Open Prompt Revision 4

1990. Choose a novel or play that depicts a conflict between a parent (or a parental figure) and a son or daughter. Write an essay in which you analyze the sources of the conflict and explain how the conflict contributes to the meaning of the work. Avoid plot summary.

                Every family has conflict.  In Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, the conflict between Willy and his son, Biff, is extreme. Miller uses literary techniques to describe and explain the father-son rift, and then uses the broken relationship to show what problems in society.

                Miller’s details and use of foils showcase Willy’s lack of parental skills.  Willy loves his sons.  The problem is that Willy provides awful advice to his children.  Willy’s foil, Charley, shows this.  Willy tells Biff to blow off school.  Charley tells his son, Bernard, to study hard.  Willy laughs at his son’s theft.  Charley teaches Bernard right from wrong.  These differences shown in the past affect the lives Biff and Bernard create.  Miller provides impressive details about Bernard’s life.  He is successful, and is even off about to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court.  Clearly, Charley’s advice was effective.  It follows naturally that Willy’s, being opposite, was not.  Biff resents Willy’s poor parenting. This is the root of the strain on Biff and Willy’s relationship. 

                Miller uses Willy’s incompetence to highlight societal problems.  Willy believes that the key to success is being well liked.  The reader is forced to examine the world to find the root of this belief.  Miller is telling us through Biff and Willy’s dysfunctional relationship that society is superficial.  All we care about is popularity, and about exteriors.  We don’t care what’s underneath.  That is why Willy’s appliances are always falling apart: quality.  Nobody in today’s world cares about quality.  Willy represents many people.  American society as a whole believes that you don’t have to work, you can skate by if people like you.  Miller sees something wrong in this fact, and showcases it through Wily and Biff’s dysfunctional relationship. 

Open Prompt Revision 3

2007. In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present activities, attitudes, or values of a character. Choose a novel or play in which a character must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an essay in which you show how the character's relationship to the past contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.

Soldiers return home with mental and physical scars.  Jake Barnes in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises must deal with his physical handicap and feelings of hopelessness, each preventing him from being with the woman he loves, Brett.  Jake lives in the past, before his time in the army, unable to advance.  Hemingway argues through use of detail, language and diction that war holds us back from progress.

                Hemingway creates an air of uselessness surrounding everything in his work.  He is particularly famous for his use of language in conveying a sense of hopelessness.  The dialogue between Hemingway’s characters, especially in this novel, is very basic, and very ambiguous.  Jake and Brett appear to be discussing nothing at all.  They talk in circles, discussing the most mundane topics.  This creates a feeling that nothing matters.  Lack of details contributes to this established feeling as well.  We are never told explicitly what Jake’s injury is.  This deliberate vagueness contributes to the uselessness.  Lacking details and specific language are confusing and upsetting.   

                Once the reader is convinced nothing has meaning, Hemingway creates some, using the specific event that ruined his characters’ lives: war. The reader accepts this easily, desperate for something to cling to.   All of Jake’s problems trace back to the battles he was a part of.  After drawing a connection between the hopeless feelings and war, Hemingway can easily assert that war is bad.  The reader already feels pity for Jake and his friends.  Once a cause is given to the situations the characters live in, the reader has no problem despising it.  Hemingway makes the reader believe that war is wrong.

Open Prompt Revision 2

 1970 Also. Choose a work of recognized literary merit in which a specific inanimate object (e.g., a seashell, a handkerchief, a painting) is important, and write an essay in which you show how two or three of the purposes the object serves are related to one another.

People often lack appreciation for a simple portrait.  In The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, a portrait is central to the story, arguably as important as any of the characters. The title object serves to remind Dorian Gray of his moral decay as well as ultimately destroy him.  These purposes combine to convey Wilde’s message about the dangers of beauty.

The painting acts as a portal of truth.  In the world in which Dorian lives, everything appears fine.  Dorian is a young, handsome man.  He attends fancy parties, falls in love, and has good friends.  However, through Wilde’s use of imagery, the painting allows us to peel back the shiny exterior of Dorian’s life and see what lies beneath.  Really, Dorian’s “soul grows sick”.  Although he stays beautiful, his moral wrongs manifest themselves in the painting.  It grows old and hideous.  Wilde’s description makes readers shudder just thinking about the twisted lips and fiery eyes of Dorian’s portrait. 

                Even Dorian is unnerved by his painting.  At first, Mr. Gray hides his painting.  As time passes and Dorian grows more evil, he begins to delight in the painting.  The physical manifestation of his evil is something only a truly corrupt person can enjoy.  This signals that the innocent Dorian Gray is gone.  Finally, remembering the horror it had once caused him, Dorian decides not to let a painting control him.  Why had he not destroyed it years ago?    Diction gives the final scene an ominous air.  As Gray plunges a knife through the painting, the evil flows back into him.  Dorian is replaced by a dead old man.

                The portrait of Dorian Gray serves to document evil and to kill it.  These meanings are not independent of each other.  Dorian destroyed the painting in an attempt to erase evidence of his evil.   In destroying it, he destroyed himself. Despite his external beauty, Dorian Gray was not attractive on the inside.  Wilde, through purposes created by diction and imagery, is saying that beauty really is only skin deep

Open Prompt Revision 1

2002. Morally ambiguous characters -- characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good -- are at the heart of many works of literature. Choose a novel or play in which a morally ambiguous character plays a pivotal role. Then write an essay in which you explain how the character can be viewed as morally ambiguous and why his or her moral ambiguity is significant to the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

While watching shows such as Dexter or House, deciding whether to root for or to oppose the morally ambiguous main character is a struggle.  In Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the reader enters a love-hate relationship with the protagonist, Raskolnikov.  Dostoyevsky first draws the reader into the complex mind of his main character, and then uses this conflicted individual to make the reader question the validity of a black and white world.

The reader finds Raskolnikov in two opposite situations, solidifying his status as morally ambiguous.  First, Raskolnikov murders an old woman and her sister. Dostoyevsky chooses words that make the reader cringe, almost able to feel Raskolnikov’s axe crashing down on the heads of his victims.  The reader is sure this man must be evil.  How could anyone who commits such a crime be anything short of a monster?  Then, Raskolnikov is shown in a new light.  After receiving a letter from his mother and sister, the softer side the protagonist comes out.   Though just pages before, the reader was sure Raskolnikov was not even human, now he seems capable of love. .

Raskolnikov’s moral ambiguity makes the reader question definitions.   Raskolnikov cannot be pigeon-holed into the category of “hero” nor “villain”, casting doubt on other labels.  What is wrong?  Yes, murder is labeled “wrong”, but who decides on these labels? Maybe the murder of Alyona Ivanovna, the old pawnbroker, was not a crime, but a good deed.  After all, this wealthy old woman was bitter and useless.  Raskolnikov states that he intends to use her money for good.  He could give it to the poor, or use it to finance his education.   Further, Raskolnikov justifies his action by asserting that all “great men” must remove obstacles in order to become great, often equating himself with Napoleon.  Christopher Columbus slaughtered large numbers of Native Americans, and modern society named a day after him.  How is this different than Raskolnikov’s “crime”?

Main Concept 4: Meaning

The ultimate question is the "so what?" question.  Everything we have done in class, and all of the previous main concepts feed into this one.  We are trying to figure out meaning and messages in literature.  It is what we do for every closed prompt, along with all of the open ones.  Meaning is what we search for in every novel, play and poem.  Everything  boils down to meaning.

Main Concept 3: Interpretation

We have spent a lot of time in this course discussing others' interpretations of texts.  Every time a director turns a book into a movie, he is interpreting it.  For example, we watched several different versions of Hamlet in class.  Although each movie followed the same basic plot line, little bits here and there were changed.  Shakespeare himself changed the original Hamlet, altering names and adding in concepts.  How each author or director chooses to interpret a text changes the message.  Additionally, during class discussions, each individual has his or her own interpretation of the text.  The goal of the course was to mesh all of the different interpretations of the texts into one conclusion.

Main Concept 2: Arguments

Learning about the structure of an argument has been a large part of this course.  There are two sides of this concept.  First, there are arguments that other authors write.  We had to learn to dissect an argument, finding the evidence and understanding what exactly the writer is trying to say.  Then, come arguments that we must write.  Our arguments must be clear and concise, without any excess words.  Plain style arguments are key on the AP, because there is so little time to construct an essay.

Main Concept 1: Techniques

This course focused majorly on techniques in writing, and what those techniques can express to a reader.  This includes DIDLS, novel terms, drama terms, comedy terms, and any of the other techniques authors use.  For example, we discussed multiple types of repetition in class.  Each of these types can express something different to the reader, and emphasize an alternate part of a sentence.  Being able to recognize literary techniques is an essential part of reading anything, and will be vital during the AP test, the test that the entire class aims to prepare us for.