TRHS AP English Literature and Composition Summer Packet for the 2016-2017 School Year Instructor: Mrs. Patty Deyermond email: [email protected] or [email protected] Dear AP English Student, AP Literature and Composition is a humanities course in which we will be examining the literature, art, and philosophies of our world. In this course, we will be reading and examining literature from a range of time periods and a range of genres including novels, poetry, drama and short story. We will be going far beyond plot to examine the techniques writers used to effectively communicate their complex ideas including examining figurative language, point of view, style, structure of the text and major themes integrated within the text. You will also be asked to complete and revise informal responses, in-class writing in response to prompts and formal critical analysis/argumentative and evaluative essays. The primary goal of this course is to develop you into a reader and writer capable of experiencing, interpreting and evaluating great works of literature and of thinking critically about the historical, cultural, psychological and sociological impact of these works. The literature, writing, and projects used in this course are meant to be intellectually stimulating and are very demanding. AP English presumes you have a strong foundation and interest in writing and reading as well as excellent time management skills. This is not a class for you to learn basic reading and writing skills. Remember, this is a college level course and the goal is that you will pass the AP exam at the end of the year and receive college credit for your effort. Beginning with the summer assignments, you will be responsible for completing work on time. There is no exception to this deadline, so please do not wait until the last minute to begin your reading and writing. The summer work will give you a good idea of what to expect for the school year in terms of the type of assignments and pace of work. I am truly looking forward to a great year with all of you! Please know that I am here to help you in any way I can, so please don’t hesitate to contact me over the summer. Email is always the best way to stay in touch, and I do check it frequently. Have a fantastic summer and happy reading and writing. Mrs. Deyermond AP LITERATURE CHOICE NOVELS – SUMMER 2016 Please obtain your own copies of these books from either your local library or buy them at a used book store. I order used copies from thriftbooks.com – most copies are around $4.00. The following list represents a broad array of interests and writing styles and all are AP level texts. You must read two of these texts and write an essay for each. Both essays are due by midnight, Saturday, August 13, though you may turn them in any time before then. Please email your essays to me at [email protected] or [email protected]. There is no exception to this deadline, so please plan your time accordingly. Your essays will represent the first two grades of quarter 1. CHOOSE TWO FROM THE FOLLOWING LIST: The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983 Pulitzer Prize winner) The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker that won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name. Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on the life of African-American women in the southern United States in the 1930s, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture. Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (1962 bestseller) An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s. A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything she stands for quickly turns from sport to a fierce power struggle with shattering results. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861 – classic literature) One of Dicken’s masterpieces, Great Expectations is an unflaggingly suspenseful story of aspirations and moral redemption. Humble, orphaned Pip, a ward of his short-tempered older sister and her husband, Joe, is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman. And, indeed, it seems as though that dream is destined to come to pass — because one day, under sudden and enigmatic circumstances, he finds himself in possession of "great expectations." In telling Pip's story, Dickens traces a boy's path from a hardscrabble rural life to the teeming streets of 19th-century London, unfolding a gripping tale of crime and guilt, revenge and reward, and love and loss.Wuthering Heights The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998 Pulitzer Prize finalist) The Poisonwood Bible (1998), by Barbara Kingsolver, is a bestselling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River. Orleanna Price, the mother of the family, narrates the introductory chapter in five of the novel's seven sections. The narrative then alternates among the four daughters, with a slight preference for the voice of the most outspoken one, Leah. The four girls increasingly mature and develop differently as each adapts to African village life and the political turmoil that overtakes the Belgian Congo in the 1960s.What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Kaled Hosseini (2007 bestseller) A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart- wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival. A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (1961 bestseller) Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest—and most celebrated—books of all time. In recent years it has been named to “best novels” lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer. Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the world's great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous fire- bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know. The story is told in a nonlinear order and events become clear through flashbacks (or time travel experiences) from the unreliable narrator who describes the stories of Billy Pilgrim, who believes himself to have been in an alien zoo and to have experienced time travel.