SAMPLE ESSAY QUESTIONS
THESE ARE STYLE ANALYSIS ESSAY QUESTIONS (passages provided on test). FOR YOUR
CONVENIENCE, I HAVE UNDERLINED AND PUT IN BOLD FACE THE TOPIC OF THE ESSAY PROMPT
(THAT WHICH YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO FOCUS ON IN THE WORK) AND THE CONTENTS YOU ARE
SUPPOSED TO ANALYZE OR EXPLAIN TO SUPPORT YOUR THESIS.
Sample 1
In the passage below, which comes from William Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem The
Prelude, the speaker encounters unfamiliar aspects of the natural world. Write an essay in which
you trace the speaker’s changing responses to his experience and explain how they are
conveyed by the poem’s diction, imagery, and tone.
Sample 2
Below is a complete short story. Read it carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which
you analyze the blend of humor, pathos, and the grotesque in the story.
Sample 3
The following passage is the opening of a novel. Read it carefully. Then write an essay in which
you analyze how the speaker conveys her attitude to the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, paying
special attention to the diction, figurative language, and tone.
Sample 4
The author of the following letter questions the traditional distinctions between comedy and
tragedy. Read the passage carefully. Then write a cohesive essay in which you discuss his
agreement and disagreement with the definitions of other writers and the literary devices he
employs to justify his definitions of the two dramatic forms.
Sample 5
The passage that follows presents the conversation of a man and woman looking back on forty
years of their marriage. Write an essay in which you discuss the differences between the
husband’s and the wife’s attitude toward marriage and the family. Explain how the author uses
the resources of language to make a reader more sympathetic to the wife’s point of view than to
the husband’s.
Sample 6
The following passage is the conclusion of Samuel Johnson’s “Life of Savage,” an account of the
eighteenth-century writer Richard Savage, who died in great poverty in 1743. Read the passage
carefully. Write a well-organized essay in which you discuss Johnson’s evaluation of Savage and
the resources of language Johnson employs to communicate his opinions effectively.
Sample 7
Read the following poem carefully. Then write a cohesive essay in which you show how the
language of each stanza reveals the perceptions and feelings of the speaker.
Sample 8
Read the following passage carefully. Write an essay in which you discuss how the choice of
detail, diction, and syntax are used to reveal the speaker’s attitude to Sir Walter Elliot.
Sample 9
Read the following poem by Jamaican-born writer Claude McKay carefully. Then write an essay
in which you discuss the way in which the author’s style (diction, imagery, selection of detail)
reveals his feeling about what he recalls an cannot remember about his youth.
Sample 10
Read carefully the following passage from Thackery’s Vanity Fair. Write an essay that defines
the targets of Thackery’s criticism and how the choice of details, the diction, and the syntax
convey the satire.
OPEN QUESTIONS
Sample 1
An eating scene is common in drama and fiction. It may be a simple meal or a banquet, holiday
party or ordinary family dinner, but the work would not be quite the same without it
Choose a play, epic, or novel which contains such a scene of eating, and write an essay in which
you discuss what the scene reveals, how the scene is related to the meaning of the work as a
whole, and by what means the author makes the scene effective.
Focus our essay on only ONE scene. Do not summarize the plot. You may write on one of the
following works or any other novel, play, epic, or your choice of equivalent literary merit.
Sample 2
Many plays and novels that focus upon the courtship or marriage of a man and a woman include
a second pair who help to define the central figures. Write a well-organized essay in which you
discuss how the secondary man and woman illuminate the central characters of the work. You
may write on one of the following works or any other play or novel of your choice of equivalent
literary merit.
Sample 3
Injustice, either social or personal, is a common theme in literature. Choose a novel or a play in
which injustice is important. Write an essay in which you define clearly the nature of the injustice
and discuss the techniques the author employs to elicit sympathy for its victim or victims.
You may use one of the following works or another work of equivalent literary merit.
Sample 4
In a novel or play, a confidant (male) or confidante (female) is a character, often a friend or
relative of the hero or heroine, whose role is to be present when the hero or heroine needs a
sympathetic listener to confide in. Frequently, the result is, as Henry James remarked, that the
confidant or confidante can be as much “the reader’s friend as the protagonist’s.” However, the
author sometimes uses this character for other purposes as well.
Choose a confidant or confidante from a novel or play of recognized literary merit and write an
essay in which you describe the various ways this character functions in the work. You may
write your essay on one of the following novels or plays or on another of comparable quality. Do
not write on a poem or short story.
Sample 5
A critic has said that one important measure of a superior work of literature is its ability to
produce a healthy confusion of pleasure and disquietude.
Select a work that produces this “healthy confusion.” Write an essay in which you explain the
sources of the “pleasure and disquietude” experienced by the readers of the work. You may
base your essay on a work from the list below or choose another work of comparable literary
merit.