<p>i realized lucifer a little too late, but still used it. really talked about his tone and comparison to the plant.</p>
<p>are we allowed to discuss multiple choice?</p>
<p>^No, never. They might someday recycle the questions.</p>
<p>“are we allowed to discuss multiple choice?”</p>
<p>Never. </p>
<p>As they said repeatedly to my testing section: “we know who you are and where you live.”</p>
<p>Q1: I discussed Wolsey’s frustration with himself for being dismissed from his position. I interpreted his words as a lament for allowing his pride and desire for more power to guide the future of the kingdom to prevent him from seeing his imminent doom of removal.
This is a summary of Cardinal Wosley according to SparkNotes
"Cardinal Wolsey - The king’s right-hand man, Wolsey is quite a schemer. He engineers a truce with France before the play begins, then a break with Spain when the king divorces Katharine, who is the daughter of the king of Spain. He plants the idea in Henry’s mind that his marriage to Katharine is illegal because he wants Henry to marry the daughter of the king of France, thus, solidifying the treaty he engineered. But he inadvertently introduces Anne Bullen to the king at a dinner, and Henry is smitten. In a letter, Wolsey tries to convince the Pope to deny Henry a divorce until Henry gets over his infatuation with Anne. But Henry intercepts the letter, along with an inventory of all the lands and holdings Wolsey has slowly been acquiring from fallen lords. Henry, enraged at Wolsey’s betrayal, fires him, removes his royal protection, and takes his possessions. Wolsey finally understands that he was wrong to have so much arrogance and realizes that he was out of his depth to be plotting the future of the kingdom as he saw fit. Finally understanding humility and honor to be the correct path, Wolsey sees the truth of his wrongdoing. Humbly, he leaves the court and dies soon after in a monastery. "</p>
<p>Q2: I felt Petry was foreshadowing Johnson’s ability to brave her environment, be it the wind, the “rain and snow” that she saw in the run-down sign, or the deprivation of the alleys and streets in general. The ending, “reasonable,” made me think Petry opened this novel/novella (can’t remember which) with Johnson’s struggle against the environment to show she will overcome her struggles in spite of their challenges and make the best of it. </p>
<p>Q3: How broad and sensational of a question could it have been? I discussed the symbolism of Tralfamadore in Slaughterhouse Five.</p>
<p>My favorite essay was the open ended essay. I wrote on the Sound and the Fury and talked about how the honeysuckle scent on Caddy influenced each of her brother’s lives. 
The wind essay confused me a little bit. I think I was over thinking the prompt.</p>
<p>i dunno, but for me, i talked about how she actually came to love the wind and it was kind of ironic because the conditions were soo bad outside, but she was like “oh yea, heated rooms, carpet, REASONABLE”, like if she likes the outside and thinks the pleasant condition as only “reasonable”</p>
<p>Phew, so I wasn’t the only one who thought that Lutie tried to persevere in the end. A bunch of my friends were like, “No way, you totally misread that.” 
But yeah, I saw how Lutie’s situation sorta did differ from the other people’s situations.</p>
<p>YES you two did what I did. I said that she was pretty much ignoring how the wind was blowing around her and could focus on the signs and insignificant details like how the paint rusted, so she was used to the urban setting&wind&blahblah.</p>
<p>I wrote about, contrast to many who live a fabulous life in the city, Lutie has an unfortunate experience-- the wind is against her, and the apartment she is looking to rent has a rusted sign and is very old.</p>
<p>Wow. I felt pretty lucky on Thursday morning - the stars were aligning for me and the muse of College Board-style essay writing was with me. Before the exam, I hadn’t yet got through a full free-response paper in under two hours. So, I was unimaginably relieved when I saw the soliloquy from Henry VIII (which I read not unrecently), and the open question. The night before, I had been studying a list of open questions from 1970 onward that I found on the Internet. Quite typically, however, I only made meaningful, comprehensive, study-worthy outlines for the first few from the top of the page, which were the earliest. I think the second one (1970/1) asked for a discussion of the function of an inanimate object from a work and its significance to character, etc, you get the idea. I actually had done an independent reading project on a “work of literary merit” in the fall with a section on symbols, so I just pulled that out to study, and when I was indulged on Thursday morning with the open question, I had everything fresh in my mind to plop down. I think that was the first time I was able to move on to the second question after forty minutes, which was quite helpful. Anyway, here’s what I wrote.</p>
<p>1: Discussion of the floral metaphor; introduced the point that unlike other tragic figures, Wolsey was not blaming fate but saw his own role in his downfall (and so his catharsis was complete); noted that he compares his fall to that of Satan (and of course, there were no apologists for Satan in Shakespeare’s time, so the poor old Devil took all the blame himself - interesting how if Shakespeare wrote that allusion today, there would be overtones of Miltonian apologism), and he accepts his own inexcusability (“Never to hope again”); wrote about the progression of Wolsey’s retrospective self-image (“tender”, “blushing”, “easy”, “wanton”, “weary and old”, “wretched”, “poor”). Just a thought, this Wolsey doesn’t seem a bit like the real one or the one from The Tudors. But I guess that’s the brilliance of Shakespeare.</p>
<p>2: This one was the last one I wrote, and the most hack I think. Used the old reliables - figurative language, diction, personification, and metaphor that are used to characterise the wind as kind of obnoxious; then discussed Lutie, particularly how the narrator describes how the wind surprises her and the diction used to convey a sort of unwanted intimacy; I didn’t want to spell out rape (or gang rape for that matter, because we later hear about the rain and the snow, I think, obstructing her), but I said that the elements represent the threat that the city poses. I wrote about the last word, “Reasonable”, indicating how urbanites like Lutie become accustomed to the threat, but noted how, when Lutie is introduced in the passage, the reality of it is still unsettling to her.</p>
<p>3: Didn’t have to plan this one, basically had it memorized thanks to whatever generous teacher it was who made a webpage with forty years of open questions. I promised myself that I was going to write about something in English (as opposed to something in English translation), but ended up just doing the novel I studied the night before, which was Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The symbol I chose was the red travelling that follows the title character throughout the novel. Kind of obscure - I got the idea a few months ago after I read the book, from the Cambridge Guide to Tolstoy.</p>
<p>Overall, I think it went pretty well - the free-response in any case. Expecting a 4, or minimum 3.</p>
<p>So, the symbol of fire and the theme of dangerous knowledge for Frankenstein, anyone?</p>
<p>So, I bombed the first two. All of the categories of literary devices I studied went out the window because I was freaking out about time; in retrospect, I remember them perfectly: symbolism, imagery, sound, form. Of course, some of these only apply to poetry (mainly form).</p>
<p>1: Discussed Wolsey’s grief. I explained the similes, which functioned as imagery. The flower was the most important, I thought. Then, I completed bs’ed the other half of my essay. I said that the alliteration — the sibilance — slowed the reader down, making the words seem ponderous, arduous and slow. I said it made Wolsey’s grief more palpable. And here comes the source of my BS: I said the line "vain pomp and glory of this world… " slowed the reader down with the p and the g, instead of the sibilance; which highlighted this line as the basis of Wolsey’s grief. Yeah, I know. Hopefully I get brownie points for at least noticing the sibilance. Expecting a 5.</p>
<p>2: Reading this again, I completely missed the abused lover thing. The urban setting pains her, tries to break her almost; but she seems ambivalent. I didn’t write that though. I only discussed her ambivalence and apathy — how she only saw the 3 bedroom house as “reasonable.” Expecting a 4.</p>
<p>3: I knew I was going to use The Awakening if I could: the writing is absolutely spectacular. I first I just discussed the protagonist, how she is trying to trying to break free from the confines of society. I then discussed how the sea reminds of her childhood and beckons her throughout the text. I said the water is also a universal symbol of a mother’s womb, so it symbolizes rebirth as well. My fourth paragraph was incredibly short. I said that Chopin highlights the protagonist’s need for a personal awakening, she highlights the need for other’s personal awakenings. That was it; it was three sentence. I should have crossed it out, so I’m beating myself up over that. Expecting a 6/7.</p>
<p>Overall, I probably averaged a 5 — which is only OK.</p>
<p>Q1>Shakespeare: I didnt go to an US school until my junior year so I never really learn anything in Shakespeare so the 1st question really was the hardest for me. I did it last though.</p>
<p>Q2>Passage: I think its level of difficulty is medium. I talked about the wind as a personification and symbol </p>
<p>Q3>Choose a symbol from a novel: This one was the easiest for me. We did a lot about novels & its symbols in my ap class so i was thrilled when i saw the prompt. I wrote about the sun, symbolizing the society and absolute truth in The Stranger by Albert Camus</p>
<p>Overall I think the test is a little easier than my expectation</p>
<p>Q1: Something about how he was abandoned and connected it to the image of the tree. I bs’ed half the essay but it sounded pretty good to me
Q2: Something about how she was going to have a child in the city and that the wind who behaviors like a child is foreshadowing to her own birth-giving. Tied that in with how the urban envrionment makes her desire certain things or w/e etcetc
Q3: This one was a freebie. “Describe a symbol and write why it’s important to the novel, btw this is what a symbol means: …” WTH?!? Is that something that AP (emphasis on AP) Lit should test on? I knew what a symbol was in Elementary school!! I wrote on a Ibsen’s “A Doll House” – too easy</p>
<p>1 ~ Hm, the opposite of what oxon-lit.hum. said – I talked about how Wolsey viewed himself as a mostly-innocent victim (like Lucifer, the “fallen angel”) and blamed the world for his downfall instead of owning up to his mistakes. I used the three devices they suggested, hahaha. The “figurative language” was the extended metaphor of the plant… 'cause the plant was innocent but the frost, a force beyond its control, came and killed it. The allusion was, again, to Satan – he was totally likening himself to an angel; what a pompous jerkface (I’ve never read the play so maybe he actually wasn’t how I portrayed him, but whatevs). And liiike there was a resentful tone established through diction blah blah blah.</p>
<p>2 ~ Uhm this one was kinda hard to think of something for. I talked about how she was insignificant in comparison to the setting? Blah blah blah the natural forces are powerful (wind) and the urban setting is old (rusted sign) and thus, in comparison, she’s a helpless figure to whose plights the environment is indifferent? Dumb. </p>
<p>3 ~ I did the darkness in Heart of Darkness. I apologized profusely, since I’m sure like 30% of the essays they get will be on HoD. My body paras (examples of darkness) were on the map of Africa, Kurtz’s painting, and the African people. The darkness symbolized the evil (or potential evil) in every human blah blah blah.</p>
<p>for the wolsey prompt the plant metaphor caught my attention because I had been preparing for the AP Bio exam ahaha. i think i remember the metaphor being his pride growing and with an untimely frost, the plant itself is what caused it to die. In extreme environments plants release hormones to inhibit growth essentially killing themselves. So from this I based my whole essay on the belief that Wolsey felt it was his own actions that caused his downfall. ahahahahahahaha i think this is why that was my favorite prompt :] I don’t care if it was wrong, I supported the hell out of my arguments!</p>
<p>dormancy != death o__O</p>
<p>okay, not really “killing themselves,” but inhibiting growth. It is a stretch, but I hope the readers don’t notice.</p>
<p>Hehe, no, I think it’s clever. Didn’t mean to be overly critical.</p>
<p>Q1: My worst one… I don’t remember much.
Q2: “I felt Petry was foreshadowing Johnson’s ability to brave her environment, be it the wind, the “rain and snow” that she saw in the run-down sign, or the deprivation of the alleys and streets in general. The ending, “reasonable,” made me think Petry opened this novel/novella (can’t remember which) with Johnson’s struggle against the environment to show she will overcome her struggles in spite of their challenges and make the best of it.”
^pretty much the same… although, I also talked about the time period and how it was depressing, etc. but Lutie was a deviant from the rest-she was out there searching for what she wanted w/o letting the wind stop her.
Q3: LOVED it. HAHA. I used The Glass Menagerie.</p>