Historically the secondary English classroom has been a nexus of academic disciplines, responsible for teaching language and literature, as well aspects of psychology, sociology, linguistics, history, and philosophy. The English classroom has also had to assume—sometimes overtly, sometimes tacitly—responsibility for teaching values and moral inquiry through the study of literature. This dissertation builds on the idea that all stories are moral ones, whose acting agents, central conflicts, and narrative trajectories present moral meaning or meanings, and examines novels popular to secondary English curricula in the United States across three periods: Silas Marner and Giants in the Earth, 1912-1944; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Tale of Two Cities, 1945-1969; and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye , 1970-2001.

Combining literary analysis of these novels with qualitative analysis of teachers' attitudes towards them (evidenced by educators' discussions of these works in The English Journal), this study articulates how shifts in the moral concerns of secondary English throughout the past century suggest the evolution of a larger American moral mythology.