Eagle Rock High School

Language Arts Department

 

AP English Literature

Summer Reading Assignment 2010

 

 

Summer reading and writing is required for all students enrolled in AP English Literature. Each student will read 3 books this summer, and write a specified response for each book as outlined below.

 

 

First, read the book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Write the chapter name and number, and a minimum of 3-5 bullet points for each chapter. These should be word-processed, and will be checked the first day of school. It is imperative you do this assignment first, as it will be used to complete the assignments for your 2 other readings.

 

Here's an example of what you might write for the first chapter:

 

Chapter 1: Elements of the quest:

- quester

- place to go

- stated reason to go there

-Challenges and trials

-The real reason to go—always self-knowledge

 

 

Next, choose 2 pieces of reading from the list that follows. You may choose to read:

                  -1 novel and an epic poem, or

                  -2 novels, or

                  -1 novel and 1 play

 

As you read, keep your notes from How to Read Literature Like a Professor close by, and look for those things that Foster pointed out in the book. (It might be a good idea to buy "tab" post-its to mark possibilities, as an easy way to keep track.)

 

 

 

After you finish your reading, apply the ideas of 2 chapters from How to Read Literature, to your reading, focusing on this question: How did the information in How to Read Literature help you understand the deeper layers of your reading?

 

For example, if your reading is Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Chapter 1 (Elements of the Quest) and Chapter 2 (Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion) may provide clues to help you better understand theme, character, plot, symbol, irony, or any of many literary devices.

 

Each of your 2 responses for each of your 2 works should include:                   -the name of the chapter from How to Read Literature                   -a very brief summary of the important points from How to Read Literature and -an explanation of how these points helped your understanding of literary aspects of the work – these aspects may include:   theme                       character                                  plot                            symbol                     irony   satire                        setting                                        structure                 tone                           point of view     Each of your 4 responses should be word-processed, and a minimum of 150 words (include a word count).

 

As with any assignment, all work should be your own. Any work that is plagiarized from any source, including a fellow student, will be grounds for dismissal from AP English Literature. All work is due the first day of class in September; students who do not complete summer reading may be dropped from AP English Literature.

AP ENGLISH READING LIST FOR SUMMER, 2010 

 

 

Novels

1.As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner - Rhe Bundren family's odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife & mother.  Told in turns by each of the family members, including Addie, ranges from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. 

 

2.Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison - A black man's odyssey through the racist American society of mid-20th century and the frauds and fanatics on both sides of the color line who wish to use or abuse him, through which he comes to a new understanding of himself and America.

 

3.Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston - Follows Janie Crawford, an African-American woman in the 1930's, through her marriages to 3 men, a trial for the murder of one.  Poetic in its prose, universal themes of love, loss, pain, happiness.

 

4.The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - Follows an Evangelical Baptist family with four daughters to the Belgian Congo in the late 1950's, and their mission to convert the natives to Christianity, which proves dangerous in light of the political climate of the Congo's fight for independence from European colonialism.

 

5.The Crying Of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon - In this highly original satire of American society and mores, Oedipa Maas is named executor of her rich former lover's will which begins a journey that takes her on a hallucinatory journey through his affairs and into a worldwide conspiracy.  Or is he just paranoid?

 

6.The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway - A group of disaffected English and American expatriates struggle to make sense of and find meaning in their lives amid drinking, traveling, bullfighting and unsatisfying love affairs in Spain after World War I, in this first novel by the author who did so much to revolutionize the writing of fiction in written in the twentieth century.

 

7.Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift - This eighteenth century satire, one of the greatest of all time, about the voyages of sailor Lemuel Gulliver, who travels from island nation to island nation, exposing first the travails and foolishness of politics, warfare, education, and at last humanity itself, in a book that remains completely timely and resonant today.

 

8. The Road by Cormac McCarthy - Set sometime in the future after a global catastrophe, The Road chronicles a father and a son—maybe the last of the "good guys"—as they tread along a forsaken patch of highway peopled by marauders and cannibals.

 

9. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton - Portrait of desire and betrayal during the Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people "dreaded scandal more than disease" 
This is Newland Archer's world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland.  When the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it.

 

10. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: of the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and her betrayal of him.

 

11. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right ideals have been carried to extremes in the monotheocratic government. The resulting society is a feminist's nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids, who turn their offspring over to the "morally fit" Wives.

 

 

Epic Poems

12.The Odyssey by Homer read only in one of the two following translations, by Robert Fitzgerald or Robert Fagles - the story of Odysseus' (Ulysses) adventures and encounters with gods and monsters while struggling to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, his son Telemachus' efforts to come to manhood and find and reunite with his father, and his wife, Penelope's, attempts to fend off her gluttonous suitors year after year while waiting for her husband's return.

 

13.Beowulf to be read only in one of the two following translations, by Burton Raffel or Seamus Heaney - Beowulf sails to save a neighboring nation from the terrible slaughter of the monster Grendel and the monster's witch mother in pitched and supernatural battle.  Will he be hero enough, or will he die trying?

 

 

Plays

14.A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen - a woman comes to realize the suffocating stereotyped roles for women held by her husband & society that keep her trapped in her 'Doll's House'.  A play that was revolutionary for its subject and point of view.

 

15.Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco - a classic of the theatre of the absurd, a parable of fascism & conformity in which one man tries to resist while all the rest of his society turn into rhinoceroses.  

  

16. Tartuffe by Moliere to be read in the translation by poet Richard Wilbur- Moliere's hilarious satire of religious hypocrisy, lust, greed and gullibility in the upper classes of 17th century France, where Tartuffe, a man of "deep faith" moves into a wealthy household and tries to take all the money and seduce all the women.

 

17. A Raisin in the Sun - The Youngers are a poor African-American family living on the South Side of Chicago. An opportunity to escape from poverty comes in the form of a $10,000 life insurance check that the matriarch of the family (Lena Younger or Mama) receives upon her husband's death. Lena's children, Walter and Beneatha, each have their plans for the money.