Summer Reading for AP English Literature
So that we can begin the year with an in-depth discussion of a novel of literary
merit, I’m asking you to read one book this summer and submit required
assignments to me by Monday, August 11th, 2014.
Please remember that since AP English Literature is patterned as a college level
course, we’ll examine college-level novels and plays. One of the purposes of this
course is to broaden our understanding and appreciation of both classic and
contemporary literature. We don’t always read this literature for pure enjoyment,
but for exposure to ideas, styles of writers, differing opinions, and thoughtprovoking situations. While some of the texts, especially contemporary
selections, deal with controversial issues / topics, the titles are suggested by the
Advanced Placement Program because of their overall themes, impressive style,
and literary merit. The choices for this summer are:
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Set during World War I, Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written in 1938
by American novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and published September 1939. Johnny Got
His Gun immediately struck a chord for American readers on the eve of World War II. It received
critical acclaim shortly after the first printing, including the National Book Award for Most Original
Book of 1939, and the American Booksellers Award in 1940. Over the course of the 20th century,
the novel inspired numerous radio shows, stage plays, film adaptations, and Metallica’s song
“One.” Radical anti-war advocates on the left and right seized upon Dalton Trumbo’s book as a
rallying cry against the American involvement in WWII. Fearing that his book might harm the war
effort, Dalton Trumbo and his publishers voluntarily ceased printing until after the war. It was also
pulled from print during the Korean War, but found new popularity during the late 1960s when
American forces entered Vietnam. The Bantam paperback includes a fascinating introduction by
Trumbo, written in 1959 with a 1970 addendum. The intro notes that the novel itself was written in
1938 and published just after the start of World War II. An "About the Author" page at the book's
beginning notes that the Colorado-born Trumbo was one of the screenwriters blacklisted during
the McCarthy era.
"Johnny" tells the story of Joe Bonham, an American soldier who is horrifically wounded and
disabled in World War I. The book is told from Joe's perspective as he struggles to understand and
cope with his situation. His mind wanders back and forth between his past, including his war
experiences, and his immediate condition. Thus we get a non-chronological but full picture of his
complete life so far. Dalton's prose style in this book made a strong impact on me. At times he
seems to be assaulting the reader without mercy as he shows us the horror of war and its terrible
human cost. But the book also includes passages of hope, triumph, and heartbreaking beauty. Joe
is an unforgettable character, and this truly disturbing book remains a profoundly relevant work of
American fiction. – Micheal J. Mazza

“He was a dead man with a mind that could still think. He knew all the answers
that the dead knew and couldn't think about. He could speak for the dead
because he was one of them. He was the first of all the soldiers who had died
since the beginning of time who still had a brain left to think with. Nobody could
dispute with him. Nobody could prove him wrong. Because nobody knew but
he.”

“He knew now that he was surely dying but he was curious. He didn't want to die
until he had found out everything. If a man has no nose and no mouth and no
palate and no tongue why it stands to reason he might be shy a few other parts
as well. But that was nonsense because a man in that shape would be dead. You
couldn't lose that much of yourself and still keep on living. Yet if you knew you
had lost them and were thinking about it why then you must be alive because
dead men don't think. Dead men aren't curious and he was sick with curiosity so
he must not be dead yet.”
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
In this hurry-scurry age, big books are viewed with suspicion, and sometimes
disdain. The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a
smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind. I read it with that
mixture of terror and excitement I feel watching a pitcher carry a no-hitter into the late innings. You
keep waiting for the wheels to fall off, but in the case of The Goldfinch, they never do. Like the
best of Dickens (I will not be the last to make this comparison), the novel turns on mere
happenstance — in this case, a heavy rainstorm in New York City. Theo Decker, our adolescent
narrator, has been suspended from his school. He and his well-loved mother (“Everything came
alive in her company; she cast a charmed theatrical light”) set off for a “conference” with school
officials but duck into the Metropolitan Museum of Art to get out of the weather. There is a terrorist
bombing, and many people are killed. – Stephen King
With a Dutch master’s attention to detail, Tartt has created a narrative voice that is simultaneously
immediate and retrospective, filled with the boy’s adolescent anxieties and the man’s fermented
despair. “How was it possible to miss someone as much as I missed my mother?” Theo says.
“Sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the
waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illuminated in a
light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been
anything but dead.” You can also feel that 19th-century spirit in the author’s willingness to take
advantage of her enormous canvas to reflect self-consciously on moral and aesthetic concerns
that so many contemporary fiction writers are too timid or too sophisticated to address directly.
Free will and fate, pragmatic morality and absolute values, an authentic life and a dutiful one —
those fusty old terms spring to life in an extended passage of philosophical trompe l’oeil as Theo
expounds with the authority of a man who has suffered, who knows why the chained bird sings.
Through years of guilt and drug-dulled pain, experience has taught him that loving something
sublime can soothe “the writhing loneliness of life.” The novel ends in full-throated praise for the
power of a great painting to sink into your soul, to act as a bulwark against the inevitable victory of
death. Look here: A great novel can do that, too. – Ron Charles

“And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things,
and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they
were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along
literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next
generation of lovers, and the next.”

“Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’
and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected.
One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing
best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past,
cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had
died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or
bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—
this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very
thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t
get there any other way?”
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
I don't remember how old I was when I discovered some
of the more harrowing chapters of human history — the Holocaust and American
slavery — but I do remember convincing my young self that I would have been
brave had I lived in those times. I would have hidden my Jewish friend Anne Frank; I
would have been a station on the Underground Railroad. I would have stood up for
humanity and against injustice.
Later, I was not quite as zealous or stalwart. I considered such acts with a keener
sense of how it felt to be ostracized, and a deeper understanding of how much I
wanted to belong — or survive. And I found myself contemplating those past selves
— the girls and women I've been over the course of my life — while reading Sue
Monk Kidd's newest novel, The Invention of Wings.
In simple terms, the book is the fictionalized history of the Grimké sisters, Sarah and
Angelina (Nina), who were at the forefront of the abolitionist and women's rights
movements, wound around the intriguing narrative of a young slave, Hetty, who
was given to Sarah as an 11th birthday present. Sarah despises slavery, even at that
early age, and out of principle attempts to reject the gift.
Much of the Grimkés' story is historically based: Kidd has fleshed out mountains of
research — facts, figures, dates, letters, and articles — into a believable and
elegantly rendered fictional first person account of Sarah's life. But though Hetty was
real, her story here is almost entirely fabricated — and perhaps because she is
mostly a product of Kidd's imagination, Hetty's character seems truly inspired. All of
Kidd’s people come to life, but especially freckled, redheaded Sarah and petite,
golden-eyed Handful, each determined to be heard. By humanizing these
formidable women, “The Invention of Wings” furthers our essential understanding of
what has happened among us as Americans — and why it still matters. – BOBBI
DUMAS

“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart
and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in
the heart our own.”

“As he left, I peered at Sarah Mapps and her mother, the way they
grabbed hands and squeezed in relief, and then at Nina, at the
small exultation on her face. She was braver than I, she always had
been. I cared too much for the opinions of others, she cared not a
whit. I was cautious, she was brash. I was a thinker, she was a doer. I
kindled fires, she spread them. And right then and ever after, I saw
how cunning the Fates had been. Nina was one wing, I was the
other.”
The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman
Carnival sideshows, freak shows and the midway all offer
chances to gawk at the differences that divide us while forgetting the humanity we all
share. Novelist Alice Hoffman employs her trademark alchemy of finding the magical
amid the ordinary in her mesmerizing new novel The Museum of Extraordinary Things. This
love story is set in early 20th-century New York, in a newly electrified Brooklyn of
struggling immigrants and striving "1 percenters." A New Yorker herself, Ms. Hoffman has
captured the tone of the era -- excitement for the modern age mixed with fear of
rampant urban and industrial development. Ms. Hoffman weaves her characters into
major events such as the fires at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and Dreamland,
providing the reader with a history lesson complementary to her otherwise imagined
world. Amid the history and drama, themes of love and acceptance make the novel
important in a time where stories about bullying and general intolerance seem to make
the news daily. Ms. Hoffman's most physically afflicted characters, like the genteel
Wolfman Mr. Morris, express the greatest sense of self while characters without these
ailments (Coralie's father) seem to lack the basic qualities of humanity. For those who
have only read about such places or seen pictures, the novel will transport you to
another time and another place, where freaks act more like normal people should and
the, so-called “normal people” are cruel reflections of our inner-most fears.

“Eddie had come to understand that what a man saw and what
actually existed in the natural world often were contradictory. The
human eye was not capable of true sight, for it was constrained by its
own humanness, clouded by regret, and opinion, and faith. Whatever
was witnessed in the real world was unknowable in real time. It was the
eye of the camera that captured the world as it truly was.”

“The truth frightens people because it isn't stable. It shifts every
day.”
I suggest that you buy your own copy of the novel you choose to read because
you’ll need it for an extended period of time. Try used bookstores or online sellers
like www.amazon.com , www.gohastings.com. Often, you can get used novels
for a fraction of the list price. E-books are perfectly acceptable as well. Use the
note/bookmark feature to take notes and mark passages.
NOTE: As you read your novel, use some method of recording your thoughts /
feelings / observations / questions about what’s going on and specific passages
that you find memorable or confusing.
 Look for rhetorical strategies and literary devices…specific examples of
the resources of language that the author uses: imagery, metaphor,
simile, paradox, irony (three types: situational, dramatic, and verbal),
allusion, analogy, oxymoron, pun, personification.

Also pay close attention to passages that give insight into character, plot,
setting, theme, and passages of distinct emotion to use for tone analysis. If
you don’t use some way of tracking your thoughts this summer, our
discussions at the beginning of the year won’t be as focused. Take this
step for yourself, not for a grade.

Mark memorable passages as you read. We’ll have a “Quaker Reading”
during the first week of school: we’ll share passages from all four novels
with the class.

When you finish reading the novel, complete these three assignments (for
yourself AND for a grade):
1. Have someone take a picture of you reading your summer novel in some
unique place and send it with your assignment…and somewhere on the pic
attach your favorite line from the novel (either embed it or attach it); we’ll make
a bulletin board collage of pictures when school starts. Along with the picture,
choose a favorite page of the novel, make a copy of it, and send it with the
photo. Put your name on the back of both, please.
2. Write a short letter introducing yourself. Include insights your summer reading
novel provided you.
3. Post at least five comments/questions/observations (with passages or direct
references to plot) about the novel on our class website’s blog (
www.cphsbaker.com). It’s called “Oughes and Phoos” (don’t worry…you’ll
understand the name after we read Heart of Darkness). I’ll have a separate
thread set up for each summer novel. Be sure to make these posts on or before
Monday, August 11th.
4. Write an essay of approximately two pages (or more) typed, double-spaced,
using one of the prompts below taken from past AP English Literature exams. Be
sure that you use specific details and passages from the novel you read to back
up your position and make sure that you address all parts of the prompt. Use
page numbers when quoting direct passages from the novel. I know that it’s
summer and your brain is for the most part on vacation…try your best to make
your essay effective…but also keep in mind you’ll have a chance to revise it
before receiving a final score.
A. In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake. In a well-organized essay,
explain how a scene or scenes of violence contribute to the meaning of the complete work. Avoid
plot summary. (1982)
B. Novels sometimes depict a conflict between a parent (or parental figure) and a son or
daughter. Write an essay in which you analyze the sources of the conflict and explain how the
conflict contributes to the meaning of the work. (1990)
C. The eighteenth-century British novelist Laurence Stern wrote, “no body, but he who has felt it,
can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of
equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time.”
From a novel or play choose a character (not necessarily the protagonist) whose mind is pulled in
conflicting directions by two compelling desires, ambitions, obligations, or influences. Then, in a
well-organized essay, identify each of the two conflicting forces and explain how this conflict
within one character illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. (1999)
D. One definition of madness is “mental delusion or eccentric behavior arising from it.” But Emily
Dickinson wrote: “Much madness is divinest Sense – To a discerning eye – “
Novelists and playwrights have often seen madness with a “discerning Eye.” Select a novel or
play in which a character’s apparent madness or irrational behavior plays an important role. Then
write a well-organized essay in which you explain what this delusion or eccentric behavior
consists of and how it might be judged reasonable. Explain the significance of the “madness” to
the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot. (2001)
E. Some novels and plays seem to advocate changes in social or political attitudes or in
traditions. Note briefly the particular attitudes or traditions that the author wishes to modify. Then
analyze the techniques the author uses to influence the reader's or audience's views. Avoid plot
summary. (1987)
F. The conflict created when the will of an individual opposes the will of the majority is the
recurring theme of many novels, plays and essays. Select a fictional character who is in
opposition to his or her society. In a critical essay, analyze the conflict and discuss the moral and
ethical implications for both the individual and the society. Do not summarize the plot or action of
the work you choose. (1976)
G. Writers often highlight the values of a culture or a society by using characters who are
alienated from that culture or society because of gender, race, class, or creed. Show how that
character’s alienation reveals the surrounding society’s assumptions and moral values. (1995)
H. In some works of literature, a character who appears briefly, or does not appear at all, is a
significant presence. Write an essay in which you show how such a character functions in the
work. You may wish to discuss how the character affects action, theme, or the development of
other characters. (1994)
I. Critic Roland Barthes once said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” 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 the question
affects your understanding of the work as a whole. (2004)
J. Some works of literature use the element of time in a distinct way. The chronological
sequence of events may be altered, or time may be suspended or accelerated. Show how the
author’s manipulation of time contributes to the work as a whole. (1986)
K. In Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), protagonist Edna Pontellier is said to possess "that
outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions." In a novel or play that you
have studied, identify a character who conforms outwardly while questioning inwardly. Then write
an essay in which you analyze how this tension between outward conformity and inward
questioning contributes to the meaning of the work. Avoid mere plot summary. (2005)
L. In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present
actions, attitudes, or values of a character. Choose a novel or play in which a character
must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an
essay in which you show how the character’s relationship to the past contributes to the
novel as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot. (2007)
M. In a literary work a minor character, often known as a foil, possesses traits that emphasize, by
contrast or comparison, the distinctive characteristics and qualities of the main character. For
example, the ideas or behavior of the minor character might be used to highlight the weaknesses
or strengths of the main character. Choose a novel or a play in which a minor character serves
as a foil to a main character. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the relationship
between the minor character and the major character illuminates the meaning of the work. (2008)
N. A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of
associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or
enlarge literal meaning. Select a novel or play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay
analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or
themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot. (2009)
O. Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said has written that “Exile is
strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced
between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential
sadness can never be surmounted.” Yet Said has also said that exile can become “a potent, even
enriching” experience. Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences such a rift
and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family,
homeland, or other special place. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the character’s
experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the
meaning of the work as a whole. You may choose a work from the list below or one of
comparable literary merit. Do not merely summarize the plot. (2010)
P. In a novel by William Styron, a father tells his son that life “is a search for justice.” Choose a
character who responds in some significant way to justice or injustice. Then write a welldeveloped essay in which you analyze the character’s understanding of justice, the degree to
which the character’s search for justice is successful, and the significance of this search to the
work as a whole. (2011)
Q. “And after all, our surroundings influence out lives and characters as much as fate, destiny, or
any supernatural agency.” Pauline Hopkins, Contending Forces
Choose a novel or play in which cultural, physical, or geographical surroundings shape
psychological or moral traits of a character. Then write a well-organized essay in which you
analyze how surroundings affect this character and illuminate the meaning of the work as a
whole. (2012)
R. A bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, recounts the psychological or moral development of
its protagonist from youth to maturity, when this character recognizes his or her place in the
world. Select a single pivotal moment in the psychological or moral development of the
protagonist of a bildungsroman. Then write a well-organized essay that analyzes how that single
moment shapes the meaning of the work as a whole. (2013)
S. It has often been said that what we value can be determined only by what we sacrifice.
Consider how this statement applies to a character from a novel or play. Select a character that
has deliberately sacrificed, surrendered, or forfeited something in a way that highlights that
character’s values. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how the particular
sacrifice illuminates the character’s values and provides a deeper understanding of the
meaning of the work as a whole. (2014)
Send your picture, copied page, letter, and essay to 1201 N. Garfield Ave, Sand
Springs, OK 74063-7322, postmarked on or before Monday, August 11th and post
your blog entries by this date. You may also bring these assignments to the
Principal’s office when you pick up your schedules; I’ll have a box labeled on the
counter. I’ll be organizing literature circles for each class, so SEND ME YOUR
ASSIGNMENTS ON TIME. Our first major projects will revolve around these novels,
so don’t jeopardize your grade in the class by neglecting to complete the
reading and the required work. If you have any questions about the summer
reading assignment, call me at 918-245-0898 (home) or text me at 918-406-7823
(cell). You can also e-mail me at shereek.baker@gmail.com or
sheree.baker@sandites.org. Have a great summer…I’m looking forward to our AP
English Literature class next year.
Sincerely,
Sheree K. Baker