Dear AP Literature Students,
Welcome to AP Literature and Composition! We are excited to start the year with exhilarating and
thought provoking literature. This is a college level course designed to both develop your critical
thinking and analysis skills as well as prepare you for college expectations. We will spend the year
doing close and careful reading and analytical writing in response to that reading as we prepare for
the AP exam.
Before school starts, you need to read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. While you read, determine
tone and theme by identifying literary techniques such as diction, syntax, characterization,
symbolism, structure, juxtaposition, and irony throughout the novel. Your novel should represent
interactive reading as you highlight, underline and write in the margins accordingly. As you make
note of these literary techniques, you must choose ten examples to turn in as a dialectical journal.
Your response to your ten entries is of the utmost importance and should be well thought out and
well explained. We will analyze McCarthy’s use of these techniques when you come to school in
the fall and your notes will prove invaluable to you during class discussions.
Poetry is also a key component of the AP Literature and Composition course. We will spend a great
deal of time this year analyzing, discussing and writing about poetry. Using the two poems
“Darkness” by George Gordon Byron, Lord and “The Horses” by Edwin Muir, you will answer the
analysis questions as well as write a brief analytic response.
The first day of class bring your dialectical journal and poetry essay. You also need to be prepared
to take a comprehensive exam on the novel during the first week of school.
Enjoy your summer. We look forward to meeting you in the fall.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Suzanne Canady
Mrs. Jessica Fisher
Mrs. Jennifer Murrin-Loomis
Reading Assignment for The Road
As you read the novel, keep a double-entry journal. You should have a total of 10 entries that span the
entirety of the novel.
Choose the most important quotes and focus on characterization including character motivation, imagery, and
juxtaposition.
Divide your paper in half as demonstrated below.
TEXT
1. Write the sentence(s) in this space
RESPONSE
1. Briefly note the circumstances
2. Write a response to the entry. Share what
prompted you to include it or why you feel it
is noteworthy. Include analysis of literary
techniques such as diction, syntax, detail and
tone.
3. Write a personal response to this quote.
How does this quote affect you emotionally?
2. You may include one entry on a page or you
may continue down the page.
3. You may write on the back of the paper.
4. This assignment must be in ink.
5. This assignment will be graded and neatness
definitely counts.
Poetry Analysis
Poetry is the most condensed and concentrated form of literature. Poetry achieves its purpose by
drawing more fully and more consistently than does ordinary language on a number of literary
devices. Among them are connotation, imagery, metaphor, symbol, paradox, irony, allusion, sound
repetition, rhythm, and pattern. Using these resources and the experiences of life, the poet shapes
and makes a poem. As you read the following poems, look for literary devices as well as tone and
theme. Answer the questions that follow and write a poetry response.
1--Guiding questions for the two poems. Please answer the following questions, referencing the text
in your answers.
Darkness: Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1788-1824)
1. Explain lines 1-9: the meaning and the literary techniques used to create that meaning. Why begin
this poem with the idea of a “dream”?
2. Explain how people created light and the significance of specific images.
3. How did ‘War’ satisfy his hunger?
4. Explain what happened to the two men who were the last two alive in the city. How/Why do they
die?
5. Darkness is named at the end of the poem. Who/What is ‘darkness,’ according to Lord Byron?
The Horses: Edwin Muir (1887-1959)
1. Explain in detail, the events prior to the arrival of the “strange horses.”
2. The overriding impression appears to be one of silence. Which diction, imagery, personification,
and/or metaphor create this?
3. Explain the shifts in the poem. There are two major shifts: identify the lines where the shifts occur
and explain how the tone, meaning, imagery, etc. shifts from one section to the next.
4. What do the horses symbolize and how do the images used by the poet help show this?
5. How would you interpret the final three lines of the poem? Use the preceding lines to support your
interpretation.
2--Response: Using one or both of these poems write a one page response. You may approach this
assignment several ways. Sometimes students write an analysis of the poem. They explain what is going on
in the poem and relate what they think the theme is. Other students begin with the theme and elaborate on
that, while some draw and explain connections between specific words, phrases, images, etc. Occasionally a
student will write a response on one line from the poem, making meaning based on that one line, but using
other pieces of the poem to help prove that meaning. If you’re using both of the poems, write a comparison.
What you do with the response is up to you as long as you say something. Do not spend time telling how you
could not understand the poem no matter how you tried. The last pages of this packet include two example
literary analysis essays, so please read through those before you write your own essay. They will provide you
some insight into the depth we expect in your analysis.
Darkness
George Gordon Byron, 1788 - 1824
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no
day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d,
And men were gather’d round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil’d;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds
shriek’d
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twin’d themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour’d,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur’d their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer’d not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak’d up,
And shivering scrap’d with their cold skeleton
hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other’s aspects—saw, and shriek’d, and
died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they
dropp’d
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before;
The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.
The Horses
Edwin Muir 1956
Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading
north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children
quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its
strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and
waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne
our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.
Literary Terms
AP English
Tone – the reflection in a work of the author’s attitude toward his or her subject. Tone in writing is
comparable to tone of voice in speech, and may be described as brusque, friendly, imperious, insinuating,
teasing, etc.
Theme – an abstract idea that emerges from a literary work’s treatment of its subject-matter, or a topic
recurring in a number of literary works. Thematic ideas include love, war, revenge, betrayal, fate, etc.
Irony – in its broadest sense, the incongruity, or difference, between reality (what is) and appearance (what
seems to be).
 Dramatic irony – a situation in which the audience knows more about a character’s situation than the
character does, foreseeing an outcome contrary to the character’s expectations.
 Situational irony – the contrast between what is intended or expected and what actually occurs.
 Verbal irony – a contrast between what is said and what is actually meant.
Characterization – the method by which an author creates the appearance and personality of imaginary
persons. The author may choose to tell the reader what a character is like through narration, show what a
character is like through actions and dialogue, or have the character reveal him/herself through inner
thoughts.
Symbol – anything that stands for or represents something else beyond it, usually an idea conventionally
associated with it.
Structure – the organization and form of a work.
Juxtaposition – the “side by side” comparison of two or more objects or ideals for the purpose of
highlighting similarities or differences.
Poetry Analysis—TP-FASTT
T
TITLE
P
PARAPHRASE
F
PARAPHRASE
FIGURATIVE
LANGUAGE
Predict what you think the title means/what the poem is about before
you read it.
Put the poem in your own words
Identify and explain significance to meaning of poem.
A
P
F
S
ATTITUDE/TONE
What is the subject of the poem and what is the author’s attitude
towards it?
SHIFTS
Where do they occur and what do they signify?
T
TITLE
What is the meaning and significance?
S
T
THEME
What observation is the author making about people?
“Poem Title” is about . . .
T
Example Poetry Comparison
London, 1802
William Wordsworth
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour;
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
Douglass
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah, Douglass, we have fall'n on evil days,
Such days as thou, not even thou didst know,
When thee, the eyes of that harsh long ago
Saw, salient, at the cross of devious ways,
And all the country heard thee with amaze.
Not ended then, the passionate ebb and flow,
The awful tide that battled to and fro;
We ride amid a tempest of dispraise.
Now, when the waves of swift dissension swarm,
And Honour, the strong pilot, lieth stark,
Oh, for thy voice high-sounding o'er the storm,
For thy strong arm to guide the shivering bark,
The blast-defying power of thy form,
To give us comfort through the lonely dark.
Example 1
Dunbar and Wordsworth, through these poems, cry out for the guidance
and protection needed in the dark days of their respective countries.
Both men look longingly to great men of the past to serve as eternal
examples of the progress that must still be made.
However, while
Wordsworth calls for a return of London to “virtue, freedom, and
power”, Dunbar seeks those things for a community of Americans who have
never completely owned them.
These two works use similar devices and techniques to get their
points across, which are also similar. For one, both works use rhyme
throughout the poem. We see this in “London 1802” in lines one through
four. We also see this in “Douglass” lines 1-4; this device serves to
dramatize and emphasize the dire nature of the times in each country.
Secondly, both works focus on the virtues of one man from the past. In
Douglass, Dunbar references abolitionist Frederick Douglass, while
William Wordsworth refers to English poet and political writer John
Milton. These men are refered to, and really idolized, in these works
because of their virtues and their well-known work in fighting causes.
Indeed, these two poems share obvious commonalities but, we must look
deeper to see their contrasts.
In these two pieces, contrasts can be drawn between the times of
London in 1802 and America in 1902 and how the goals of these two poems
differ. For one, William Wordsworth calls for a return to virtues and
freedom, saying that England has become a “swamp of stagnant waters.”
We must make the inference that in the time of John Milton, Londoners
came into an age of liberty and power in the public. However, this
inference can’t be made for the African American community in the time
of Frederick Douglass. Dunbar, instead of calling for a return to
virtue, calls for leadership, a guiding light through the dark fight
for freedom and equality in the Black American community. We see this
when he says he longs for the “Blast defying power of thy form, To give
us comfort through the lonely dark.” Indeed Wordsworth and Dunbar
clearly differ when it comes to the intent with which they call for the
great Milton and Frederick Douglass.
Throughout their commonalities and differences, we see that London
in 1802 and the United States 100 years later were lands of bleakness
where the relevant, poignant voices of Wordsworth and Dunbar called
longingly for men of courage and virtue to guide and protect.
Example 2
In the poems “London, 1802” and “Douglass,” Wordsworth and Dunbar,
respectively are crying out to the patriots of their causes, to lift
themselves and their people out of the darkness of social turmoil,
disillusion, and oppression. Although written at different times and
in different places, these two poems convey their writers desperate
need for a savior to alleviate the social ills of their countries.
In “London, 1802,” Wordsworth is speaking to John Milton, saying
that “England hath need of thee: she is a fen.” Wordsworth believes
that Milton, who “championed the cause of liberty and public virtue”
would be able to restore meaning and glory to the “stagnant waters [of]
altar, sword, and pen.” To Wordsworth, the glory of old England—its
churches, its victory and pride, and its creative inspiration has
dissipated, become hollow and meaningless, and that England is peopled
by “selfish men” who have sacrificed “inward happiness.” Wordsworth
thus laments the loss of his countries guiding light—Milton—whose “soul
was like a star.”
In “Douglass,” Dunbar calls out to Frederick Douglass, the escaped
slave and ardent abolitionist, to come back and champion his cause once
more. Dunbar speaks of his present time as “such days as thou
[Douglass], not even thou didst know.” In other words, the racial
prejudice in Dunbar’s time and the trampling of the rights of black
Americans is even worse than in Douglass’ time.
In this poem, Dunbar
never mentions the glory of what America once was, as Wordsworth does
about England in his poem. Instead, American race relations are “the
awful tide that [still battles] to and fro. . . the waves of swift
dissention [swarming]” ever greater. Dunbar pleas to Douglass to give
black- Americans strength as they try to rise against oppression—“to
give [them] comfort through the lonely dark.”
Stylistically, both poems call out to a “thou”, or a “thee” from the
standpoint of a “we!” In Wordsworths case, he stands for all early 19th
century Englanders, while Douglass speaks for African Americans in
early 20th century. Metaphorically, while both poems are a cry for
freedom—in “London, 1802” from the inward oppression, and in “Douglass”
from white- American oppression, both use water—the sea to relate to
this freedom. However in Wordsworth’s poem, the sea relates to Miltons
voice—hence it serves as a metaphor for purity and freedom. In Dunbars
poem, the sea is violent with “a tempest of dispraise” and racial
problems are referred to as “storm.”
Hence, while these poems are simmlar in their style, and in their
authors want for calm and freedom, their origins are fundamentally
different.