10th Grade English Final Exam Essay Prompts
Be prepared to write two or three five-paragraph essays from the following nine topics. The quotes
provided are to get you started thinking (and will be provided on the test). As you prepare, please
gather further evidence from the text to support your argument.
1. The Pursuit of Happiness
Mond, the Controller, says that in this world there are no losses to compensate for; youthful desires
never falter, minds and bodies continue to delight in activity, and soma takes care of any problems.
While this may sound like paradise, can a man really know that he is happy if he has never been
unhappy? The Savage says, “Nothing costs enough here.”
Compare with
Frankenstein: When asking Victor to make him a companion, the monster says, “Make me happy,
and I shall again be virtuous.” What is the novel saying about an individual’s need to be loved?
2. Seeking peace
A Separate Peace: "I think we reminded [the Devon faculty] of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen.
We registered with no draft board, we had taken no physical examinations We were carefree and wild,
and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to preserve."
3. Traveling towards delusion
Describe the descent into madness of Lady Macbeth and Leper: the causes and effects
Lady Macbeth:
“A little water clears us of this deed. How easy it is then!” and “Out damn’d spot!”
Leper
“One day I couldn’t make out what was happening to the corporal’s face. It kept changing into faces
from somewhere else, and then I began to think he looked like me, and the he…he changed into a
woman, I was looking at him as close as I’m looking at you and his face turned into a woman’s face
and I started to yell for everybody, I began to yell so that everyone would see it too…but I couldn’t yell
soon enough, or loud enough, and when somebody did finally come up to me, it was this man with
the cough who slept in the next cot, and he was holding a broom because we had been sweeping out
the barracks, but I saw right away that it wasn’t a broom, it was a man’s leg which had been cut off.”
4. Doubles
Be prepared to write an essay comparing and contrasting at least three of the following four pairs:
Charles Darnay and Sidney Carton
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Frankenstein and the monster
Gene and Finny
5. Happy endings
Compare the conclusion of Pygmalion with the conclusion of Much Ado About Nothing.
6. Deception
Write an essay on the theme of truth and deception in Macbeth and A Separate Peace.
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence. Banquo, I, iii
“Phineas was a poor deceiver, having had no practice.” A Separate Peace
7. Watch what you wish for:
“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of
knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he
who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” Frankenstein
Compare with Pygmalion – Eliza’s attainment of the knowledge she sought
“You know well I couldn’t bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it’s wicked and
cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could.”
8. The lure of war
The French revolution as depicted in A Tale of Two Cities (focus on the viciousness of Madame
Defarge).
Compare with
World War II in A Separate Peace. (focus on Leper’s experiences and Brinker Hadley’s realization
about his father’s war stories)
"Because it seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that
wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart." Gene, A Separate Peace
9. Being a man
Discuss what it means to be a man in Macbeth and The Courtier
"When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man." Lady Macbeth II.ii.
“Let us have our Courtier be of such good judgment that he will not let himself be persuaded that
black is white, or presume of himself more than he clearly knows to be true.” The Courtier