2019 AP English Literature Summer Assignment

Part I:

Print out the PDF of the excerpted pages of The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim found on the AP Lit Summer Reading link on our school website. Read and annotate (Talk to the Text) the following:

“Fairy Tales and the Existential Predicament” pgs. 6-11

“The Child’s Need for Magic” pgs. 45-53

“Fear of Fantasy: Why Were Fairy Tales Outlawed?” pgs. 116-123

Part II:

Read and annotate (Talk to the Text) eight fairy tales from The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Four should be fairy tales with which you are familiar (at least saw the Disney version) and four that you have never seen, but that look interesting. There is a lot from which to choose!

Part III:

Write a two-three page reflection on your reading, understanding and impressions of both the Bettelheim and Grimm texts. More astute responses will apply some of Bettelheim’s assertions to the selected fairy tales. This should help you be better equipped at recognizing and understanding literary allusions over the course of our study.

Part IV:

Locate the 2009 AP Literature Essay prompts. Read, annotate (Talk to the Text) and complete question 1 and 2. Answer each of the prompts in separate essays. The essays should be in MLA Format (Times New Roman, 12 point font, double-spaced), and either written in or uploaded to Google Docs. They will be submitted to Turnitin.com on the first day of class.

You should spend at least TWO HOURS on each essay. Take the time to think through the prompts and provide a quality response. We want to see what you can do!

Part V:

Read and annotate (Talk to the Text) Earnest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. You can buy your own copy in order to annotate directly on the pages or you can check it out from either your local library or from our textbook room in which case you will either use Post-its or your own notes. Be prepared to discuss and write about the novel during the first week of school.

If you have questions regarding the assignment, contact one of the AP Lit teachers:

Ms. Gordon: skg0108@lausd.net Ms. Vasquez: margaret.vasquez@lausd.net

Mr. Zeccola: joseph.zeccola@lausd.net

2009 AP® ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

© 2009 The College Board. All rights reserved. Visit the College Board on the Web: www.collegeboard.com.

GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE. -2-

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION SECTION II

Total time—2 hours

Question 1

(Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.) In the following speech from Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey considers his sudden downfall from his position as advisor to the king. Spokesmen for the king have just left Wolsey alone on stage. Read the speech carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how Shakespeare uses elements such as allusion, figurative language, and tone to convey Wolsey’s complex response to his dismissal from court.

So farewell—to the little good you bear me. Farewell? a long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes, to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honors thick upon him; 5

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls as I do. I have ventur’d, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,1 10

This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride At length broke under me, and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream that must for ever hide me. 15

Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye! I feel my heart new open’d. O how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favors! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, 20

More pangs and fears than wars or women have; And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,2 Never to hope again. 1 air-filled sacs 2 Satan, the fallen angel

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INSTRUCTIONS: Read both prompts and annotate (Talk to the Text).

Answer each of the prompts in separate essays. The essays should be in MLA Format (Times New Roman 12, Double-Spaced), and either written in or uploaded to Google Docs. They will be submitted to TurnItIn.com on the first day of class.

You should spend at least TWO HOURS on each essay. Take the time to think through the prompts and provide a quality response. We want to see what you can do!

2009 AP® ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS (Form B)

© 2009 The College Board. All rights reserved. Visit the College Board on the Web: www.collegeboard.com.

GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE. -3-

Question 2

(Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.) The passage below is the opening of Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), a novel written by Zora Neale Hurston. Read the passage carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze the literary techniques Hurston uses to describe Sawley and to characterize the people who live there.

Sawley, the town, is in west Florida, on the famous

Suwanee River. It is flanked on the south by the curving course of the river which Stephen Foster* made famous without ever having looked upon its waters, running swift and deep through the primitive 5

forests, and reddened by the chemicals leeched out of drinking roots. On the north, the town is flanked by cultivated fields planted to corn, cane, potatoes, tobacco and small patches of cotton.

However, few of these fields were intensively 10

cultivated. For the most part they were scratchy plantings, the people being mostly occupied in the production of turpentine and lumber. The life of Sawley streamed out from the sawmill and the “teppentime ‘still.” Then too, there was ignorance 15

and poverty, and the ever-present hookworm. The farms and the scanty flowers in front yards and in tin cans and buckets looked like the people. Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow. 20

This was in the first decade of the new century, when the automobile was known as the horseless carriage, and had not exerted its tremendous influence on the roads of the nation. There was then no U.S. 90, the legendary Old Spanish Trail, stretching straight 25

broad concrete from Jacksonville on the Atlantic to San Diego on the Pacific. There was the sandy pike, deeply rutted by wagon wheels over which the folks of Sawley hauled their tobacco to market at Live Oak, or fresh-killed hogmeat, corn and peanuts to Madison 30

or Monticello on the west. Few ever dreamed of venturing any farther east nor west.

Few were concerned with the past. They had heard that the stubbornly resisting Indians had been there where they now lived, but they were dead and gone. 35

Osceola, Miccanope, Billy Bow-Legs were nothing more than names that had even lost their bitter flavor. The conquering Spaniards had done their murdering, robbing, and raping and had long ago withdrawn from the Floridas. Few knew and nobody cared that the 40

Hidalgos under De Sota had moved westward along this very route. The people thought no more of them than they did the magnolias and bay and other ornamental trees which grew so plentifully in the swamps along the river, nor the fame of the stream. 45

They knew that there were plenty of black bass, locally known as trout, in the Suwanee, and bream and perch and cat-fish. There were soft-shell turtles that made a mighty nice dish when stewed down to a low gravy, or the “chicken meat” of those same 50

turtles fried crisp and brown. Fresh water turtles were a mighty fine article of food anyway you looked at it. It was commonly said that a turtle had every kind of meat on him. The white “chicken meat,” the dark “beef” and the in-between “pork.” You could stew, 55

boil and fry, and none of it cost you a cent. All you needed was a strip of white side-meat on the hook, and you had you some turtle meat. *American songwriter (1826-1864) whose song “Old Folks at Home”

begins “Way down upon the Swanee River”

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