Note: Do not use outside sources for your essays. If your work is plagiarized, you will face withdrawal from AP Literature and school disciplinary action. You should know that your teachers are far more interested in what you have to say than what anyone else has to say.
When you analyze poetry and narrative works, your main goal will be to find the message or human truth of the work, and then to explain how the artist uses writing techniques to make the work powerful.
Format your essays according to MLA standard guidelines. Please strive to properly format your poetry citations. You will be able to rewrite the essays for a better grade during marking period one.
1) College Essay: Due on first day of school. Essays should be at least 500 and no more than 650 words. See Common Application prompts for 2023-2024. Likely, you worked on these at the end of 11th grade, but if you need any help, check with Ms. Anderson. Check out this link, which provides advice from Yale University. Or, this article in the New York Times.
2) Poetry Essay: Essay and annotated poems due on the first day of school. About
750 words. See the prompt, tips, and sample essay below. Read and annotate both poems, but only write ONE essay. Choose either Chicago by Carl Sandburg OR the rites for Cousin Vit, by Gwendolyn Brooks. (Link for poems with line numbers.)
3) Summer Reading and Study Guide Responses: Read Julius Caesar and The Handmaid's Tale.
Write responses to questions in the Study Guide for The Handmaid's Tale. These are due when you come to school. Essays for summer reading will be completed when you come back to school. See notes on readings, suggested prompts, and tips for writing these narrative essays below if you want to get a head start on these.
For your own enrichment, consider reading Geoffrey Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale, one of the Canterbury Tales. This was published in 1387 and likely was an inspiration for Atwood's novel. *See note below.
Poetry Essay Prompt: Write a well-organized essay in which you explain how the poet portrays a complex picture of his or her subject (use adjectives that describe the "good" and the "bad") through the use of perspective, figurative language, sound, imagery, form, and other literary devices.
Poetry Essay Tips:
One of the goals of AP Literature and Composition is to guide you to see the art at work in poetry and literature. For poetry, begin with explaining the poem's purpose or meaning. Use your body paragraphs to explain how the poet uses poetic and literary devices to intensify the poem's message. Follow the poet's organization and see how the poem's ideas progress from the beginning to the end. See Sample Poetry Essay.
A good way to begin would be to thoroughly annotate the poem you choose. Be sure you clearly understand the meaning of each verse line and find literary devices that work to make the poem powerful. Be sure your claim (thesis statement) clearly states what you think this “complex picture” is. Use adjectives to precisely describe the positives and negatives. Do not simply repeat the vague phrasing of the prompt question.
Follow the link on how to eloquently blend poetry verse lines into your essay on the blog. Figurative language includes metaphor, simile, personification, apostrophe, symbol, irony, paradox, and hyperbole. Other devices are imagery, sound, syntax, form, perspective, meter, and more.
Be sure your essay has an introduction paragraph that includes the poet's name, the title of the poem, and a clear thesis statement. Your essay should have paragraphs with clear topic sentences. Always lead your paragraphs with ideas, not literary devices. Here is a reasonable list of terms to know, and a Quizlet with the definitions so you can practice.
A good way to begin would be to thoroughly annotate the poem you choose. Be sure you clearly understand the meaning of each verse line and find literary devices that work to make the poem powerful. Be sure your claim (thesis statement) clearly states what you think this “complex picture” is. Use adjectives to precisely describe the positives and negatives. Do not simply repeat the vague phrasing of the prompt question.
Your essay should strive to eloquently incorporate quotes into your text and explain how literary or poetic tools in these quotes heighten the emotional content of the poem. Poems of course, especially narrative poems, can incorporate literary tools, or elements of narrative fiction, such as plot elements and character development.
Be sure your essay has an introduction paragraph that includes the poet's name, the title of the poem, and a clear thesis statement. Your essay should have paragraphs with clear topic sentences. Always lead your paragraphs with ideas, not literary devices. Here is a reasonable list of terms to know, and a Quizlet with the definitions so you can practice.
Notes on Summer Readings:
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood. This novel was published in 1985, during the Reagan years, thirteen years after the Equal Rights Amendment failed to be ratified and women's rights experienced a backwash after the passing of Roe v. Wade.
When I (Ms. Sasso) read the novel, I was twenty-seven. I remember thinking how grateful I was because I lived in the United States and that this dystopian vision was just an exaggerated tale of caution against the Puritanical push at the time to put women back in the home. I never would have thought this book would still resound in 2023, let alone seem more like a prediction than fiction.
Please DO NOT FAIL to read the last chapter, the "Historical Notes" at the end of the novel. It is the key to understanding the work as a whole.
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. For detailed background information about this play and definitions for Roman offices, see the link to another post on this blog. See this: Link to the awesome 1953 movie with Marlon Brando.
Narrative Essays Tips
The purpose of any story -- even personal ones -- is to illustrate a life lesson or "human truth": What is honor? Can an individual act morally in an unjust society? When you begin your essay, you have to make a bold, opinionated, and provable statement that pins the blame on someone or something for what happens at the end of the story. This will be your thesis statement or claim.
Be sure your introduction paragraph includes your thesis statement, the author's name, and the title of the work, in italics. You must analyze the story to the end. What happens in the end is usually where you find "the meaning of the work as a whole".
Follow the link to this character assessment exercise to help you formulate an idea for your thesis statement. Since one novel might have many perspectives, different characters might find different truths. The main character, however, is your best bet for a thorough response.
Narrative Essay Prompts: Consider the following prompts for your essays when you get to class in the fall.
2022: Many works of fiction feature characters who accept or reject a hierarchical structure. This hierarchy may be social, economic, political, or familial, or it may apply to some other kind of structure. Choose a work of fiction in which a character responds to a hierarchy in some significant way. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how that character’s response to the hierarchy contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole. Don’t summarize the plot.
2007B: Works of literature often depict acts of betrayal. Friends and even family may betray a protagonist; main characters may likewise be guilty of treachery or may betray their own values. Select a novel or play that includes such a betrayal. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the nature of the betrayal and show how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
2010: Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special places. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.
*The Canterbury Tales is a series of stories told by a haphazard, motley crew of pilgrims heading from London to Canterbury Cathedral, who engage in a storytelling contest. The Wife of Bath's prologue, or introduction to her tale, is perhaps more fascinating than the actual story. Just as Atwood's novel seems, horrifically, to resonate today, Chaucer's Wife of Bath seems to be screaming her fight from the 14th century to future women. Her story is funny, sad, and inspirational. (What really, do women want? The answer was the same in 1387. It is a fight to be continued.)
