Here it is--the open-ended essay prompt from this year's AP Literature and Composition Exam.
As you can see, our students need to pull from EVERY ENGLISH TEACHER's classroom as they face this rigorous test. Take a stab at it! Set your timer at 40 minutes and take off!
(E-mail your essay to candace.tannous@cfisd.net and let's celebrate EFFORT and WRITING in summer!)
Kudos to Mitzi Phillips who turned in a fine essay before school was out.
ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS
© 2011 The College Board
Question 3
(Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.)
In a novel by William Styron, a father tells his son that life “is a search for justice.”
Choose a character from a novel or play who responds in some significant way to justice or injustice. Then write a well-developed essay in which you analyze the character’s understanding of justice, the degree to which the character’s search for justice is successful, and the significance of this search for the work as a whole.
You may choose a work from the list below or another work of comparable literary merit. Do not merely summarize the plot.
All the King’s Men
All the Pretty Horses
Antigone
Atonement
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
The Bonesetter’s Daughter
Crime and Punishment
A Gathering of Old Men
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Invisible Man
King Lear
A Lesson Before Dying
Light in August
Medea
The Merchant of Venice
Murder in the Cathedral
Native Son
No Country for Old Men
Oedipus Rex
The Poisonwood Bible
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Set This House on Fire
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
The Stranger
Things Fall Apart
A Thousand Acres
A Thousand Splendid Suns
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Trial
well, I just finished my essay and found it was more difficult to write than I expected. I wrote on No Country for Old Men, which is what a lot of my Eng IV students chose, and where I STARTED going with my thoughts on justice is NOT where I ended up...so I went back and adjusted my first paragraph a little, which AP students can't do as it's handwritten. However, they CAN, perhaps, write their intro on prompt page (not essay pages) and leave some space to add it in at end to avoid what happened to me. That's a gamble, though, with timing!
ReplyDeleteI just wrapped up my essay with interruptions from the AT & T Uverse repair guys! (A good repair guy from AT & T Uverse is hard to find. But, I recommend Homer and Ray.) With TV back on, I had to watch a little of Wimbledon, then it dawned on me: "Hey, I gotta finish that essay!" So, I fudged the time quite a bit and gave my self an hour all totaled, which means I have mucho sympathy for our students who must crank out their essays in 40 minutes with manual pen and ink production whereas a keyboard allows so much quicker execution.
ReplyDeleteI went for the Big Easy, choosing the novel of social protest itself--good ole GRAPES OF WRATH. As I got into the writing, I sort of bogged down talking about how inherent a quest for justice is in the human heart. I think I called it a primal instinct--which was something I never considered before! So, yes, this was a good assignment because it gave me great empathy for our students and reminded me how hard it is to write. I couldn't remember exactly a single quote that was useful. I knew the quotes I wished I could remember! I ended up making up a quote for Muley that was something like what I believe he said. I'm not sure that's kosher.