Notes on Question #3
of the
A.P. Literature &
Composition examination
Mr. Cleon M. McLean
A.P. English
Ontario High School
Focus
The essay should be analytical, not
declarative, i.e., do not TELL the reader.
Rather, SHOW the reader via explanations
and examples. You must alternate between
concrete details from a work or passage,
and your commentary.
Explain the use of literary devices
• Remember that a literary device or
technique is not the focus of your essay;
rather, it is the meaning of the work or
passage that should be your focus. Simply
telling the reader where the literary device
or technique appears will be of no value or
interest. Instead, work towards explaining
HOW and WHY the author employs certain
literary devices and/or techniques.
Explain the use of literary devices
continued
• Do not name literary devices and/or techniques in your
introductory paragraph, since this oftentimes leads to an
essay full of lists rarely in the service of analysis.
• Discussions of diction should lead to a serious and apt
connection to your analysis. In discussion of a poet’s
diction, mention an alternate choice that would have
weakened the phrase.
• Unfortunate example: “He uses effective diction here,
including words like “fall” and “shake”
• A more fitting example: By employing words such as
“fall” and “shake,” the poet alludes to the resounding
(biblical) fall of man. Such seemingly simple diction
evokes a poignant response from the reader .
Waste
• Avoid giving your essay a title; it is quite frankly a
waste of precious time.
• Avoid long introductions, especially the funnels
which begin far out in the cosmos, i.e., “Since the
dawn of time, writers have used certain literary
techniques to elicit particular responses from their
readers.” There is almost no way of digging out
of this black hole.
Waste
continued
• Avoid judgments. The essay questions will not
ask for you to make a judgment, so do not waste
your time giving them. Most judgments sound
foolish, anyway, even if they are only one word
long. E.g., “Shakespeare skillfully moves Hamlet
into…” (DROP “skillfully.”)
• “These things make “Equus” a great play that
people will enjoy for years to come.” (DROP THE
WHOLE SENTENCE!!)
Even more waste…
• DO NOT use a sentence to identify a word
or a phrase as an example of a literary
device or technique. E.g., “When the poet
says “the trees have a face,” she is using
personification.
• Correction: The poet personifies the trees
to show…
Quotations
• Keep quotations from the passage or the
work as short as possible. One word or one
line is often enough. The essay
graders/readers have the passages in front of
them. A full sentence is nearly always too
much by far.
Diction
• Avoid vague language. Use specifics rather than
general terms like “positive” and “negative”
• Avoid using the meaningless words “certain” and
“particular” (except where “certain” means
confident, or “particular” means exacting). If you
are unsure of the meaning of a word, go the
conservative route and just leave it out…your task
is not to bewilder the reader with awkward
diction.
• Avoid using the phrase “is when,” especially in a
definition
Diction, continued
• Avoid the word “incredible” and “unbelievable,”
even when you’re using them with their real
meanings.
• Be logical with the word “both.”
• An unfortunate example: “The two poems both
contrast with each other.” DROP THE WORD “both”
• Avoid the word “quote.”
• An unfortunate example: “‘…when Horatio quotes
“The rest is silence.”’
Mechanics
(grammar, spelling, and punctuation)
• Use the apostrophe correctly. Missing or unnecessary
apostrophes are the most common mechanical errors.
They are annoying errors because the reader often has to
back up and start the sentence again.
• Underline titles of novels; use quotation marks around
titles of poems, plays, and short stories. Forty to fifty
percent of papers graded used neither, and, of course, this
is to the writer’s disadvantage. With works such as
Macbeth, and Hamlet, in which characters also share the
name of the title, confusion will abound if titles are not
underlined or placed between quotation marks.
Mechanics, continued
• DO NOT write in pencil. While you do not
lose points for writing in pencil, it is quite
likely that you can lose points when readers
lose track of your ideas while pausing to
decipher a word. Also, essays written in
pencil tend to show multiple other
weaknesses.