English with Mrs. Lamp

Crafting powerful essay prompts is an art. You want to challenge your students and create an opportunity for rich literary analysis. Here’s how to create prompts that will engage your budding AP Lit rock stars:

1. Focus on big ideas: Address major themes, character development, or literary techniques central to the work.
2. Encourage critical thinking: Use verbs like evaluate, analyze, or argue; this will move them away from simple summary.
3. Use specific language: Employ precise verbs like “analyze,” “evaluate,” or “compare” to guide students’ approach & ensure they know what they must do.
4. Connect to larger literary concepts: Link the specific work to broader ideas like archetypes, narrative styles, or literary movements.
5. Incorporate literary elements: Ask students to examine how specific elements (e.g., symbolism, narrative perspective) contribute to the work’s meaning. Have students draw on their literary vocabulary!
6. Prompt comparison: Encourage students to draw connections between characters, themes, or even other works.
7. Balance specificity and openness: Provide enough direction to focus students’ thoughts, but leave room for original interpretation.
8. Challenge assumptions: Ask students to reconsider common interpretations or evaluate controversial aspects of the work.

By following these guidelines, you’ll create prompts that push students to deeper understanding and more sophisticated analysis.

Here Are Some Sample Prompts I’ve Used in the Past:

Read each prompt carefully. Choose one and then write a well-organized response to the prompt that includes an intro, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

All the Pretty Horses Essay Prompts

1. Is John Grady Cole a “hero”? Consider what you know about heroes in literature, the Archetypal journey, and the coming-of-age narrative.
2. All the Pretty Horses is about the end of the mythic era of the American cowboy. In McCarthy’s view, what does the end of the cowboy era mean for the world? How have the world and its inhabitants changed, and is that change good, bad, or neutral?
3. All the Pretty Horses contains scenes of depraved cruelty, vicious cynicism, and bloody violence. It also contains scenes demonstrating hope, love, loyalty, and warmth. In the end, is this an optimistic or a pessimistic novel?
4. What significance do horses have in the novel? How does their presence in the novel, their juxtaposition with cars and busses, and what both the narrator and the characters say about them help reveal important ideas and themes?

The Inferno Essay Prompts

1. Discuss how Dante’s reaction toward sin changes over the course of The Inferno and consider whether he is right to lose his pity or sympathy for the souls he encounters in hell.
2. Describe Virgil’s function (or role) in The Inferno. How does he differ from Dante? What does he represent? Is he an excellent guide, or could someone else have done better?
3. Dante’s image of Satan and Satan’s punishment often surprises readers, and it certainly differs from typical images of Satan. Why does Dante portray Satan and Satan’s punishment as he does?

As I Lay Dying Essay Prompts

1. What does this novel gain through its use of multiple perspectives, and how does this narrative style contribute to a major theme of the text?
2. Why did Faulkner choose Daryl to be the main narrator?
3. Once the family gets to town, each member clearly has his or her own reasons for having made the trip. What message does the novel send, therefore, about human nature?

A Farewell to Arms Essay Prompts

1. How does desertion (abandonment) play a role in this novel? Who deserts? What does the novel say about those who abandon their responsibilities or commitments? How does the desertion motif illuminate a larger theme?
2. What one values can be determined only by what one sacrifices. Discuss a character who deliberately sacrifices, surrenders, or forfeits something and analyze how that sacrifice both illuminates the character’s values and provides a deeper understanding of the meaning of A Farewell to Arms as a whole.
3. A work that does not provide the pleasure of significant closure has terminated with an artistic fault. A satisfactory ending is not, however, always conclusive in every sense; significant closure may still require the reader to abide with or adjust to ambiguity and uncertainty. Explain how and why the ending of A Farewell to Arms provides an appropriate conclusion for the novel.
4. In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake. A Farewell to Arms confronts the reader with scenes of violence. Explain how a scene or scenes of violence contribute to the meaning of the novel as a whole.

Catch-22 Essay Prompts

1. What is it that powerful people regard more highly than truth, and how does absurdity in the novel reveal this?
2. Who has the most integrity in this novel, and who has the least? What happens to them, and what does that say about integrity?
3. Is Yossarian crazy? Why or why not?

Pride and Prejudice Essay Prompts

1. How is Elizabeth different from the rest of the Bennet family, what does the contrast reveal about her character, and what are readers supposed to learn from her unique approach to life?
2. Some critics say that Jane Austen’s “stock” characters (ones who are flat, static, and archetypal) are well-drawn and unique, while others find them extremely flat and boring. What purpose are these stock characters meant to serve in the novel, and do they live up to that purpose?
3. Why is Pride and Prejudice a better title than Jane Austen’s “draft” title: First Impressions.
4. Does Jane Austen’s novel advance radical ideas and extreme change for her society, or not? Consider: Does she present English society’s emphasis on wealth and social class (rather than moral character) as wholly bad? Does she side fully (or not) with Elizabeth’s romantic view of marriage over Charlotte and Mrs. Bennet’s more pragmatic view—marriage is for financial security? How radical is this novel?
5. Although this is largely a novel about individuality, Austen portrays both family and community as important role models and influences on individual character. How does Austen portray the power of both family and community to shape individuals?