What to Expect on the AP Literature Exam (and some tips too)!
Multiple-choice
counts for 45% of total score
about 55 questions (between 45-60)
Interpretation of five or six pieces of literature including poems, dramatic scene, a bit of a
memoir, or an excerpt from a novel or short story
Questions focus on the author’s linguistic and rhetorical choices, emphasis is on literary
technique including structure of the passage, effects of diction and syntax point of view, and the
relationship between parts of the passage
The most common questions pertain to:
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tone
shifts in the writing style within the passage
the effects of certain words and phrases, especially figures of speech
the relationship of one sentence or idea to another
the relationship on one sentence to the meaning of the passage as a whole
the rhetorical stance of the narrator
generally at least one question on standard English grammar
You are expected to be aware of basic allusions to biblical and mythological works.
The selection is self-contained.
Poetry
-questions focus on anything from the aesthetic intent of the poet to the implications of a single
word. The most common poetry questions asked students to identify the meaning of a word or
phrase in context, to relate to the implication or meaning of figures of speech, to the tone, and to
the effect of poetic techniques on the unity or meaning of the entire poem.
SECTION II: 2 hours (recommended 40 minutes each)
Essay section counts for 55% of total score
3 essay questions: two based on a piece of literature provided on the exam (one poetry, one
prose), one open-ended essay.
1.Poetry: write an essay that explains the techniques the poet used to convey meaning. It may
suggest that you consider specific poetic devices or may be open-ended, allowing you to discuss
devices you deem important to the poem.
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How does the language of the poem
reflect the speaker’s perceptions, and how
does that language determine the reader’s perception?
How does the poet reveal character? (i.e., diction, sound devices, imagery, allusion)
Discuss the similarities and differences between two poems. Consider style and theme.
Contrast the speakers’ views toward a subject in two poems. Refer to form, tone, and
imagery.
Discuss how poetic elements, such as language, structure, imagery, and point of view,
convey meaning in a poem.
Relate the imagery, form, or theme of a particular section of a poem to another part of
that same poem. Discuss changing attitude or perception of speaker or reader.
Analyze a poem’s extended metaphor and how it reveals the poet’s or speaker’s attitude.
· Discuss the way of life revealed in a poem. Refer to poetic elements such as tone,
imagery, symbol, and verse form.
· Discuss the poet’s changing reaction to the subject developed in the poem.
· Discuss how the form of the poem affects its meaning.
Types of Poetry Essay Questions
2. Prose: analyze an excerpt from a novel or story. The prompt will specify the purpose of your
analysis, but you will choose the literary elements such as tone, language, structure, diction, and
others to include in your discussion.
Types of Prose Essay Questions
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Analyze narrative and literary techniques and other resources of language used for
characterization.
How does a narrator reveal character? (consider tone, diction, syntax, and point of view)
How does the author reveal a character’s predicament? (consider diction, imagery, and
point of view)
Explain the effect of the passage on the reader.
Compare and contrast two passages concerning diction and details for effect on reader.
How does the passage provide characterization and evaluation of one character over
another? (consider diction, syntax, imagery, and tone)
What is the attitude of the speaker toward a particular subject?
Analyze the effect of revision when given both the original and the revised version of a
text.
Analyze style and tone and how they are used to explore the author’s attitudes toward his
or her subject.
How is the reader prepared for the conclusion of the piece?
3.Open-Ended: A question that highlights specific insights applicable to a broad range of
literary texts. You choose the piece of literature to which you will refer. A list of works will be
provided at the bottom of the prompt, but you are not required to choose one of these options.
Most Frequently Cited 1970-2010
23 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
18 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
16 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
15 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski
15 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
15 Moby Dick by Herman Melville
13 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
13 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
12 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
12 King Lear by William Shakespeare
11 Billy Budd by Herman Melville
11 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
11 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
10 The Awakening by Kate Chopin
10 Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
10 Light in August by William Faulkner
10 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
10 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zorah Neale Hurston
9 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
9 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
8 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
8 Antigone by Sophocles
8 Beloved by Toni Morrison
8 Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
8 Candide by Voltaire
8 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
8 The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
8 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
8 Native Son by Richard Wright
8 Othello by William Shakespeare
8 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
7 The Crucible by Arthur Miller
7 Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
7 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
7 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
7 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
7 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
7 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
7 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
7 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
7 Sula by Toni Morrison
7 Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
6 All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
6 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
6 A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
6 An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
6 Equus by Peter Shaffer
6 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
6 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
6 Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
6 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
6 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
6 Obasan by Joy Kogawa
6 Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
6 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
6 Sula by Toni Morrison
6 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
6 The Tempest by William Shakespeare
6 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
5 Bleak House by Charles Dickens
5 The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chkhov
5 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
5 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
5 Hamlet by William Shakespeare
5 Macbeth by William Shakespeare
5 Medea by Euripides
5 The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
5 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
5 Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw
5 Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot
5 The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
5 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
5 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
5 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
5 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
5 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
5 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
5 Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
Thirty years of AP Open Questions! (condensed)
*IMPORTANT: ALL of the questions below ask you to:
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General:
Show HOW what you’re discussing relates to the work’s over-all significance
Choose a work of literary merit on or off the list provided
Avoid plot summary!
1. Significance of a title
2. The author’s manipulation of time
3. A predominant allusion in a work
4. Particular social attitudes or traditions that the author apparently wishes to change
5. Opening scene of a work
6. Conflict between a parent (or a parental figure) and a son or daughter
7. How contrasting places (for example, two countries, two houses) represent opposed forces or
ideas
8. Arguments for or against the work’s relevance in today’s world
9. Similarities and differences in a sequence of parallel or recurring events in a work
10. Implausible or unrealistic incident or character - how it relates to the realistic elements in the
work
11. Character who confronts a mystery – identify the mystery and its investigation
12. Internal events (mental/psychological) – how they impact external action in a work
Scene:
1. A scene or scenes of violence
2. A scene of social occasion (wedding, funeral, party…) – how it shows the values of the
character /society
4. A line or passage in a work and the reasons for its significance and effectiveness
5. How and why an ending appropriately or inappropriately concludes the work
Based on quotes about literature:
1. “Spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation” evident in the ending of a work
2. A work which you initially considered conventional, but now see as “uncivilized free and wild
thinking”
3. Explain the “pleasure and disquietude” experienced by the readers of a particular work
4. A scene or character which awakens “thoughtful laughter” in the reader
5. How and why important elements of a work are “distorted”
Character:
1. How and why a particular immoral character in a work makes us react sympathetically
2. Characters alienated from society because of gender, race, class, or creed – how that alienation
reveals society’s assumptions or moral values
3. Character whose mind is pulled in conflicting directions by two compelling desires or
influences
4. Character who appears briefly, or does not appear at all, but has a significant presence
5 The nature of a character’s villainy
6. Character’s conflict between a private passion and a social responsibility
7. A conventional or stereotyped character’s function in achieving the author’s purpose
8. A rebel’s conflict and its ethical implications for the individual and society
9. The function of a confidant/e in a work
*from Claudia Felske on the AP ListServ
What AP Readers Long to See
Remember that your Reader will try to reward what you do right, rather than focus on what you
do
wrong. Make it easy for your Reader to reward you!
1. Read the prompt. It hurts to give a low score to someone who misread the prompt but wrote a
good essay. Circle or underline the words that carry the weight of the prompt.
2. Do everything the prompt asks. Always answer exactly what the question asks. Many writers
focus on a
few strategies and never fully answer the question. Come on…its going to take at least two
pages.
3. Think before you write. Which strategies are used and how do they answer the prompt? If you
are working on the “open question,” think about which novel or argument is the best for the
prompt. Don’t limit yourself to the suggested list of ideas on any prompt.
4. Plan and organize your response. Use your test booklet to brainstorm and write down ideas.
Jot a plan or even words, phrases, points, sentences. A little organization will help you avoid
extensive editing, suchas crossing out lines or in some cases whole paragraphs. Arrows on the
essay directing your Reader to goto another page, read a paragraph and then return are difficult
to follow and may be ignored.
5. Make a strong first impression. Don’t parrot the prompt word for word, or turn the prompt into
a statement. Use the language of the prompt, not the prompt itself. Your Reader knows it from
memory. The opening sets your Reader’s expectations.
6. Get to your thesis quickly! Begin your response immediately; don’t beat around the bush with
“There are many great novels” or “What is courage?” Avoid these generalizations. Lose the
timeworn phrases!
7. Be thorough and specific. Do not simply “point out” strategies. Explain how they are used,
give examples, and show how they establish what the question is asking. Begin a few sentences
with “For example…” Integrate quotes into your own sentences. Most of your quotes will be one
word or line. No long lumpy quotes!
8. Avoid merely paraphrasing the passage. Your essay can follow the sequence of the passage,
but your central idea/thesis — not the content of the passage — should dictate your overall
organization. You are proving an assertion or looking for meaning or analyzing the style, not
recycling the passage.
9. Avoid such comments as, ‘The writer uses diction/syntax/imagery’ without providing a
qualifier for these terms. For example, formal diction, sophisticated diction, awkward diction,
inverted syntax, balanced syntax, balanced syntax, convoluted syntax.
10. Use clear transitions that help your Reader follow the flow of your essays. Keep your
paragraphs organized; do not digress.
11. Never refer to the author by first name. It is Shakespeare, not Will. So not your buddy!
12. Keep your essay in present tense when referring to a work of writing. A piece of literature
comes alive newly each time it is read.
13. Write to express, not to impress. Keep vocabulary and syntax within your zone of
competence.Students who inflate their writing often inadvertently entertain, but seldom explain.
14. Demonstrate that you understand style. Show your Reader how the author has developed the
selection to create the desired effect. Explain how, not what. Do not simply identify a simile for
instance; explain the purpose or effect of the simile.
15. Make a strong final impression. The conclusion should be a separate paragraph, even if you
only have time for one sentence.
16. Let your writing dance with ideas and insights. You can receive a 6 or a 7 with a lockstep
approach, but the essays that earn 8’s and 9’s expand to a wider perspective. Organic essays
grow out of their own ideas and are not constrained by five paragraphs.
17. Write legibly — large enough to read, in black ink. If your Reader cannot read half the
words, you will not get your best score, even if your essay is passed on to a reader with keener
eyesight. Patience decreases as the reading progresses.
18. Let your work stand on its own merits. Avoid penning “pity me” notes (“I was up all night.”
“I have a cold,” etc.) to your Reader.