WENDY SCRUGGS: Hi, everyone, and welcome to AP Daily Practice
sessions.
I'm Mrs. Wendy Scruggs, and I teach AP Literature
and Composition at Jack Bryant High School in Fayetteville,
North Carolina.
So today, I'm going to show you how
to use the prompt to guide your reading to find
evidence for your writing at the FRQ 2, the prose prompt,
and also to think about your thesis as you go.
The following excerpt is from Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel
of Blithedale Romance that was published in 1852.
And in this passage, two characters
have been living on Blithedale farm, a community designed
to promote an ideal of equality achieved
through communal rural living.
And they're about to part ways.
Read the passage carefully, and then in a well-written essay,
analyze how Hawthorne uses literary elements
and techniques to portray the narrator's complex attitude
towards Zenobia.
So before I even began to read this passage,
I know I need to focus on some very important things--
the narrator's complex attitude towards Zenobia,
or a relationship.
So always think about it in terms of a relationship
either to another character or to something like the setting
or an event, OK?
Now, I already know I've got to focus on that.
And I want to look at the prompt also before we even
read the passage and see if there are any hints that will
help guide my reading as I go.
So some key things I can use--
it's published in 1852 to put it in historical context.
I start thinking about all kinds of issues
that can be going on in 1852 on a rural community of quality.
An ideal of equality is very important.
So there's something about this narrator and this Zenobia lady
and something with equality, and they're parting ways.
So that makes me wonder, what is going
to go down with these two?
A communal rural living situation.
So this seems like, I think, farm life and rustic,
so it starts to bring up lots of connotations about the event.
And they're about two part ways.
Is this going to be good?
Is it going to be bad?
All of those things really pop in my head before.
And I have to remember, a thesis--
present a defensible interpretation.
So I have to have something to argue.
I need to use evidence to make my line of reasoning
and support it, and then I have to explain
how those examples, that evidence,
is going to support the line of reasoning, and of course,
use proper grammar and punctuation.
So these are things I need to focus on before I even read.
So let's go over a couple of reminders about this.
Focus on the task of the narrator's complex reaction.
Look for at least two sides to that reaction
because two sides or more is going to give us complexity.
Don't read for literary elements.
Read for reaction.
So we need to start thinking--
I'm looking out for emotional things.
Find details that show the reaction,
then discuss them in terms of the literary elements.
And then prove the complex reaction with your evidence.
So now, let's try and practice it.
If you will pause your video for a moment
and go ahead and read this passage for me.
OK, now that you've had a chance to read the passage,
we're going to focus on the first half of it--
an annotated section at a time.
OK.
So let's take a look at some details that
stood out to me as a reader.
Her manner bewildered me.
I was dazzled by the brilliancy of the room.
The furniture was exceedingly rich.
Our old farmhouse with its homely board and benches,
costly self-indulgence, reflection
of a great mirror, which shows Zenobia's proud figure,
likewise, and my own.
And so already there's a connection
made between these expensive opulent surroundings
in the, room and this Zenobia person.
And its getting compared or juxtaposed
to this more rustic environment, where the narrator and Zenobia
apparently have been living in this communal setting
for equality.
So the imagery and the language are leading me
to some statement about how the narrator and Zenobia are not
in this utopian ideal anymore.
And so instead of all this simplicity of that environment,
everything is really fancy.
It seems like it's bringing across an idea
of a lot of materialism, and she seems
to be fitting into that environment,
so that makes me think that he's noticing this.
And at first, he does seem impressed.
Remember we're looking for complexity,
so more than one emotion going on.
Because then we're going to see it shift.
It costs me, I acknowledge, a bitter sense of shame.
That's a key phrase there for me.
That shows a shift, and this is a drastic swing
from the bewildered and dazzled and kind
of positive language at first from the first part
of this passage.
So it's already shifted to he's impressed,
but he doesn't feel good about being impressed.
He feels guilty for it.
OK.
And then we see that it also shifts to a conflict of wills
with this line--
a positive effort to bear up against the effect, which
Zenobia sought to impose on me.
And he says, "I reasoned against her in my secret mind
and strove to keep my footing."
So we see now the reaction is from being impressed,
bewildered, overwhelmed.
Now, he's fighting against it.
So again, there's more than one portion of this reaction.
The emotions are on a continuum.
So now, you feel shame, and then he's
pushing back against his own reaction.
He doesn't want to give into her, whatever
this entanglement is, right?
And then we see more of this reaction coming into play.
And then he goes back.
So he's wavering between the reactions--
gorgeousness with which she had surrounded herself.
And so she seems gorgeous in this setting,
and he can't help but be impressed.
He feels bad about it, but then he
goes back to being impressed.
So we see he's really struggling with this internal conflict.
And he talks about the physical nature
of the rich type of her beauty, and that seems
suitable in that environment.
So again, the positive part, again, and then we
see it change again.
I malevolently beheld the true character of the woman--
passionate, looks serious, lacking
simplicity, not deeply refined, incapable
of pure and perfect taste.
That's a slap in the face in his mind towards her, isn't it?
Because she has this beauty, and the environment is beautiful,
and it's parallel to her character.
And he's saying, all of this ostentatiousness of the room
and of her is contradictory to what he really admires,
which would be pure and perfect taste.
And it seems that the more rustic,
rural, equality-driven experience of this utopian
community, where they've lived, is an ideal and much more
simplistic as opposed to all of this
showiness and fancy surroundings and apparently her beauty.
And then we see a change, again.
In the next instance, she was too powerful
for all my opposing struggles.
He tells us he's struggling, and he feels
like he's losing the battle.
So we see this internal conflict just building--
how fit it was she should make herself
as gorgeous as she please.
So she's like this room.
She's just decked out apparently in her beauty.
And she'd do a thousand things that would have been ridiculous
in the poor and then weakly characters of other women.
So she's gone overboard--
like the showiness of this room with its marble and chandeliers
and everything.
And so it becomes more negative again.
And then he says, "I hardly know whether I then
beheld Zenobia in her truest attitude,
or whether that were the truer one in which she had presented
herself at Blithedale."
So we see, again, he's admitting in his mind to us
the struggle that he's having, and in both,
there was something like the illusion, which a great actress
flings around her.
So it's kind of like, oh, I think
she's just putting on air.
So these are very contrasting images--
positive, negative, positive, negative internal conflicts.
So that is-- the literary devices come up naturally
as we're reading for what stands out to us.
Okay.
So now, we're going to focus on the second portion
of the passage.
So if you can please pause the video, and read this section,
and I'll put it on the next screen for you larger.
OK.
So in this section, some more items stand out.
And notice that this is where we leave the narrator's thoughts
and we start seeing dialogue between these characters.
So we see his reaction directly to her.
And look at what she says--
Zenobia, I think in a poor and Meager nature that
is capable of one set of forms.
So she's saying-- she's challenging him, if you will,
because the present happens to be unlike it.
Why isn't it OK to be in this type of showy environment
with all of this opulence and me to be opulent with it
and materialistic with it?
Why can't I do both if I want to?
So she does challenge him, and he's not
going to react well to this.
She's like, why do we have to be stuck
with all the homely stuff?
Why can't we live other ways?
And then here's his reaction in blue.
It irritated me-- the self-complacent
condescending qualified approval and criticism
of a system to which many individuals,
and he goes on in his criticism.
So notice, he immediately-- his reaction,
which we have to address in our thesis and in our essay
is going to be this.
So we've seen it change again after the dialogue.
Here's his reaction as soon as she stands up
for herself about how she is.
And then we have a dash.
We're going to have this break in thought,
and it's going to interrupt it.
So he's criticizing still in blue.
I'm determined to make proof if there were any spell,
and he's still negative to exercise her out
of the part, which she seemed to be acting.
So it's so bad to him as this person from this utopian
society on the farm with her that he says, you know what?
He compares it to something evil that
has to be flushed out of her because he's still
trying to decide what's the real Zenobia?
The one he's experienced living with on this farm, or the one
that he's meeting with right now in this very fantastically
opulent room and setting.
And then here, it just gets interesting.
"She compelled to give me a glimpse of something true."
He feels like he's got to force it out of her.
Whether it's right or wrong, he wants
to see what's the real her.
So we know his reaction as he's trying to figure out which
one is the genuine person.
And then he says, because--
he broke for a moment and talked about how gorgeous she
was between those dashes, and then he
goes back to the negative and this internal struggle.
And then here, he says coolly to her.
And now, he's going to go on the attack.
He felt like she was overwhelming him,
and now, here, he's going on the attack.
And he's going to do it through this other man.
And this is brutal-- whoever this Hollingsworth
being is that she apparently is with now.
Poor fellow.
It's a pity.
Fault of a narrow education.
The slightest modicum of common sense
would teach him its utter and impracticability.
Those are not compliments about this guy.
So he's indirectly attacking her by attacking her man.
And it's brutal, and this is how he's
going to try to flush out the real Zenobia in this situation.
It requires quite all my real regard
for this respectable and well intentioned
man to prevent me laughing at him, as I find society at large
does.
So he's really saying that Hollingsworth
is so clueless in the situation, and he doesn't even
understand that because of his association with Zenobia
and how he's behaving with her in this non-utopian way, so
to speak, that he is making everyone disrespect him
and laughing him behind his back.
And this makes a really strong reaction by prodding her,
by attacking this Hollingsworth person.
Zenobia is going to poke back, and this
is going to really be effective in him drawing her out
and making her react to him.
So he's trying to take back power in this situation.
And look at what the reaction he gets from her is.
"Her eyes darted lightning.
Her cheeks flushed, flaming up suddenly within her.
She had shown me the true flesh and blood of her heart."
I guess involuntarily resenting my slight pity
and half-kind half-scornful mention of the man, who
was all in all with her.
So she is not happy about this, and because he
has ruffled her feathers, so to speak, in this situation,
he has drawn out the fact that she
is more interested in this other lifestyle than the one
that they all shared, apparently,
on the farm in the utopian society.
So he feels like he's been able to extract
from her her true self, and he feels satisfaction
that he's done this.
That Zenobia resents him from mentioning and insulting
the other man.
But he says, it's OK because I can tell who she really is,
what she really cares about.
So that's how you actively can read an FRQ prompt for prose.
And if you want more review before the exam,
be sure to watch the other practice sessions that we're
going to have and our in-depth reviews from 2021 and 2022
that are available in AP Classroom and here
on YouTube in the course playlist.
So thanks for joining me, and best of luck on your AP exams.