Hamlet

Advanced Placement Examination

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION

(Suggested Time – 40 minutes.)

Select one (1) of the following prompts on which to write your essay. Please write on every other line. When you are finished, staple this sheet to the front of your essay.

DICTION AND IMAGERY

Writers frequently develop a character by describing him or her in imagery of one or two consistent types. The character may speak in words filled with the particular imagery, or other characters may use the imagery in describing or talking about the character in question. The character may also be placed in settings described with the same imagery. Select a character from a work with which you are familiar and show how the writer suggests the character’s personality, strengths or weaknesses, and/or relationships to other characters.

CHARACTER

Henry James, the nineteenth-century American novelist, coined the term “reflectors” to explain his theory that writers use minor characters to reflect certain aspects of a major character’s persona. Select a character from a work with which you are familiar and show how the writer uses “reflectors” to emphasize certain key traits of the character’s personality. Be sure to identify the two key character traits before you identify the characters who reflect those traits and explain how they do so. You should also discuss the author’s reasons for using “reflectors.”

STRUCTURE

Formalist literary critics believe that an author may capsulize the structure of his or her work by carefully working out the opening sentences or lines in such a way that the entirety of the work is condensed into that sentence or those lines. For example, some say that a blueprint of the structure of the entire play is contained in the first two lines of Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

Bernardo: Who’s there?

Francisco: Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

Select a character from a work with which you are familiar and show how the writer sets up the structure of the entire work by using the opening sentence or lines to do so. Be sure that you explain the implied structure in detail.

PERSUASION

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the title character tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Write a carefully reasoned essay that defends, challenges, or qualifies this assertion. Use evidence from your observation, experience, or reading to develop your position.