Advanced Placement Literature & Composition
Standards: ELACC11-12RL1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the
text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text
leaves matters uncertain. ELACC11-12RL2: Determine two or more themes or central ideas of text and
analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one
another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text. ELACC11-12RL3:
Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or
drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and
developed). ELACC11-12RL4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text,
including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning
and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or
beautiful. ELACC11-12RL5: Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts
of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic
resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact. ELACC1112RL6: Analyze a case in which grasping point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a
text from what is really meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony, or understatement). ELACC11-12RL7: Analyze
multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or
recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. ELACC11-12W1:
Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and
relevant and sufficient evidence. ELACC11-12W4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the
development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. ELACC11-12W5:
Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new
approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.
Advanced Placement Literature & Composition
Unit 1 – The Duality of Man: The Crisis if Identity
Essential Questions:
1. Who and/or what gives us our identity?
2. What happens when identities collide?
3. What is the corollary between multiple critical lenses and ourselves?
Primary Literary Elements Explored: Imagery, Symbolism, Diction, Tone, Allusion, Metaphor,
Characterization
Major Text #1: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad - Read primarily outside of class with periodic inclass discussions concluding with a Socratic Seminar and timed essay prompt.
Major Text #2: Hamlet by William Shakespeare – Read primarily in class during the last three weeks of
the quarter concluding with a written assessment.
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Supplemental Texts – The theme of “duality” will be the focus of discussions concerning these
texts. Students will read the texts and discuss how tone, imagery, and characterization lead to
an author’s development of the theme of duality. In addition, students will learn how the
earlier works are alluded to, either directly or indirectly, in the newer works and discuss how
man has been struggling with his duality for centuries.
Assessments: Students will be given weekly written assessments, timed and untimed, in-class
and take-home, to give them ample opportunity to practice for the AP Exam and to illustrate
comprehension of the big ideas we have been examining with each work.
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The Book of Ecclesiastes
 Students will read this ancient text and study how King Solomon proposed one
should deal with the duality of one’s self. Students will analyze the text as
poetry and discuss elements of the text that can be found in contemporary art
forms.
Matthew 4:1-11 (The Temptation of Jesus)
 Students will read the text as poetry and discuss the allegorical nature of the
story and connect it to the struggles they have witnessed in other literary works.
excerpt from “Paradise Lost” by John Milton
 Students will read this excerpt from the long poem which focuses on the
temptation of Eve by the serpent and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Students will discuss the “glamorous” side of evil and how hard it is to do good
all of the time thus solidifying the duality of human beings. Students will also
read Genesis Chapter 3, the Biblical account of the fall of Adam and Eve and
compare/contrast the two stories.
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
 The themes of grace and evil will be analyzed in this short story. Students will
use the knowledge they have gained from their short study of the Bible and
apply it to this story about a man and a woman struggling with who they are
and what they want.
“Daddy” by Sylvia Plath
 Read in conjunction with Hamlet, students will examine the relationship
between father and daughter.
Advanced Placement Literature & Composition
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“ Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison
 Also read in conjunction with Hamlet, students will examine this “coming of
age” story and how the unnamed protagonist compares to Hamlet in regards to
familial influence and their own deaths and rebirths.
“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot
 Read in conjunction with Heart of Darkness, Eliot tackles the concept of duality
by looking into the hollow men’s souls and how they yearn to go to heaven but
can’t because of their actions while on earth.
Advanced Placement Literature & Composition
Unit 2 – Who Am I: The Road to Self-Discovery
Essential Questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
What is a good life? What gives life meaning?
What are good and evil? Is evil an intrinsic element of human nature?
Is it, in matters of life and death, acceptable to break with traditional cultural mores and norms?
How does narrative point of view affect the presentation of good and evil?
Primary Literary Elements Explored: Structure, Diction, Imagery, Point of View, Allusion, Tone
Major Text #1: Life of Pi by Yan Martel – Read primarily outside of class with periodic in-class discussions
concluding with a Socratic Seminar and timed essay prompt.
Major Text #2: The Road by Cormac McCarthy – Read primarily outside of class with periodic in-class
discussions concluding with a Socratic Seminar and timed essay prompt.
Major Text #3: A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen (If Time Allows) – Read primarily in class during the last
three weeks of the quarter concluding with a written assessment.
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Supplemental Texts – The theme of “self-discovery” will be the focus of discussions concerning
these texts. Students will read the texts and discuss how structure, point of view, diction, and
imagery lead to an author’s development of the theme of self-discovery. In addition, students
will learn how the earlier works are alluded to, either directly or indirectly, in the newer works
and discuss how man has been struggling with his identity for centuries.
Assessments: Students will be given weekly written assessments, timed and untimed, in-class
and take-home, to give them ample opportunity to practice for the AP Exam and to illustrate
comprehension of the big ideas we have been examining with each work.
o “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 Our choices in life determine who we become.
o “I Have Learned So Much” by Rumi
o “God’ Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
o “Limbo” by Seamus Heaney
 The path to spirituality is different for each soul.
o “The Metamorphosis of the Spirit” by Friedrich Nietzsche
 This short essay explores the path to self-discovery.
o “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
o “The Use of Force” by William Carlos Williams
 These two short stories test the strengths of their protagonists.
o excerpts from The Book of Job
 A classic tale of adversity and triumph.
Advanced Placement Literature & Composition
Unit 3 – The Absurdity of Existence: Why ARE We Here?
Essential Questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
What is existentialism? Is it an optimistic or pessimistic philosophy, or both?
What’s the difference between crime and sin?
Is perception reality?
What does your generation see as its mission, and what do you see as yours?
Primary Literary Elements Explored: Existentialism, the Absurd, Understatement, Imagery, Symbolism,
Diction, Tone, Allusion, Metaphor, Motif, Structure, and Characterization
Major Text #1: The Stranger by Albert Camus - Read primarily outside of class with periodic in-class
discussions concluding with a Socratic Seminar and timed essay prompt.
Major Text #2: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard – Read primarily in class during
the last three weeks of the quarter concluding with a written assessment.
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Supplemental Texts – The themes of absurdity and existence (“why are we here?”) will be the
focus of discussions concerning these texts. Students will read the texts and discuss how tone,
imagery, and characterization lead to an author’s argument of how our existence is shaped. In
addition, students will learn how the earlier works are alluded to, either directly or indirectly, in
the newer works and discuss how man has been struggling with his duality for centuries.
Assessments: Students will be given weekly written assessments, timed and untimed, in-class
and take-home, to give them ample opportunity to practice for the AP Exam and to illustrate
comprehension of the big ideas we have been examining with each work.
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“The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus
 Students will read this essay about the Greek myth of Sisyphus and discuss
Camus’s interpretation of the story. It illustrates/defines the idea of the absurd
before students begin reading The Stranger.
Because this unit’s focus is existence and our reason for being alive, students will trace
this theme in a number of poems including, but not limited to, the following:
 “Out, out” by Robert Frost
 “The Heron” by Hayden Carruth
 “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath
 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens
 “Anecdote of the Jar” by Wallace Stevens
 “Thirteen Ways of Being Looked at by a Possum” by Everette Maddox
 Students will read, annotate, and analyze each of the poems focusing on
structure, imagery, and tone. Each student will choose two poems to
write extensively about in a timed, analytical essay on a given topic.
“A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka
 Kafka is one of the world’s leading existentialist writers and students will read
and analyze this work as to why and how its protagonist survives in a world that
he believes to be devoid of any meaning. Tone and imagery will be the focus of
this piece.
Advanced Placement Literature & Composition
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“Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
 Students will focus on the imagery and symbolism present in this short story
and how it turns an otherwise meaningless conversation into one about a very
deep and troubling subject.
Advanced Placement Literature & Composition
Unit 4 – It’s a Mad, Mad World: Satire
Essential Questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Are we, as a species, to judgmental of the actions of others?
Do writers, a very small percentage of the population, speak for the majority?
Is satire a viable tool to exact socio-political change?
Is satire a mirror?
Primary Literary Elements Explored: Satire, irony, Tome, Characterization, Symbolism, Metonymy, and
Synecdoche
Major Text #1: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Major Text #2: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift or Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
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Supplemental Texts – Satire is one of the most important, and most difficult, literary forms.
Students will study the primary elements of satire – irony, hyperbole, understatement,
metaphor – and be able to identify these elements in satirical pieces and use these elements
to lead to theme. Students will also study the important grammatical structures of active
voice and parallelism and how these are effective tools in making satire work. Students will
also become familiar with the three different types of satire and the characteristics of each.
Assessments: Students will be given weekly written assessments, timed and untimed, inclass and take-home, to give them ample opportunity to practice for the AP Exam and to
illustrate comprehension of the big ideas we have been examining with each work.
o “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift
 Students will read and analyze this classic piece of satire, looking specifically
for elements of irony and hyperbole.
o “The Lorax,” “Yertle the Turtle,” “Horton Hears a Who,” “The Sneetches,” “The
Butter Battle Book” by Dr. Seuss
 Students will read and analyze the works of Dr. Seuss to see how he used
children’s’ books to satirize many social and political targets. Students will
look closely at symbolism, understatement, irony, and metaphor as well as
parallel structure and active voice and how they are essential tools in satire.