Essay Prompts
AP ENGLISH LIT AND COMP
FREE RESPONSE QUESTIONS
2004 (Form A): Critic Roland Barthes has said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” Choose a novel or play and, considering Barthes’ Observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers any answers. Explain how the author’s treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
You may select a work from the list below or another novel or play of comparable literary merit.
Alias Grace Middlemarch All the King’s Men Moby-Dick Candide Obasan Death of a Salesman Oedipus Rex Doctor Faustus Orlando Don Quixote A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man A Gesture Life Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Ghosts The Scarlet Letter Great Expectations Sister Carrie The Great Gatsby The Sound and Fury Gulliver’s Travels Sula Heart of Darkness The Sun Also Rises Invisible Man Their Eyes Were Watching God Joe Turner’s Come and Gone The Things They Carried King Lear The Turn of the Screw Major Barbara Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf
2004 (Form B): The most important themes in literature are sometimes developed in scenes in which a death or deaths take place. Choose a novel or play and write a well-organized essay in which you show how a specific death scene helps to illuminate the meaning of the work as whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
You may select a work from the list below or choose another novel or play of comparable literary merit.
All the King’s Men King Lear Anna Karenina Madame Bovary As I Lay Dying The Mill on the Floss The Awakening Moby-Dick Billy Budd Mrs. Dalloway Bleak House Native Son Bless Me,Ultima One Hundred Years of Solitude Catch-22 Othello Crime and Punishment The Scarlet Letter The Crucible
FREE RESPONSE QUESTIONS
2004 (Form A): Critic Roland Barthes has said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” Choose a novel or play and, considering Barthes’ Observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers any answers. Explain how the author’s treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
You may select a work from the list below or another novel or play of comparable literary merit.
Alias Grace Middlemarch All the King’s Men Moby-Dick Candide Obasan Death of a Salesman Oedipus Rex Doctor Faustus Orlando Don Quixote A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man A Gesture Life Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Ghosts The Scarlet Letter Great Expectations Sister Carrie The Great Gatsby The Sound and Fury Gulliver’s Travels Sula Heart of Darkness The Sun Also Rises Invisible Man Their Eyes Were Watching God Joe Turner’s Come and Gone The Things They Carried King Lear The Turn of the Screw Major Barbara Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf
2004 (Form B): The most important themes in literature are sometimes developed in scenes in which a death or deaths take place. Choose a novel or play and write a well-organized essay in which you show how a specific death scene helps to illuminate the meaning of the work as whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
You may select a work from the list below or choose another novel or play of comparable literary merit.
All the King’s Men King Lear Anna Karenina Madame Bovary As I Lay Dying The Mill on the Floss The Awakening Moby-Dick Billy Budd Mrs. Dalloway Bleak House Native Son Bless Me,Ultima One Hundred Years of Solitude Catch-22 Othello Crime and Punishment The Scarlet Letter The Crucible