Your
Semester 1 Final Exam is as simple – and as complex – as this: working alone or with a
single partner, and using any of the following elements, connect every piece of
literature we’ve studied this six weeks with at least one other piece of
literature. You may illustrate your work however you want, but your ties
between pieces of literature must take the form of a legibly handwritten, complete,
grammatically correct, comparative analytical statement you would be proud to include
in an AP essay. You will have the period before the exam and the exam period itself
to work on this in class, and you may work outside of class during scheduled
tutoring time or flex. Your poster is due by the end of your scheduled ACP
period, no exceptions.
Analytical
Elements:
- Theme (s)
- Motif(s)
- Characterization
- Syntax and Diction
- Symbolism
- Figurative Language
- Imagery
- Structure
- Nomenclature
- Poetic form
- Genre/sub-genre
- Schools of literary criticism popularly applied
- Periodization
Literature
List:
- “Lineage” – Ted Hughes
- “Night, Death, Mississippi” – Robert Hayden
- “The Second Coming” – William Butler Yeats
- Heart of Darkness –Joseph Conrad
- “The White Man’s Burden” – Rudyard Kipling
- Death and the King’s Horseman – Wole Soyinka
- “A Rose for Emily” – William Faulkner
- “A Good Man is Hard to Find” – Flannery O’Connor
- “Extracts from Gosschen’s Diary” – Blackwood’s Magazine, 1818
- “Porphyria’s Lover” – Robert Browning
- “Love the Way You Lie” – Eminem
- “My Last Duchess” – Robert Browning
- “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” – Robert Browning
- “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” – Bob Dylan
- “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” – Joyce Carol Oates
- “Saboteur” – Ha Jin
SAMPLE COMPARATIVE ANALYTICAL
STATEMENT
FOR OUR DEATH BY POSTER EXAM:
In Scott
Tatum’s novella “Ms. Townsel Was Once a Goddess, In Possession of Exceptional
Wisdom and Even Better Taste,” he paints a picture of a crazed, unkempt English
teacher, broken by the vagaries of life and who, as a result of her
student-induced mental illness, has fallen so far from the graces of society
that we find her living below her desk with only her coffee maker affording her
comfort and solace. Smith’s picture of the mentally ill Townsel is evocative of
Dr. Cedric Barrett’s Booker Prize-winning portrait of a similarly disturbed Patrick
McGhee in his stunning poem “AP Teacher Snaps His Twig,” with its disturbing
imagery of the ginger-bearded instructor using a prop sword to pummel his flex
class into submission. Both works not only share a theme of the psychosis that
often affects teachers, they instill in their readers a feeling of melancholy,
of dread, of spiritual need for escape from the confines of an academic world
that crushes not just students but, in great numbers, their instructors.
Grading
Rubric: 100 points
- All works studied this semester included and comparatively analyzed: 30 points
- All required comparative literary statements completed: 30 points
- All required comparative literary statements accurate and effective: 20 points
- Conventions: 15 points
- Appearance (including neatness): 5 points
