AP LITERATURE & COMPOSITION
● Julie Otsuka’s When The Emperor Was Divine
● Joseph Campbell’s Hero with A Thousand Faces
● Prepare to present an English sonnet of your choosing aloud (not Sonnet 130), memorized and with no notes the
first week of school.
Reading: Carefully read and annotate Julie Otsuka’s When The Emperor Was Divine; use post-it notes or color-marking
as you select and denote three specific occurrences of figurative language (for example, imagery, symbolism, recurring
motif) from each of the six chapters revealing meaning in the text. If you cannot keep the text (library book, for
example), write the passage and page numbers on your paper, then denote the literary device and how it reveals
meaning (theme) in the text. Expect an in-class mastery reading check test and writing assessment the first day of
school. This may be word-processed. Example:
“Evacuation Order No. 19”
Symbolism of the color red; red as a recurring motif: “red dress” (16, 17); “…red satin lining” (31);
“Maple…sapling…bright red in the fall.” (28) Here, the color red marks the sharp contrast between the before and
after of the family’s internment. Specifically, the red dress worn by the mother shows how noticeable she is—
even the man at the hardware store, Joe Lundy, acknowledges her dress: “that’s a nice red dress.” (17) This serves
as a binary to how invisible she is when she returns. Next, the red lining in the boy’s suitcase is indicative of his
excitement—like he is packing for a vacation with his baseball mitt being the first thing he packs. Then the
narrative reference to the “red leaves” of the young trees is symbolic of how trees become also a thing of the
present, for later the narrative indicates that trees are things they see only in their dreams….
Read and take hand-written notes on ten specific symbols from Joseph Campbell’s Hero with A Thousand Faces; bring
this to class with you on the first day of school.
Recitation: Select and memorize an English Sonnet; prepare to present this the first week of school with no notes. Also
known as the Shakespearean Sonnet, the English sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet, and follows the abab, cdcd,
efef, gg rhyme scheme. The couplet plays a pivotal role, usually arriving in the form of a conclusion, amplification, or
even refutation of the previous three stanzas, often creating an epiphanic quality to the end. For example, in Sonnet 130
of William Shakespeare’s epic sonnet cycle, the first twelve lines compare the speaker’s mistress unfavorably with
nature’s beauties. But the concluding couplet swerves in a surprising direction:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.