AP English Literature and Composition

Thesis Statement Mad Lib

In your timed-writing responses, do not parrot the prompt. You are obligated to address all aspects of the prompt, but you need to do so meaningfully—which means you need to elaborate. Instead of parroting, craft an interesting mad lib (thesis-like) response, which not only provides necessary information, but displays to the reader that your response will not only be interesting but insightful as well.

What does it mean to parrot the prompt? Why do you want to avoid doing it?

EX 1:

1979 prompt: Choose a complex and important character in a novel or a play of recognized literary merit who might, on the basis of the character's actions alone, be considered evil or immoral. In a well-organized essay, explain both how and why the full presentation of the character in the work makes us react more sympathetically than we otherwise might. Avoid plot summary.

Parrot prompt response:

Willy Loman is highly immoral in Death of a Salesman, yet Miller makes him sympathetic.

Mad lib (thesis-like) prompt response:

In ______’s ______, ______

(author) (genre of literature) (title) (name)

is ______for his or her ______;

(some synonym for evil) (explain immoral/evil behavior)

however, he or she is developed more sympathetically [when or through or because of] ______

______.

1984 prompt: From a novel or play of literary merit, select an important character who is a villain. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze the nature of the character's villainy and show how it enhances the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

Parrot prompt response:

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the Commander’s villainy enhances the meaning of the novel.

Mad lib (thesis-like) prompt response:

In the ______, ______

(genre) (title) (author)

creates ______, a villain who ______,

(character’s name) (character’s predominant villainous action)

but his villainy is necessary in developing the idea that ______

______.

2003 prompt: According to critic Northrop Frye, "Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning."

Select a novel or play in which a tragic figure functions as an instrument of the suffering of others. Then write an essay in which you explain how the suffering brought upon others by that figure contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole.

Consider the Great Gatsby essay you recently read; use the following organizer to develop the potential thesis for the essay:

Parrot prompt response:

In The Great Gatsby, the suffering of otherscontributes to the tragic vision.

In ______’s ______,

(author) (genre) (title)

______causesthe ______of ______

(tragicfigure)(synonym for suffering)

______whose circumstances reveal

that ______.

(tragic vision)

Now with a partner, create theMab lib thesis-like statement for the Oedipus Essay prompt: