Blue = Words from the Prompt As Introduction

Student:______KEY______

For each prompt below: 1) write a thesis statement, and 2) write down what you will be looking for as you read (or would read) each passage.

Blue = words from the prompt as introduction

Red = what you will be proving in your essay (you will use the words in the prompt as a guide, but in your essay you will substitute these words with specific literary terms).

English Language and Composition 2001

Question 1 (now a Question 2 example)

(Suggested time----40 minutes. This question counts one-third of the total essay section score.)

The letter below was written in 1866 by the English novelist Marian Evans Lewes (who used the pen name George Elliot) in response to a letter from an American woman, Melusina Fay Peirce.

Read the letter carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze the rhetorical strategies Lewes uses to establish her position about the development of a writer.

In her 1866 reply letter to American Melusina Fay Peirce, English novelist Marian Evans (pen named, George Elliot) uses rhetorical strategies to establish her position about the development of a writer.

______
English Language and Composition 2001

Question 2

Carefully read the following passage from “Owls” by Mary Oliver. Then write an essay in which you analyze how Oliver’s style conveys the complexity of her response to nature.

Through her style, Mary Oliver’s essay “Owls” conveys the complexity of her response to nature.

English Language and Composition 2001

Question 3

Carefully read the following passage by Susan Sontag. Then write an essay in which you support, refute or qualify Sontag’s claim that photography limits our understanding of the world. Use appropriate evidence to develop your argument.

Susan Sontag is correct when she claims that photography limits our understanding of the world.

Susan Sontag is incorrect when she claims that photography limits our understanding of the world.

Susan Sontag is only partially correct when she claims that photography limits our understanding of the world.

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English Literature and Composition 2001

Question 1

(Suggested time----40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.)

In each of the following poems, the speaker responds to the conditions of a particular place and time---England in 1802 in the first poem, the United States about 100 years later in the second. Read each poem carefully. Then write an essay in which you compare and contrast the two poems and analyze the relationship between them.

Comparing and contrasting these two poems -- in which the speaker of each is responding to the particular conditions in, first England in 1802 and second in the U.S. around 1900 -- reveals the relationship between them.

English Literature and Composition 2001

Question 2

The passage below is taken from the novel Tom Jones (1749) by the English novelist and playwright Henry Fielding. In this scene, which occurs early in the novel, Squire Allworth discovers an infant in his bed. Read the passage carefully. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze the techniques that Fielding employs in this scene to characterize Mr. Allworthy and Mrs. Deborah Wilkins.

Early in the novel Tom Jones, by English novelist and playwright Henry Fielding, Squire Allworthy finds an infant in his bed. Analyzing this passage reveals that Fielding employs techniques to characterize both Mr. Allworthy and Mrs. Deborah Wilkins.

______

English Literature and Composition 2001

Question 3

One definition of madness is “mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it.” But Emily Dickinson wrote

Much madness is divinest Sense-

To a discerning Eye-

Novelists and playwrights have often seen madness with a “discerning Eye.” Select a character with apparent madness or irrational behavior. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain what this delusion or eccentric behavior consists of and how it might be judged reasonable. Explain the significance of the “madness” to the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

You may select a work from the list below or choose another novel or play of literary merit.

In the novel, ______by ______, the character ______suffers madness. But, his mental illness helps convey the theme of ______.