What if you could tell how a famous novel or play turns out or what the story’s really about just by reading the title? I can think of a few times I’ve read something that, by the end, I wish I had known more about so I could have seen what I was getting into and saved myself either the pain and suffering of actually cracking the thing open or the emotional roller coaster ride of reading it.
Just for funsies, here are some famous texts transformed to include slightly more honest titles. (NOTE: Possible spoilers. But probably not really.)
1. John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men Chase Lenny to His Death
2. William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Dies Before Seeing Everyone Stab Themselves with Swords
3. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Man’s Will to Live, a Drunk Bigot in a Field, and a Child’s Innocence
4. Homer’s The Odyssey Through One Man’s Epic Mid-Life Crisis
5. William Golding’s The Lord of the Privileged Children Who Have to Actually Fend for Themselves for Once in Their Lives
6. Arthur Miller’s The Noose-ible: Everyone Pays for One Couple’s Whorish Ways
7. Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin and the Son Who Won’t Grow Up Already
8. Kathryn Stockett’s The Help Get Some Help But Not Enough to Keep Them from Being the Help
9. Stephenie Meyer’s Twhy Does She Keep Using the Same Adjectives Over and Over and Over Again?
10. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gratuitousness of the Jazz Age and The Subsequent Death of the American Dream
11. Dan Brown’s Da Very Clever Art-Meets-Catholicism Conundrum
12. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Into a Rage and Got Himself Lobotomized
13. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finally Stops Calling Jim a N–Nope, Wait, Never Mind
14. Veronica Roth’s Barely Diverges from The Hunger Games Plot
15. George Orwell’s 1984 Ain’t Got Nothin’ on 2016
16. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is Where I’d Rather Get My Food Than the Place Described in Here
17. Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange Ya Glad You’ve Never Run Into an Alex on the Street?
18. William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Just Look What Happens When Spoiled Teenage Brats Defy Their Parents’ Wishes
19. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit Four Fifty One Way to Keep the Masses Lapping from the Cup of Conformity
20. J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rhymes with Buck
21. John Green’s The Fault in Somebody Not Telling Me I’d Need So Many Tissues
22. William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Whiny, Jealous Little Man Children
23. Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Too Many Words
24. William Faulkner’s As I Die Reading
25. Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and His Seriously Boring Fight with a Fish
26. John Irving’s Not Even a Prayer Could Help Owen Meany
27. Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeping Much, MUCH More Than My Secrets
28. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Burn of Chillingworth’s Jealousy
29. Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Demoralizing Daddy Issues
30. Herman Melville’s Both Moby and Ahab are Giant Dicks
These just scratch the surface of titles that tell the real story. Comment with your additions below!