Since it was announced Zendaya was cast in Spider-Man: Homecoming there’s been a big question mark around her character. Early rumors that she’d been cast as Mary Jane Watson were quashed by the star in a November interview with ET Online. She verified her character is named “Michelle.” Last night we saw the first trailer for the film finds Zendaya reading in the cafeteria giving us our first glimpse of the actress in her role.
The moment doesn’t give us many answers other than showing us “Michelle” is an avid book reader. As a fan of seeing books on film and figuring out what characters are reading, I took time last night to squint at the blurry screen capture.
Here are the top three books in the pile with Wikipedia synopsis:
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent
The novel chronicles the life of 19-year-old intellectual, Arkady Dolgoruky, illegitimate child of the controversial and womanizing landowner Versilov. A focus of the novel is the recurring conflict between father and son, particularly in ideology, which represents the battles between the conventional “old” way of thinking in the 1840s and the new nihilistic point of view of the youth of 1860s Russia. Whereas the young of Arkady’s time embraced a very negative opinion of Russian culture in contrast to Western or European culture.
Another main theme is Arkady’s development and utilization of his “idea” in his life, mainly a form of rebellion against society (and his father) through the rejection of attending a university, and the making of money and living independently, onto the eventual aim of becoming excessively wealthy and powerful.
Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove
This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her effect on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honorable motives, while others are more self-interested.
Kōbō Abe’s Woman in the Dunes
In 1955, Jumpei Niki, a schoolteacher from Tokyo, visits a fishing village to collect insects. After missing the last bus, he is led, by the villagers, in an act of apparent hospitality, to a house in the dunes that can be reached only by ladder. The next morning the ladder is gone and he finds he is expected to keep the house clear of sand with the woman living there, with whom he is also to produce children. He eventually gives up trying to escape when he comes to realize returning to his old life would give him no more liberty. After seven years, he is proclaimed officially dead.
As for the fourth book, there are many books that have “Democracy” and I haven’t been able to find a matching book spine image.
Zendaya Reading in the Second Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer
The second trailer dropped on March 27 and gave us our second peek into Zendaya’s character’s reading interests in Spider-Man: Homecoming. This time the visual is clear: W. Somerset Maugham‘s 1915 masterpiece Of Human Bondage.
From Penguin Books: