1. In Alice Cary’s poem “Autumn,” published in 1874, the speaker contemplates the onset of autumn. Read the poem carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Cary uses literary elements and techniques to convey the speaker’s complex response to the changing seasons.

In your response you should do the following:

• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible
• Select and use evidence to support your line of
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your

Autumn

Shorter and shorter now the twilight clips

The days, as though the sunset gates they crowd, And Summer from her golden collar slips

 

Line

And strays through stubble-fields, and moans aloud,

 

5     Save when by fits the warmer air deceives,

And, stealing hopeful to some sheltered bower, ¹

She lies on pillows of the yellow leaves, And tries the old tunes over for an hour.

The wind, whose tender whisper in the May

10          Set all the young blooms listening through th’ grove, Sits rustling in the faded boughs to-day

And makes his cold and unsuccessful love.

The rose has taken off her tire ² of red—

The mullein-stalk ³ its yellow stars have lost,

15     And the proud meadow-pink ⁴ hangs down her head Against earth’s chilly bosom, witched with frost.

The robin, that was busy all the June,

Before the sun had kissed the topmost bough, Catching our hearts up in his golden tune,

20          Has given place to the brown cricket now.

The very cock crows lonesomely at morn—

Each flag ⁵ and fern the shrinking stream divides— Uneasy cattle low, ⁶ and lambs forlorn

Creep to their strawy sheds with nettled sides.

 

25     Shut up the door: who loves me must not look Upon the withered world, but haste to bring

His lighted candle, and his story-book, And live with me the poetry of Spring.

 

¹ a spot in a garden shaded by a covering of vines or branches

² attire

³  stem of a woolly-leaved plant ⁴ slender plant with pink flowers ⁵ plant with long tapering leaves ⁶ moo

2. The following excerpt is from Nisi Shawl’s novel Everfair, published in 2016. In this passage, the narrator describes the experience of a young woman, Lisette, as she rides her bicycle through the French countryside in July 1889.

Read the passage carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Shawl uses literary elements and techniques to portray Lisette’s complex response to her experience of riding her bicycle.

In your response you should do the following:

• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible
• Select and use evidence to support your line of
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your

 

 

Line

Lisette Toutournier sighed. She breathed in again, out, in, the marvelous air smelling of crushed stems, green blood bruised and roused by her progress along this narrow forest path. Her progress, and that of her

Up on the creaking leather seat. Legs drawn high, boots searching, scraping, finding their places . . . and pedal! Push! Feet turning circles like her machine’s wheels, with those wheels. It was, at first, work. She

5 new mechanical friend. Commencing to walk again, she pushed it along through underbrush and creepers, woodbine and fern giving way before its wheels. Oh, how the insects buzzed about her exposed skin, her face and hands and wrists and ankles, waiting to bite.

10 And the vexing heat bid fair to stifle her as she climbed the hillside slowly—but the scent—intoxicating! And soon, so soon, all this effort would be repaid.

There! The crest came in sight, the washed-out

15 summer sky showing itself through the beech trees’

20 smaller in the bluing distance, the sky pale overhead, the perfect foil for the dark-leaved woods behind her and by her sides. Not far off a redwing sang, cold water trickling uphill.

She had the way of it now: gripping the rubber

25 molded around the machine’s metal handlebars, she leaned it toward her and swung one skirted leg over the drop frame. Upright again, she walked it a few more steps forward, aiming straight along the lane, the yellow-brown dust bright in the sun. The machine’s

30 glossy paint shone. Within the wheel’s front rim its spokes were a revolving web of intricacy, shadows and light chasing one another. Tiny puffs of dust spurted from beneath the black rubber tires.

She raised her eyes. The vista opened wider, wider.

35 The road laid itself down before her.

splashing over her as she careened by. Coasting, at last, spilling all velocity till she and the machine came to rest beside the river.

40 pedaled and steered, wobbling just once and catching herself. Then going faster, faster! Flying! Freedom!

Saplings, walls, and vines whipped by, flashes of greenbrowngreengrey as Lisette on her machine sped down the road, down the hill. Wind rushed into her

45 face, whistled in her ears, filled her nose, her lungs, tore her hair loose of its pins to stream behind her. She was a wild thing, laughing, jouncing over dry watercourses, hanging on for dear, dear life. Lower, now, and some few trees arched above, alternately

50 blocking the hot glare and exposing her to itold silver trunks. Now her path connected with the                 coolwarmcoolwarm, currents of sun and shade

road, stony, rutted, but still better suited for riding. She stood a moment admiring the view: the valley, the blurred rows of cultivation curving away smaller and

55        The river. The comforting smell and sound of it rushing away. Out on the Yonne’s broad darkness a barge sailed, bound perhaps for Paris, the Seine, the sea beyond, ¹ carrying casks of wine and other valuables. Flushed from her ride, Lisette blushed yet

60 more deeply, suddenly conscious of the curious stares of those around her: Mademoiselle Carduner, the schoolmistress; and Monsieur Lutterayne, the chemist, ² out for a promenade during his dinner hour or on some errand, seizing a chance to vacate his

65 stuffy shop. Flustered, she attempted to restrain her hair into a proper chignon, ³ but at only sixteen and with many pins missing, this was beyond her skill. She began furiously to plait ⁴ her thick blond curls, and the others moved away.

70        At last she was alone on the riverbank with her mechanical friend. She tied her plaits together, though she knew that momentarily they would slither apart. She stroked the machine’s still-gleaming handlebars, then leaned to fit her forehead at their center, so.

75 “Dear one,” whispered Lisette. “How can you ever know how much you mean to me? Who would not give all they could, everything they had, in exchange for such happiness as I have found with you?”

 

¹ The Yonne River in France is a tributary of the Seine River, which passes through the city of Paris toward the Atlantic Ocean.

² pharmacist

³ a hairstyle in which the hair is pinned into a knot at the nape of the neck or at the back of the head

⁴ braid

 

Everfair by Nisi Shawl. © 2016, Nisi Shawl.

 

 

 

 

3. In many works of literature, characters choose to reinvent themselves for significant reasons. They may wish to separate from a previous identity, gain access to a different community, disguise themselves from hostile forces, or express a more authentic sense of self.

Either from your own reading or from the following list, choose a work of fiction in which a character intentionally creates a new identity. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how the character’s reinvention contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

In your response you should do the following:

• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible
• Provide evidence to support your line of
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your

 

 

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man The Awakening

Brooklyn

By the Way . . . Meet Vera Stark Ceremony

The Color Purple

The Count of Monte Cristo Disgrace

Fahrenheit 451 Fences

Great Expectations

A House for Mr. Biswas The House of the Spirits

The Hummingbird’s Daughter Jane Eyre

Jasmine

The Joy Luck Club Kindred

Kiss of the Spider Woman The Known World

The Last of the Menu Girls

Lila

Little Fires Everywhere Lucy

The Mayor of Casterbridge Middlesex

The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez The Nickel Boys

Orlando Passing

The Poisonwood Bible

Sophie’s Choice

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Surfacing

The Taming of the Shrew The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Their Eyes Were Watching God There There

Vanity Fair Washington Black Wuthering Heights

 

 

4. In William Ellery Channing’s poem “The Barren Moors,” published in 1843, the speaker addresses moors, open expanses of wild, uncultivated land. Read the poem carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Channing uses literary elements and techniques to develop a complex portrayal of the speaker’s experience of this natural setting.

In your response you should do the following:

• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible
• Select and use evidence to support your line of
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your

 

The Barren Moors

 

On your bare rocks, O barren moors, On

our bare rocks I love to lie,—

They stand like crags upon the shores,

Or clouds upon a placid sky.

Across those spaces desolate,

The fox pursues his lonely way,

Those solitudes can fairly sate ¹

The passage of my loneliest day.

Like desert Islands far at sea

Where not a ship can ever land,

Those dim uncertainties to me,

For something veritable stand.

No friend’s cold eye, or sad delay, Shall vex me now where not a sound

Falls on the ear, and every day

Is soft as silence most profound.

No more upon these distant wolds ²

The agitating world can come,

A single pensive thought upholds

The arches of this dreamy home.

Within the sky above, one thought

Replies to you, O barren moors!

Between, I stand, a creature taught

To stand between two silent floors.

A serious place distinct from all Which busy Life delights to feel,

 I stand in this deserted hall,

And thus the wounds of time conceal.

 

¹ fully satisfy

² hills

 

 

 

5. The following excerpt is from Brenda Peynado’s short story “The Rock Eaters,” published in 2021. In this passage, the narrator is one of a group of people who left their home country after developing the ability to fly, an ability that is accepted as realistically possible within the story. Years later, the group returns to that country with their children. Read the passage carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Peynado uses literary elements and techniques to convey the narrator’s complex experience of this return home.

In your response you should do the following:

• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible
• Select and use evidence to support your line of
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your

We were the first generation to leave our island country. We were the ones who developed a distinct float to our walk on the day we came of age. Soon enough we were hovering inches above the ground,

5 then somersaulting with the clouds, finally discovering we could fly as far as we’d ever wanted. And so we left. Decades later, we brought our children back to see our home country. That year, we all decided we were ready to return.

10        We jackknifed through clouds and dodged large birds. We held our children tightly; they had not yet learned to fly. Behind us trailed roped-together lines of suitcases packed with gifts from abroad. We wondered who would remember us.

15        Our parents, those who were still alive, came out to greet us, hands on their brows like visors. Some were expecting us. Others were surprised, terrified at the spectacle of millions of their prodigals ¹ blotting the sky with our billowing skirts, our shirts starched for

20 the arrival. We touched down on our parents’ driveways, skidding to rough landings at their feet, denting cars, squashing flowers, rattling windows.

Our old friends and siblings, the ones we’d left behind, kept their doors locked. They peered through

25 window blinds at the flattened flowerbeds, the suitcases that had burst and strewn packages all over the yards and streets, our youngest children squealing now that they’d been released, the peace we’d broken by returning. They didn’t trust us, not after our

30 betrayal decades ago, the whiff of money we’d earned or lost in other countries like a suspect stench. Our parents hugged their grandchildren and brought them inside to houses with no electricity, candles wavering like we were in a séance. “More brownouts,” they told

 

35   us. “We remember,” we said, recoiling at how little the place fit us anymore. Those first nights we slept in our old beds, our feet hanging over the edges, the noises of the city and the country crowing and  honking us awake, music from radios and guitars,

40 celebrations we’d not been invited to.

We dragged our children along to knock on the doors of old friends and siblings, the ones who never developed the ability to fly. They eventually, reluctantly, opened their doors. At first we sat stiffly

45 on couches and inquired after their health and others we once knew. Then we got them to laugh with us about the time we pulled the nuns’ skirts or put gum in the kink of a rival’s hair, when we caught baby chicks in the village and raised them, or cracked open

50 almonds on the malecón. ² Then their children came shyly out of their rooms and took ours by the hand. We smiled when we saw them climbing trees together in the patios, their children showing ours how to eat cajuilitos solimán and acerolas ³ from the branch.

55        We introduced our children to everyone we used to know: at colmados, ⁴ by the side of the road, at the baseball fields, at country clubs we had to beg to be let back into. We showed our children the flamboyán trees in the parks, blooms of coral red spilling in the

60 dirt. We showed them the granite striated through the rock faces of mountains, the glimmering pebbles under waterfalls, the red dust that stained the seats of their best clothes. We walked past the stray dogs that growled and whined; the most ancient among them

65 remembered us, wagging their tails when they saw us and running to sniff our offspring. We dunked our children into the rivers we’d once swum. We dug through the banks for the arrowheads that belonged to

the Tainos, who’d been erased after the Spanish came,

70 their remnants lost in the mud.

Lost, the children whispered in awe and fear, turning the black, glinting points in their palms, testing the hardness of flint between their teeth. Back in our foreign homes, we had never talked to them of

75 history.

We remembered we’d been happy. “We loved this land,” we said. We forget why we ever left.

 

¹ children who have left home and then returned

² a walkway along a waterfront

³ Cajuilitos solimán and acerolas are types of fruit.

⁴ neighborhood stores

 

Excerpt from THE ROCK EATERS: STORIES by Brenda Peynado, copyright (c) 2021 by Brenda Peynado.

Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.