AP English Literature
and Composition
Past Papers

Marking Time

Christopher Gilbert

Explore how a morning run prompts shifting observations and memories.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Aimee Bender

Analyze Rose’s unusual sensory and emotional experience of her mother’s cake.

Conflict between old and new

Explain how tensions between established and changing ways shape a work.

Monologue for Saint Louis

Colleen McElroy

Analyze the experience of returning home after personal change.

The Bradshaw Variations

Rachel Cusk

Explore Thomas Bradshaw’s characterization through morning family interactions.

A memory’s lasting influence

Connect an important memory with a character’s actions and the whole work.

Two Guitars

Victor Hernández Cruz

Explore how personified instruments create a layered musical world.

The All of It

Jeannette Haien

Analyze Father Declan’s portrayal during the journey home from fishing.

A secret and its effect on relationships

Explain how concealment changes relationships and the work’s larger meaning.

To a Star Seen at Twilight

John Rollin Ridge

Trace the significance of a solitary star in the speaker’s reflections.

One Morning in June

Mavis Gallant

Analyze Mike’s experience of studying painting and assessing his ambitions.

Indecision and its effects

Explain the consequences of a character delaying or avoiding a decision.

On Summer

George Moses Horton

Examine the layered portrayal of summer in a rural landscape.

The Night Stages

Jane Urquhart

Analyze Kenneth’s perspective as he finishes and reflects on his mural.

An unfulfilled need

Explain how a character’s sense of absence shapes the work’s meaning.

Autumn

Alice Cary

Explore the speaker’s changing feelings as the seasons turn.

Everfair

Nisi Shawl

Analyze Lisette’s layered response to travelling through the countryside by bicycle.

Reinventing an identity

Explain how a deliberately constructed identity contributes to the whole work.

The Barren Moors

William Ellery Channing

Analyze the speaker’s experience of a wild landscape.

The Rock Eaters

Brenda Peynado

Examine the narrator’s complex return to a former home country.

Rebellion and complex motives

Connect a disruptive character’s motivation with an interpretation of the work.

Shaving

Richard Blanco

Trace the memories and meanings associated with an everyday ritual.

People of the Whale

Linda Hogan

Analyze how two unusual events help characterize a community.

A character’s response to hierarchy

Explain the significance of accepting, resisting or navigating a hierarchy.

The Man with the Saxophone

Ai

Explore the significance of a street encounter at a particular moment.

Breath

Tim Winton

Analyze the narrator’s complicated reaction to an incident beside the river.

The symbolic importance of a house

Explain how a dwelling contributes to an interpretation of the whole work.

The Gift of Rain

Tan Twan Eng

Analyze the narrator’s feelings when visiting his mother’s childhood home.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

James Weldon Johnson

Explore how remembered infatuation produces a complex emotional response.

The Fig Tree

Katherine Anne Porter

Analyze Miranda’s reaction to the interaction between two older relatives.

The Landlady

P. K. Page

Explore the speaker’s layered portrayal of the landlady.

The Rise of Silas Lapham

William Dean Howells

Analyze the sisters’ experiences within their family and social world.

Idealism and its consequences

Connect a character’s ideal view of life with the work’s larger meaning.

Plants

Olive Senior

Explore the relationships among the speaker, the audience and plant life.

A parting conversation at Blithedale

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Analyze the narrator’s attitude toward Zenobia through the passage’s language.

A gift that is also a burden

Develop an interpretation of an advantage that also creates difficulty.

Juggler

Richard Wilbur

Connect the description of a performer with what it reveals about the speaker.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Thomas Hardy

Examine a father and daughter’s reunion through tone and selected details.

Deception and motivation

Explain why a character deceives others and why that deception matters.

XIV

Derek Walcott

Explore the importance of a remembered childhood encounter with a storyteller.

The Beet Queen

Louise Erdrich

Analyze how the environment affects the two children in the opening passage.

Cruelty and its consequences

Explain the function of cruelty and what it reveals about those involved.

For That He Looked Not upon Her

George Gascoigne

Trace a complex attitude through the poem’s form, word choices and images.

The Known World

Edward P. Jones

Analyze the introduction of Moses through perspective and selected details.

Sacrifice and personal values

Explain what a character’s deliberate sacrifice reveals about the work.

The Black Walnut Tree

Mary Oliver

Examine how poetic choices connect a family and its tree.

The Rainbow

D. H. Lawrence

Explain how the passage presents the woman and the limits of her circumstances.

A pivotal coming-of-age moment

Relate one stage of a protagonist’s development to the whole novel.

A Story

Li-Young Lee

Analyze the father–son relationship through perspective and the poem’s movement.

Middlemarch

George Eliot

Explore a married couple’s complex relationship during financial difficulty.

The search for justice

Evaluate a character’s understanding and pursuit of justice within the work.

An Echo Sonnet

Robert Pack

Explain how the poem’s form and echoing voices develop meaning.

Kiss of the Fur Queen

Tomson Highway

Analyze how descriptive and narrative choices dramatize Okimasis’s experience.

An illuminating episode

Show how a particular moment reveals the meaning of a whole work.

The Century Quilt

Marilyn Nelson Waniek

Trace the layered significance the speaker gives to a family quilt.

Belinda

Maria Edgeworth

Analyze the contradictions in Clarence Hervey’s characterization.

Exile: alienation and enrichment

Develop an argument about both loss and possibility in displacement.

To Sir John Lade / When I Was One-and-Twenty

Samuel Johnson; A. E. Housman

Compare perspectives and tones in poems about reaching adulthood.

Cherry Bomb

Maxine Clair

Explore how an adult narrator reconstructs a childhood summer.

The lasting influence of home

Explain why home remains significant after a character leaves it.

Henry VIII: Wolsey’s speech

William Shakespeare

Trace a dramatic speaker’s response to losing status and influence.

The Street

Ann Petry

Explore how the urban environment shapes Lutie Johnson’s experience.

One significant symbol

Explain how a symbol develops character or thematic meaning across a work.

Icarus

Edward Field

Analyze the effects of relocating an ancient myth into modern life.

Seraph on the Suwanee

Zora Neale Hurston

Connect the depiction of Sawley with the characterization of its residents.

A political or social issue

Examine how literary choices develop an issue within a whole work.

When I Have Fears / Mezzo Cammin

John Keats; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Compare poetic responses to time, ambition and the course of a life.

Fasting, Feasting

Anita Desai

Analyze Arun’s experience through speech, perspective and social surroundings.

A foil to the central character

Explain how a contrasting minor character develops the work’s meaning.

Hawk Roosting / Golden Retrievals

Ted Hughes; Mark Doty

Compare animal speakers and the outlooks created by their voices.

Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen

Examine the narrator’s techniques for presenting Catherine Morland.

Childhood or adolescence

Explain how a work’s portrayal of growing up shapes its larger meaning.

A Barred Owl / The History Teacher

Richard Wilbur; Billy Collins

Compare the poems’ treatment of adults explaining the world to children.

Johnny Got His Gun

Dalton Trumbo

Analyze the father–son relationship through perspective, details and syntax.

The continuing influence of the past

Connect a character’s engagement with earlier events to the work’s meaning.

Here

Philip Larkin

Follow how descriptive choices develop an attitude toward different places.

Childhood experiences of reading and writing

Seamus Deane

Explain how remembered literary experiences shape the speaker’s development.

Betrayal and its significance

Analyze an act of betrayal and its contribution to the whole work.

Evening Hawk

Robert Penn Warren

Connect the described scene and its language with mood and meaning.

Lady Windermere’s Fan

Oscar Wilde

Examine how dramatic dialogue exposes social values and attitudes.

The significance of a country setting

Explain how a rural setting helps establish the work’s values.

To Paint a Water Lily

Ted Hughes

Explore attitudes toward the natural world and the challenge of representing it.

A narrator on the idle gentlefolk

Analyze how prose style expresses the narrator’s judgments of others.

A physical journey

Show why a character’s movement between places matters to the whole work.

The Chimney Sweeper: two poems

William Blake

Compare poetic treatments of child chimney sweeps and their circumstances.

Birthday Party

Katharine Brush

Explain how narrative devices support the short story’s purpose.

Outward conformity and inward questioning

Analyze the significance of a character’s conflict between appearance and belief.

Five A.M. / Five Flights Up

William Stafford; Elizabeth Bishop

Compare how morning scenes express the speakers’ different mental states.

McTeague’s dental practice

Use diction, detail and syntax to examine the narrator’s attitude.

The struggle for power

Relate a character’s pursuit of or resistance to power to the whole work.

Acquainted with the Night / We grow accustomed to the Dark

Robert Frost; Emily Dickinson

Compare the functions of darkness, perspective and poetic form.

The Pupil

Henry James

Analyze relationships through the narrator’s perspective and tone.

A central question and its answers

Consider how a work raises a question and develops or withholds answers.

Mary Barton

Elizabeth Gaskell

Explain how dialogue, detail and perspective expose social differences.

Crossing the Swamp

Mary Oliver

Explore the speaker’s relationship with the swamp through poetic choices.

A significant death scene

Show how one death scene contributes to the meaning of a whole work.

Eros: two contrasting portraits

Robert Bridges; Anne Stevenson

Compare how poetic choices present different ideas about love.

The Other Paris

Mavis Gallant

Connect narrative voice and characterization to social criticism.

A tragic figure and others’ suffering

Explain how a tragic character’s influence shapes the work’s larger vision.

Modern Love

George Meredith

Trace the poem’s presentation of a troubled intimate relationship.

We Were the Mulvaneys

Joyce Carol Oates

Examine how the passage constructs Judd Mulvaney’s voice and character.

Cultural collision and identity

Connect a character’s response to competing cultures with the work’s meaning.