The Course Description for AP Literature and Composition states that students will:
…read deliberately and thoroughly, taking time to understand a work’s complexity, to absorb its richness of meaning, and to analyze how that meaning is embodied in literary form. In addition to considering a work’s literary artistry, students reflect on the social and historical values it reflects and embodies. Careful attention to both textual detail and historical context provides a foundation for interpretation…
In essence, AP Lit is the study of the human reaction to four major influences, which form the theme for this course:
growth, struggle, sex, and death
Growth
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
—Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
Making the transition from childhood to adulthood, shedding old beliefs in favor of new ones, refining thoughts about love, life, and happiness—all of these exemplify the growth of humans into fully-realized individuals. Works of literature explore these ideas of growth, how that process works, and its results.
Struggle
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
One of the first lessons you learn about storytelling is the notion of conflict: humans vs. other humans, humans vs. nature, humans vs. themselves. Much as muscles cannot build without first being broken, the presence of conflict and struggle is what ultimately defines how we see the world and its people. Whether benevolent, benign, or malevolent, these struggles focus our attention and reveal our inner character. The introspection in the pages of a novel or the dialogue in a play provide a means to explore situations we may not encounter in our normal lives.
Sex
“Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast, / To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, / Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, / Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, / And so live ever — or else swoon in death.”
—John Keats, “Bright Star”
Ah, love! It fuels our imaginations, helps us write our poems and songs, and can be the source of life’s greatest pleasures—and its pains. Companionship, both friendly and sexual, is one of humankind’s core desires. Longing, passion, comfort, healing, closeness, and poison can all be found in literature.
Death
“Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ”
—Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
The last and ultimate question of the human life is its most defining: What happens when we die? Many of the great works focus on the results of facing one’s own or another’s mortality. Death comes for us all, and literature looks at that journey and whether those on the path face it with grace or, as the poet Dylan Thomas puts it, “do not go gentle into that good night.”
All of the novels and plays we will read together will touch on one or more of these universal experiences. The interplay among them will provide much to talk about!