AP English Language and Composition (11th)

Summer Assignment 2015-2016

You must complete the following assignments over summer as both assignments are due on the first day of school. NO exceptions.

Assignment 1 – Annotation/Test: The Grapes of Wrath

In stark and moving detail, John Steinbeck depicts the lives of ordinary people striving to preserve their humanity in the face of social and economic desperation. When the Joads lose their tenant farm in Oklahoma, they join thousands of others, traveling the narrow concrete highways toward California and the dream of a piece of land to call their own. Each night on the road, they and their fellow migrants recreate society: leaders are chosen, unspoken codes of privacy and generosity evolve, and lust, violence, and murderous rage erupt. A portrait of the bitter conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of a woman’s quiet, stoical strength, The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature, one that captures the horrors of the Great Depression as it probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America.

Read the book The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Annotate as you read**. This book is available for purchase from an online retailer (such as Amazon), Barnes and Noble, or Yesterday’s Used Books. On the first day of school, you will take a test on this novel (50 points). You will also turn in your book to show your annotations (50 points).

The assignment is due on the first day of school and is worth a total of 100 points.

**Read the handout “A Guide to Active Reading” for more information about annotating.

Assignment 2 – Passage Analysis Essay

Prompt: The following is an excerpt from John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. Read the passage carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze the rhetorical strategies (i.e. imagery, tone, syntax, figurative language, etc.) Steinbeck uses to portray the character of Tom Joad. You must cite concrete details from the text to support your analysis. Your typed essay should be 3-5 pages in length, double-spaced, MLA format.

The assignment is due on the first day of school and is worth a total of 100 points.

Passage Analysis Essay

The Grapes of Wrath

Prompt: The following is an excerpt from chapter 2 of John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. Read and annotate the passage carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze the rhetorical strategies Steinbeck uses to portray the character of Tom Joad.

Outside, a man [Tom] walking along the edge of the highway crossed over and approached the truck. He walked slowly to the front of it, put his hand on the shiny fender, and looked at the No Riders sticker on the windshield. For a moment he was about to walk on down the road, but instead he sat on the running board on the side away from the restaurant. He was not over thirty. His eyes were very dark brown and there was a hint of brown pigment in his eyeballs. His cheek bones were high and wide, and strong deep lines cut down his cheeks, in curves beside his mouth. His upper lip was long, and since his teeth protruded, the lips stretched to cover them, for this man kept his lips closed. His hands were hard, with broad fingers and nails as thick and ridged as little clam shells. The space between thumb and forefinger and the hams of his hands were shiny with callus.

The man’s clothes were new—all of them, cheap and new. His gray cap was so new that the visor was still stiff and the button still on, not shapeless and bulged as it would be when it had served for a while all the various purposes of a cap—carrying sack, towel, handkerchief. His suit was of cheap gray hardcloth and so new that there were creases in the trousers. His blue chambray shirt was stiff and smooth with filler. The coat was too big, the trousers too short, for he was a tall man. The coat shoulder peaks hung down on his arms, and even then the sleeves were too short and the front of the coat flapped loosely over his stomach. He wore a pair of new tan shoes of the kind called “army last,” hob-nailed and with half-circles like horseshoes to protect the edges of the heels from wear. This man sat on the running board and took off his cap and mopped his face with it. Then he put on the cap, and by pulling started the future ruin of the visor. His feet caught his attention. He leaned down and loosened the shoelaces, and did not tie the ends again. Over his head the exhaust of the Diesel engine whispered in quick puffs of blue smoke…

The hitch-hiker [Tom] stood up and looked across through the windows. “Could ya give me a lift, mister?”

The driver looked quickly back at the restaurant for a second. “Didn’ you see the No Riders sticker on the win’shield?”

“Sure – I seen it. But sometimes a guy’ll be a good guy even if some rich bastard makes him carry a sticker.”

A Guide to Active Reading

To get the most out of reading, we must invest something of ourselves in the process, applying our own ideas and emotions and attending not just to the substance but also the writer’s interpretation of it. This kind of reading is critical because it looks beneath the surface of a piece of writing. (The common meaning of critical as “negative” does not apply here: critical reading may result in positive, negative, or even neutral reactions.)

Critical reading can be enormously rewarding, but of course, it takes care and time. A good method for developing your own skill in critical reading is to prepare yourself beforehand and then read the work at least twice to uncover what it has to offer. Preparation can involve just a few minutes as you form some ideas about the author, the work, and your likely response to the work.

 What is the author’s background, what qualifications does he or she bring to the subject, and what approach is he or she likely to take?  What does the title convey about the subject and the author’s attitude toward it? Note, for instance, the quite different attitudes conveyed by these three titles on the same subject: “Safe Hunting,” “In Touch with Ancient Spirits,” and “Killing Animals for Fun and Profit.”  What can you predict about your own response to the work? What might you already know about the subject? Based on the title and other clues, are you likely to agree or disagree with the author’s views?

After developing some expectations about the piece of writing, read it through carefully to acquaint yourself with the subject, the author’s reason for writing about it, and the way the author presents it. Try not to read passively, letting the words wash over you, but instead interact directly with the work to discover its meaning, the author’s intentions, and your own responses.

One of the best aids to active reading is to make notes in your book on the pages themselves. As you practice making notes, you will probably develop a personal code meaningful only to you. As a start, however, try this system:

 Underline or bracket passages that you find particularly effective or that seem especially important to the author’s purpose.  Circle words you don’t understand so that you can look them up when you finish.  Put question marks in the margins next to unclear passages.  Jot down associations that occur to you, such as examples from your own experience or disagreements with the author’s assumptions or arguments.

After your initial reading, try to answer your own questions by looking up unfamiliar words and figuring out the meaning of unclear passages. Then let the text you have just read rest in your mind for at least an hour or two before approaching it again.

After you read the text a second time, aim to answer the following questions:

 Why did the author write about this subject?  What impression did the author wish to make on readers?  How do the many parts of the work – for instance, the sequencing of information, the tone, the evidence – contribute to the author’s purpose?  How effective was the piece, and why?