AP Language
Sample Responses to Questions on Staples
Questions on Meaning
1. Staples writes to communicate his experience as a black man of whom others are needlessly
frightened. He writes to explain his discovery that, when mistaken for a criminal, it is wiser not to react with rage but to take precautions to appear less threatening. However the writer’s purpose is put, this is a piece of personal experience and observation; we do not see Staples trying to predict the future or proposing any long-term solutions.
2. If we keep on reading, we find Staples acknowledging that women areoften the victims of street violence, some of it perpetrated by young AfricanAmerican males. He believes, though, that reports have been exaggerated.He takes pains to make clear that he isn’t dangerous. He
considers himself not a tough guy but a “softy” who hates to cut up a rawchicken (par. 2); he has shrunk from street fights (6); his own brotherand others have been killed in “episodes of bravado” (7).
3. By using it in this context, Staples gives the word survivor fresh connotations. Usually it suggests rugged strength, ability to endure, and so on, but here Staples helps us to understand that, in an area of gang warfare, knifings, and murders, timidity is a form of self-preservation.
Questions on Writing Strategy
1. Staples convinces by giving examples: anecdotes from his own experience (pars. 1, 5, 8, 9) and that of another African American male (10).
2. The examples are set forth in detail too rich to seem a mere bare-bones list. The similar nature of all the examples lends the essay coherence and, to give it even more, Staples uses transitions skillfully. In nearly every paragraph, the opening sentence is transitional, and transitional phrases indicate time: “One day,” “Another time,” “a couple of summers ago.”
3. Beginning with the scene of a near-empty street at night and a frightened woman fleeing him, Staples dramatizes his thesis and immediately sets forth a typical, recurrent situation.
Questions on Language
1. As we have seen, Staples’s essay uses a narrative hook at the start and, to make the hook grab hard, the writer deliberately misleads us. The word victim leads us to take him for a self-confessed criminal. By the end of the paragraph, we doubt our impression, and in his second paragraph, Staples explains that he is harmless, can hardly take a knife to a chicken. If we look back on the opening paragraph, we see the discrepancy between the word victim and reality. In truth, the fleeing woman is mistaken and fearful, a person on whom the innocent narrator has no designs. This discrepancy makes clear the writer’s ironic attitude. As the essay proceeds, he expresses a mingling of anger, humor, and resignation.