AP English Language: Sample Responses to Questions on LailaAyad’s “The Capricious Camera”
(Something to consider) This documented student essay is complex in both its ideas and its organization. It analyzes a photograph taken during the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II: an image of a young girl surrounded by soldiers. Ayad makes two overlapping points — one about the Nazis’ Lebensbornexperiment (the attempt to create a master race through breeding and adoption) and another about the ambiguities of photography.
QUESTIONS ON MEANING
1. Ayad’s dual theses are as follows: “It is not merely people of other persecuted races who can become victims in a racial war, but also those we would least expect — the persecuting race itself” (par. 1); and “Unlike hand-made art, which in its very purpose begs to be viewed throughvarious interpretations, photography, and particularly photojournalism, . . . demands to be viewed alongside its agenda, for without this context, it may never be fully understood” (par. 8). The two come together in the final paragraph: “[E]ven if the original photographer saw the image as artistic, subsequent events compel us to try to see the image of the Polish girl with Nazis as journalism. In this endeavor, we must uncover as much as possible about the surrounding context. As much as we can, we need to know this girl’s particular story.”
2. Ayad focuses on the Nazi Lebensbornexperiment, in which “[c]hildren who possessed strong Nordic or Aryan qualities were systematically taken from their native countries, adopted by German parents (who were paid by the Nazi regime), taught to forget their families and former lives, and raised to breed not only many children of their own but, above all, families that would uphold Nazi ideology” (par. 11). Thus the Nazis persecuted their own “race” as well as others.
3. Ayad seems to want to show both the limitations of and the opportunities in photojournalism. It must be viewed in context, but that analysis can be very revealing.
QUESTIONS ON WRITING STRATEGY
1. Ayad focuses extensively on the photograph to show the ways it can be interpreted out of context and to demonstrate that without context we cannot truly understand the image.
2. Ayad seems to assume a general familiarity with Nazi Germany: In paragraph 1, for example, she uses “Hitler,” “Aryan,” “anti-Semitism,” and “Holocaust” without explanation. However, she does not assume familiarity with the Lebensbornprogram, which she explains in detail (pars.
1, 9–12).
3. The conclusion brings the essay full circle and (as noted in the answer to the first meaning question) weaves together the essay’s two threads. The last two sentences freeze the image of the girl in readers’ minds, capturing the poignancy of her unknown fate.
4. Ayad uses description in paragraphs 2–6, giving readers the information they need to see the photograph as she does.
QUESTIONS ON LANGUAGE
1. Ayad is clearly moved by the girl’s plight, as evident in language such as “overwhelming,” “the magnitude and force of the oppressing men,” “innocence and helplessness of the lone girl,” “both cruel and terribly frightening,” “menacing and unjust,” “symbols of oppression, producing an eerily suffocating effect,” “dramatic,” “wistful and innocent,” and “heads . . . hang in almost shameful disgrace.”
2. The quotations from Hitler, Gunther, and Himmler chillingly prove the Nazis’ racism and their goals of racial purification. The quotation from the Polish woman provides an eyewitness account of what happened to many children, including, perhaps, the girl in the photograph.
3. Targeting conveys a sinister intent, as in targeting prey.
4. Aryan originally referred to a Northern tribe that conquered much of Asia around 2000 BCE. German racialists began — some spuriously — to trace Northern Europeans back to these ancestors in the nineteenth century, and the Nazis found further reason to apply the term to themselves because of that people’s idealization of conquest.