Willy is a salesman who works very hard to achieve the American dream. This goal becomes unattainable when his boss no longer pays him salary and he must live off of commission alone. When his two sons, Biff and Happy, come home to visit tension starts to arise. The conflict is hard to comprehend because the reader follows Willy's sporadic train of thought. The reader does attain knowledge from the struggles of this family: being honest will keep one out of trouble.

Finally, Wuthering Heights does more poorly at acquiring the three main elements which make a good novel. This book contains characters that are hard to relate to. Heathcliff and Chatherine fall into a deep and some what strange love. Even though their love for each other is deep, Catherine ends up marrying her wealthy and more socially accepted neighbor, Linton; Heathcliff marries Linton's sister, Isabella. Problems arise because Heathcliff and Linton do not get along. Catherine and Linton's daughter ends up falling in love with Heathcliff and Isabella's son. The relationship once had between Heathcliff and Catherine