AP Literature and Composition
Summer 2014 Reading and Writing Assignments
Port of Los Angeles High School
[email protected]
Welcome to AP Literature and Composition!
During your time off this summer, I have some reading
and writing that I would like you to complete.
Hopefully, these assignments will help you to prepare for
Fall semester, give me some insight into your proficiency at literary analysis, and
prevent your brain from atrophying! I have thought through the sequencing of
these assignments very carefully, so complete them in the order they are listed.
Please feel free to email me with any questions you have over the summer. Enjoy!
All assignments will be collected on the first day of the Fall semester.
Overview of assignments:
1. Your first assignment is to produce two Personal Statements. This composition
will be necessary for your college applications and will also help me get to know you
and your writing strengths and weaknesses. I have attached the requirements and
specifications for the assignment.
2. Next, you will need to read a copy of How to Read Literature like a Professor by
Thomas C. Foster. This text provides a humorous and accessible introduction to
college level literary analysis. As you read, compose 150 to 300 words (one half to
one whole page) of notes for each chapter. I think that you will find these notes a
valuable reference source throughout the year.
3. Finally, you will be reading and analyzing poetry during your summer vacation.
Poetry is a huge portion of the AP Exam in May, and we will be reading, analyzing,
and writing essays on poetry throughout the year. Define the list of poetry terms
attached to this packet. After you have defined the terms, read the poems attached
and answer the questions for each poem. Then, choose five poems of your own and
answer the same questions.
Personal Statement
This essay will be useful to you in many ways.
The Personal Statement
Explanation from the UCs (taken from the Admission's website):
“In reading your application, we want to get to know you as well as we can. There's a limit to
what grades and test scores can tell us, so we ask you to write a personal statement.
Your personal statement is your chance to tell us who you are and what's important to you. Think
of it as your opportunity to introduce yourself to the admissions and scholarship officers reading
your application. Be open, be honest, be real. What you tell us in your personal statement gives
readers the context to better understand the rest of the information you’ve provided in your
application.
A couple of tips: Read each prompt carefully and be sure to respond to all parts. Use specific,
concrete examples to support the points you want to make. Finally, relax. This is one of many
pieces of information we consider in reviewing your application; an admission decision will not
be based on your personal statement alone.”
My advice:
•
Be careful with the three D's: divorce, drugs, depression. While you may have negative
experiences that have shaped your life, make sure that you spell out very clearly how they have
contributed POSITIVELY to your future. This essay is not a counseling session.
Instructions:
• Respond to both prompts, using a maximum of 1,000 words total.
• You may allocate the word count as you wish. If you choose to respond to one prompt at
greater length, we suggest your shorter answer be no less than 250 words.
• Stay within the word limit as closely as you can. A little over — 1,012 words, for
example — is fine.
Prompt #1
Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or
school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
Prompt #2
Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience
that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud
and how does it relate to the person you are?
Poetry Section
Define the following terms:
1. alliteration
26. rhyme
2. ambiguity
27. simile
3. allusion
28. simple metaphor
4. antithesis
29. situational irony
5. apostrophe
30. symbol
6. assonance
31. tragic flaw
7. connotation
32. verbal irony
8. consonance
33. anaphora
9. denotation
34. aphorism
10. dramatic irony
35. asyndeton
11. extended metaphor
36. cacophony
12. flashback
37. caesura
13. foreshadowing
38. conceit
14. hyperbole
39. chiasmus
15. imagery
40. dues ex machine
16. metaphor
41. enjambment
17. metaphysical
42. epigram
18. motif
43. euphony
19. onomatopoeia
44. juxtaposition
20. oxymoron
45. litotes
21. parallelism
46. malapropism
22. paradox
47. periphrasis
23. personification
48. synecdoche
24. pun (paronomasia)
49. synesthesia
25. rhetorical question
50. zeugma
Directions: For the five poems attached, answer the following questions. Also, find five poems
of your own and answer the questions for each of the poems you chose. Make sure you attached
a copy of the poems when you turn in your summer work.
1. What is the dramatic situation?
That is, who is the speaker (or who are the speakers)? Is the speaker a male or female? Where is
he or she? When does this poem take place? What are the circumstances? Sometimes you’ll be
able to answer all the questions. Sometimes you’ll be able to answer only a few, and sometimes
only vaguely: The speaker is unnamed and unplaced and is speaking to an indeterminate audience. No matter. Already you’ve begun to understand the poem.
2. What is the structure of the poem?
That is, what are the parts of the poem and how are they related to each other? What gives the
poem its coherence? What are the structural divisions of the poem? In analyzing the structure,
your best aid is the punctuation. Look first for the complete sentences indicated by periods, semicolons, question marks, or exclamation points. Then ask how the poem gets from the first sentence to the second and from the second to the third. Are there repetitions such as parallel syntax
or the use of one simile in each sentence? Answer these questions in accordance with the sense
of the poem, not by where a line ends or a rhyme falls. Don’t assume that all sonnets will break
into an 8–6 or a 4–4–4–2 pattern, but be able to recognize these patterns if they are used.
Think about the logic of the poem. Does it, say, ask questions, then answer them? Or develop an
argument? Or use a series of analogies to prove a point? Understanding the structure isn’t just a
matter of mechanics. It will help you to understand the meaning of the poem as a whole and to
perceive some of the art, the formal skills that the poet has used.
3. What is the theme of the poem?
You should now be able to see the point of the poem. Sometimes a poem simply says “I love
you;” sometimes the theme or the meaning is much more complex. If possible, define what the
poem says and why. A love poem usually praises the loved one in the hope that the speaker’s
love will be returned. But many poems have meanings too complex to be reduced to single sentences.
4. Are the grammar and meaning clear?
Make sure you understand the meaning of all the words in the poem, especially words you
thought you knew but which don’t seem to fit in the context of the poem. Also make sure you
understand the grammar of the poem. The word order of poetry is often skewed, and in a poem a
direct object may come before the subject and the verb.
5. What are the important images and figures of speech?
What are the important literal sensory objects, the images, such as a field of poppies or a stench
of corruption? What are the similes and metaphors of the poem? In each, exactly what is compared to what? Is there a pattern in the images, such as a series of comparisons all using men
compared to wild animals? The most difficult challenge of reading poetry is discriminating between the figurative (“I love a rose” — that is, my love is like a rose, beautiful, sweet, fragile)
and the literal (“I love a rose” — that is, roses are my favorite flower).
6. What are the most important single words used in the poem?
This is another way of asking about diction. Some of the most significant words in a poem aren’t
figurative or images but still determine the effect of the poem. A good reader recognizes which
words — usually nouns and verbs, adjectives and adverbs — are the keys to the poem.
7. What is the tone of the poem?
Tone is a slippery word, and almost everyone has trouble with it. It’s sometimes used to mean
the mood or atmosphere of a work, though purists are offended by this definition. Or it can mean
a manner of speaking, a tone of voice, as in “The disappointed coach’s tone was sardonic.” But
its most common use as a term of literary analysis is to denote the inferred attitude of an author.
When the author’s attitude is different from that of the speaker, as is usually the case in ironic
works, the tone of voice of the speaker, which may be calm, businesslike, even gracious, may be
very different from the satiric tone of the work, which reflects the author’s disapproval of the
speaker.
8. What literary devices does the poem employ?
The list of rhetorical devices that a writer may use is enormous. The terms you should worry
about are, above all, metaphor, simile, and personification. However, after you define the attached list of poetic terms, seem how many you can fine in the poem.
.
Poem #1
A Barred Owl
The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”
Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus domesticate a fear,
And send a small child back to sleep at night
Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.
Poem #2
The History Teacher - Billy Collins
Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"
The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.
The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.
Poem #3
"London, 1802"
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.
Poem #4
Blackberry Picking
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
for a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots
where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
we trekked and picked until the cans were full,
until the tinkling bottom had been covered
with green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
with thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
Poem #5
“Sonnet 73”
That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.