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5 Steps to a 5: Writing the AP English
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CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Step 1 Set Up Your Study Program

Chapter 1 Introduction to the Training Program
Meet Your Trainers
Questions and Answers About the AP English Essay
Chapter 2 How Is This Book Going to Work?
Creating Your Personal Writing Profile
About the Basic Training Program
About the Icons Used in This Book
Step 2 Determine Your Readiness

Chapter 3 Review the Basics of Discourse
The Four Modes of Discourse
Warm-Up Exercises
Chapter 4 Review the Basics of Rhetorical Construction
Rhetorical Strategies
Exemplification
Contrast/Comparison
Cause and Effect
Classification and Division
Process Analysis
Definition
Description
Narration
Argument
Synthesis
Total Workout
Chapter 5 Review the Basics of Rhetorical Analysis
Rhetorical Devices
Rhetorical Techniques
Style
Total Workout
Step 3 Develop Strategies for Success

Chapter 6 Reading and Working Different Types of AP English
Prompts
Key Words and Phrases
What Constitutes an AP English Prompt?
Chapter 7 Prewriting and Planning
Prewriting
Notating the Text
Two Sample Texts
Step 4 Review the Knowledge You Need to Get a High

Score
Chapter 8 Introducing the Essay
How The Professionals Do It
Opening Paragraphs
Student Samples
Total Workout
Chapter 9 Constructing the Body of the Essay and Supporting
Syntax
Samples of the Body of the Essay
Student Samples
Supporting Syntax
Chapter 10 Writing the Conclusion of the Essay and Revising
Sample Conclusions
Student Samples
Revision
Sample Essays
Step 5 Build Your Test-taking Confidence

Chapter 11 Practice with Sample AP English Language Exam Essays
Sample AP English Language Essay Prompt 1
Sample Student Essays
Sample Synthesis Essay Prompt
Chapter 12 Practice with Sample AP English Literature Exam Essays
Sample AP English Literature Essay Prompt 1
APPENDIXES
Appendix I Bibliography of Recommended Authors and Texts
Appendix II Glossary of Terms
Appendix III Web Sites Related to AP English
Appendix IV Answers for Practice Activities
PREFACE
5 Steps to a 5, Writing the AP English Essay is meant to be a

supplement to both the AP English Language and Composition and
the AP English Literature and Composition courses. There is no way
to take the place of the instruction, interaction, feedback, and
growth that takes place in the English classroom. What we hope to
accomplish in this text is similar to what a personal trainer can do in
the gym: provide those eager and willing to learn with information
and activities designed to increase writing endurance and to
enhance, fine tune, and shape the writing muscles being used in the
AP English classroom.
Although specifically designed for the AP English student, the
concepts, strategies, techniques, and skills examined in this book
can easily be applied to college-level writing assignments across the
curriculum.
MAJOR CHANGES AS OF SEPTEMBER 2019

Effective the 2019–2020 school year and the 2020 exam, The
College Board will initiate major changes to both the AP English
Language and AP English Literature course framework and exams.
These changes will include the following about the essays:
• Both Courses: The rating/scoring of essay questions will be

based on analytic rubrics rather than holistic rubrics.
• Both Courses: The rating/scoring of essays will be on a 6-
point scale. This new rubric will consist of:
✓ 1 point for thesis/claim/introduction
✓ 4 points for evidence/support of the thesis/claim
✓ 1 point for complexity and syntax
Note: The final scoring will remain 5, 4, 3, 2,1 with the essay
section constituting 55 percent and multiple choice with 45
percent.
The construction of essay prompts will be consistently worded
for each type of prompt. The course texts and activities will still
be up to the instructor.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our love and appreciation to Leah and Allan for their constant
support and encouragement. Our very special thanks to the many
English instructors and English students who were so gracious and
cooperative in granting us access to their expertise and their writing.
We particularly would like to acknowledge the following educators:
Diane Antonucci, Joyce Bisso, Mrs. Curran, Sandi Forsythe, Scott
Honig, Barbara Inners, Mike Kramer, Margaret Rice, Joan Rosenberg,
Ed Schmieder, Joanne Seale, Conni Shelnut, Doris Valliante,
Rosemary Varade, Karl Zemer, and Pat Zippel.
The following students were willing to be risk takers in allowing
their writings to be incorporated into the pages of this book. They,
and all of our students, are the primary reason why all of us do the
work we do.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Barbara Murphy taught AP Language and other college-level

courses at Jericho High School for over 20 years. She is a long-time
reader of the AP English Language exam and is a consultant for the
College Board’s AP Language and AP English Literature courses, for
whom she has conducted workshops, conferences, specialty
conference presentations, and summer institutes. After earning her
BA from Duquesne University and her MA from the University of
Pittsburgh, Ms. Murphy did her doctoral course work at Columbia
University. She also holds professional certifications in still
photography and motion picture production and is one of the
founding members of the women’s film company, Ishtar Films.
Estelle Rankin taught AP Literature at Jericho High School for over

25 years. She was honored with the AP Literature Teacher of the
Year award by the College Board in 1996. Estelle also received the
Long Island Teacher of the Year award in 1990. She was also the
recipient of the Cornell University Presidential Scholars’ award and
has been recognized by the C. W. Post Master Teachers Program.
Ms. Rankin earned her BA from Adelphi University and her MA
from Hofstra University. She has pursued further graduate work in
the field of creative studies at Queens College and Brooklyn College.
Estelle has done extensive work in the research and development
of film, drama, and creative writing curricula, and has participated in
numerous AP Literature conferences and workshops, is a consultant
for Building Success, and is also a Literature presenter for the
Advanced Placement Specialty conferences. In addition, she
pioneered a “senior initiative mentoring program” based on
internships and service, and has conducted many English workshops
for both teachers and students at high schools and middle schools
for New York’s Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES).
Her first teachers were her parents, Edward and Selma Stern.
Ms. Rankin and Ms. Murphy are also the coauthors of McGraw-
Hill Education’s 5 Steps to a 5: AP English Language, AP English
Literature, and Writing an Outstanding College Application Essay.
STEP 1
Set Up Your Study Program

CHAPTER 1
Introduction to the Training

Program
IN THIS CHAPTER
Summary: Find the answers to your questions about the AP English
essays
Key Ideas
Discover what constitutes an AP English essay
Examine different essay requirements for AP English Language
and AP English Literature
Explore a generic set of AP English essay rubrics
Meet Your Trainers
Welcome to our writing training program. Obviously, if you’ve
decided to purchase and read this book, you already have an
interest in writing. Good for you. Now, take a moment to clarify for
yourself why you feel the need for training. (Check those that apply.)
Perhaps:
“The task of a writer consists in being able to make something out of

an idea.”
—Thomas Mann
____ You want to do well in your AP English class.

____ You freeze when writing timed essays.
____ You have trouble finding the right things to say.
____ You don’t like to write exam essays.
____ You can’t finish an exam essay on time.
____ You frequently have writer’s block.
You might also have chosen this text because you’re interested in
or unsure about one or more of the following aspects of the writing
process. (Check those that apply.)
____ pointers
____ planning
____ models
____ exercises
____ standards
____ evaluation
We’re betting that you checked off more than one of these items.
With this in mind, we’re going to help you address each of these
areas of concern about writing. Think of us as your AP Writing
personal trainers. You have the ability, and you certainly have the
desire and will. Together, we will develop and strengthen those
writing muscles you need to compose effective AP English essays.
It is important to understand that the purpose of this training is
to help you to develop as an AP writer throughout the year, NOT just
for performance on a single exam at the end of the term. But,
obviously, if you train with a specific goal in mind, your performance
on the exam should be enhanced.
Having said that, there are probably many questions that you
would like to ask about AP English essays. Here are a few that
students have asked over the years.
Questions and Answers About the AP English

Essay
What’s the Difference Between the “Average
High School English Essay” and One Termed an
“Advanced Placement English Essay?”
You can begin to answer this question yourself just by deciding
which of the following is an average high school essay and which is
an AP English essay.
Verbal prowess has certainly played a great role in history. An

individual’s language is instrumental in the formation of his personal
identity just as the language of a given culture plays a large part in
the formation of its communal identity. Language can be a key to
success in both personal and public causes. Back in the early 1800s,
a young black slave Phyllis Wheatley set herself apart through poetry
and led her readers to a fuller awareness of the plight of slaves in
the United States. In the later 1800s, a very eloquent ex-slave
Frederick Douglass spoke on behalf of his race, expertly
manipulating his words into an extremely effective weapon.
Douglass’s mastery of language earned him great respect, an
invitation to the White House, and the ear of the American public. In
the mid-1900s, people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X
continued Douglass’s legacy through their own communication and
speaking skills. These public figures and artists illustrate that those
who can speak and write well readily earn people’s respect, thus
developing their own individuality and ability to fight for the success
of their cause.
I have a very good friend who speaks really well. He is an

example of how speaking correctly can lead to bigger and better
things. He was always using words such as “like,” “you know,” “ain’t.”
We all use these words when we talk to each other, but our teachers
always tell us that adults in the business world don’t like us to use
slang like this. So, when my friend set up an appointment to
interview for a summer job, we all told him not to use these words.
He shrugged it off and didn’t listen to us, and he didn’t get the job.
The second job he went to interview for was different. He didn’t use
those words, and he got the job. This goes to show that language
can be the key to success.
So, which one did you pick as the AP English paragraph? We

were fairly certain that you’d choose A. Now, here is the difficult
part. Why did you pick it as the AP sample? Quickly list three
reasons.
1.
_______________________________________________________
___________________
2.
_______________________________________________________
___________________
3.
_______________________________________________________
___________________
Do your reasons include any of the following?

____ clear thesis
____ diction (word choice)
____ sentence variety
____ examples and details
____ organization
____ syntax (sentence structure)
____ topic adherence
____ vocabulary
You may not have used our exact words, but you probably did
identify a couple of these points. Good, you DO know what an
upper-level essay is. Now our job, and yours, is to provide
opportunities for you to practice and develop the knowledge, skills,
and techniques that will allow you to write a variety of successful AP
English essays consistently.
What Actually Is an AP English Essay?

The College Board directly states that one of the goals of an AP
English course is to have students become “practiced, logical, and
honest writers.” In other words, the AP English student is expected
to read, think, plan, write, and revise so that the ideas presented are
clear, appropriate, and effective for the chosen purpose and
audience.
In general, an AP English essay will demonstrate the writer’s
ability to do the following:
1. Think through an idea.

2. Plan the presentation of his or her own claim (thesis, assertion,
main point).
3. Draft a text that is logically organized to effectively support the
writer’s idea(s) and purpose.
The AP English student must be able to write a well-developed,

timed essay, which is most often a critical analysis, argument, or
exposition in response to a specific prompt. Those who create AP
English courses and exams also expect the student writer to use the
elements of syntax, diction, and rhetoric appropriate to the writer’s
purpose and audience.
Specifically, the student who elects to take the AP English
Language or Literature exam in May will be required to do the
following:
What’s the Difference Between the AP English

Language and the AP English Literature
Essays?
Basically, the AP English Language course concentrates on reading
prose from various time periods, written to achieve many different
purposes. The emphasis is on writing expository, analytical, and
argumentative essays.
In general, Language essays are based on nonfiction works. You
may be asked to do any of the following:
• Identify the rhetorical situation.
• Identify the author’s purpose.
• Identify the audience.
• Identify and analyze the rhetorical strategies and/or language
resources used by the author to achieve his or her purpose.
AND/OR
• Take and defend a position on a given subject.
• Create a synthesis essay.
In contrast, AP Literature students read a wide range of literary
works of differing genres, and the assigned essays require the writer
to focus on a given piece of literature, be it prose, poetry, or drama.
The emphasis is on writing analytical, expository, and argumentative
essays based on the literature.
Most often, literature essays are based on prose and poetry,
although selections from drama may be included. For each, you may
be asked to do any of the following:
• Analyze the techniques the author uses to produce a particular
effect, reveal a character, develop a concept, etc., in the work.
• Compare and contrast two pieces of literature other than poetry.
AND/OR
• Compose an essay based on a given topic that must be

supported with specific references to a full-length literary work of
your choice.
As we progress through this text, we will look carefully at the

various essay formats and requirements of each course.
Major Change in Essay Rating as of September

2019
• The rating/scoring of essay questions will be based on
analytic rubrics rather than holistic rubrics.
• The rating/scoring of essays will be on a 6-point scale.
This new rubric will consist of:
º 1 point for thesis/claim/introduction
º 4 points for evidence/support of the thesis/claim
º 1 point for complexity and syntax
Note: The rating comments at the end of each essay have no
need of change. Whether based on analytic or holistic rubrics, the
comments remain connected to the quality of the essay.
What Are the Expectations of the AP English

Essay?
Before addressing this question, it is important to define two

terms used throughout this book. The first is PROMPT. A prompt
is the professional word that indicates the “question” on which
your instructor or exam creator requires you to base an assigned
essay. It is your essay assignment. The second is RUBRIC. A
rubric is the professional word for a set of rating standards
employed by the reader(s) of a given essay.
In Chapter 5 we will work with the process of reading and

working the essay prompts. Right now, let’s take a close look at
rubrics used for evaluating an AP English essay. For both Language
and Literature the highly rated essays are assigned either a 6 or a 5.
The middle-range essays receive a 4 or 3. Those essays rated 2 or 1
are considered low range.
It is important to note that AP English essays on the AP exam are
rated with numbers ranging from 6 to 1 for each of the exam’s three
essays. The AP English essays are also characterized as high,
middle, and low range. With a specific formula, these scores are
combined with the multiple choice score, and converted into an
overall rating of the complete exam that ranges from 5 to 1.
If using a six point rating scale, a generic set of Language rubrics
would look like this. Note: The rubric will change when the six
point rating scale is implemented.
Both Courses: The rating/scoring of essay questions will be

based on analytic rubrics rather than holistic rubrics.
Both Courses: The rating/scoring of essays will be on a 6-point
scale. In general terms, this new rubric will consist of:
• 1 point for thesis/claim/introduction
• 4 points for evidence/support of the thesis/claim
• 1 point for complexity and syntax
Note: The construction of essay prompts will remain the same.
For AP English Language

The Rhetorical Analysis Essay
Thesis = 1 Point
• 1 pt.—Addresses the prompt with a thesis that makes it clear
HOW the thesis will be developed.
• 0 pt.—Merely repeats the prompt, or statement is vague, avoids
taking a position, or presents only an obvious fact.
Development with Evidence = 4 Points

• 4 pts.—With specific references to the text, the writer develops
the thesis with conclusions and inferences that are the result of
explaining the relationship between what the author says and
what the rhetorical strategy does.
• 3 pts.—Development may be uneven, limited; there may be
minor instances of description rather than analysis; there may be
minor errors or weak links between thesis and support.
• 2 pts.—Development repeats, oversimplifies, or misinterprets
cited references; may misinterpret or misunderstand the chosen
rhetorical strategies; points made are not supported by the text.
• 1 pt.—Merely summarizes the text, or references to the text are
not clear or relevant; merely restates points made in the text.
• 0 pts.—May lack a thesis; or presents irrelevant or too few
references to the text in support of a clear thesis; or does not
address the prompt; or writes about something totally unrelated
to the prompt.
Note: Writing that lacks grammatical or syntactical control that

interferes with a clear presentation of ideas, cannot earn a 4.
Sophistication = 1 Point
• 1 pt.—(sophistication of thought or development of complex
argument) Writer develops the thesis with nuanced explanation of
evidence; and/or recognizes and discusses a broader context;
and/or recognizes and engages with opposition; and/or makes
strong, convincing rhetorical choices in developing the thesis;
and/or prose is especially convincing or appropriate.
• 0 pts.—Oversimplifies complexities of the text or the thesis;
and/or diction and/or syntax does not enhance the presentation;
and/or may overuse sweeping generalizations.
The Argument Essay

Thesis = 1 Point
• 1 pt.—Addresses the prompt with a thesis that clearly takes a
position and makes it clear HOW the thesis will be developed.
• 0 pts.—Merely repeats the prompt, or statement is vague, avoids

• 4 pts.—The writer presents support for the thesis, clearly
explaining the relationships between the evidence and the thesis.
• 3 pts.—The development may be uneven, limited, incomplete;
there may be minor errors or weak links between thesis and
support.
• 2 pts.—The development repeats, oversimplifies, or misinterprets
cited evidence; points made are not supported by the text.
• 1 pt.—The writer provides little or no commentary that links the
evidence to the thesis.
• 0 pts.— May lack a thesis; or presents irrelevant or too few
to the prompt.

interferes with a clear presentation of ideas cannot earn a 4.
The Synthesis Essay

Thesis = 1 Point
• 1 pt.—Addresses the prompt with a thesis that makes it clear
HOW the thesis will be developed.
• 0 pts.—Merely repeats the prompt, or statement is vague, avoids

• 4 pts.—With references to at least three of the given sources,
the writer presents support for the thesis explaining the
relationships between the evidence and the thesis.
the development may be uneven, limited; there may be minor
errors or weak links between thesis and support.
the development repeats, oversimplifies, or misinterprets cited
references; points made are not supported by the text.
• 1 pt.—With references to two or fewer of the given sources, the
writer merely summarizes the referenced sources, or references to
the text are not clear or relevant; provides little or no commentary
that links the source to the thesis.
• 0 pts.—May lack a thesis; or presents irrelevant or too few
to the prompt.

interferes with a clear presentation of ideas cannot earn a 4.
For AP English Literature:

The Prose Passage Essay Rubric
• 1 point for thesis/claim/introduction that is appropriate to the
prompt
º Presents an assertion that is a clear and reasonable
interpretation of the text related to the prompt
º Clear and appropriate references to the text
º Clear presentation of how the references relate to the thesis
• 1 point for complexity of the commentary and syntax
º Demonstrates a sophisticated ability to present complex ideas
The Poetry Essay Rubric

prompt
º The thesis clearly cites a major work related to the prompt
and indicates how the support will be developed.
The Free Response Essay

prompt
º The thesis clearly cites a major work related to the prompt
and indicates how the support will be developed.
Although each essay is rated on a scale of 6 to 1, your final AP

English exam score is going to be a 5, 4, 3, 2, or a 1. If you’d like to
transpose these numbers into letter grades, you could use the
following as a guide.
EXAM
5 = A
4 = B
3 = C
2 = D
1 = F
Is It Difficult to Write an Effective AP English

Essay?
When watching experts “do their thing,” we often say, “Wow, that
sure looks easy. I could do that.” However, doing something well is
not always easy. What is done well “appears” smooth and effortless.
However, the observer is unaware of the hours, days, months, and
sometimes years that go into the event or presentation. The same is
true of writing. Try not to think of writing in terms of difficulty. Think
of it as an ongoing process that becomes clearer and smoother with
practice. Easy!
CHAPTER 2
How Is This Book Going to
Work?
IN THIS CHAPTER
Summary: Familiarize yourself with the function and purpose of this
book
Key Ideas
Create your personal writing profile
Understand the basic training program
Meet the graphics you’ll encounter throughout the text
Creating Your Personal Writing Profile

This book will be your personal training manual for writing the AP
English essay. Because we’re going to be your personal AP writing
trainers, we will ask you to do the first thing any good trainer would
do. We’re going to ask you to assess your needs. First, why are you
here? What do you hope to gain from spending time and effort
working your way through this text?
My primary goals are:
_______________________________________________________
_______
_______________________________________________________
_______
_______________________________________________________
_______
_______________________________________________________
_______
Make certain your goals are reasonable and realistic. For

example, having a primary goal of winning the Nobel Prize in
Literature during your year as an AP English student is not realistic—
a terrific dream, but not a reasonable goal for this year.
The next step is to create a profile of you as a writer. To do this,
you need to respond to the following statements.
My Personal Writing Profile

When I write an essay that allows for planning and revision, I
usually receive a ________ high, ________ middle, or
________ low grade.
When I write a timed essay under controlled conditions, I
usually receive a ________ high, ________ middle, or
________ low grade.
What frustrates me most about writing in general is
_________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
What frustrates me most about timed writing is
_________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
I do my best writing when _________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
Take a few moments to consider your responses. If you

answered these statements honestly, you have created a fairly
accurate profile of yourself as a writer. Are you satisfied with your
writing portrait? If you are, you don’t need us—give this book to a
friend! If you’re not (to be honest, almost no one ever is), commit
yourself to a training program—and invite a friend to work out with
you.
About the Basic Training Program
Why the Basic Training Program?

We believe we have something unique to offer you. For over 25
years we have addressed the needs of AP students just like you,
and we’ve had the opportunity to learn from these students.
Therefore, the basic training program we offer in this book
reflects genuine student concerns and needs. This is a student-
oriented program. We will not overwhelm you with pompous
language, mislead you with inaccurate information and tasks, or
lull you into a false sense of confidence through cutesy shortcuts.
We stand behind every suggestion, process and question we
present. There is no busy work in this book.
This basic training program is designed to serve many purposes.
It will:
• Clarify requirements for the AP English Essay for both

Language and Literature
• Provide you with essay practice
• Show you models and rubrics on which you can model and
evaluate your own work
• Anticipate and answer your questions
• Enrich your understanding and appreciation of the writing
process
• Help you pace yourself
• Make you aware of the Five Steps to Mastering the AP
English essay
We believe that reading should be an exciting interaction between

you and the writer. You have to bring your own context to the
experience and you must feel comfortable reaching for and exploring
ideas. You are an adventurer on a journey of exploration, and we
will act as your guides. We will set the itinerary, but you will set your
own pace. You can feel free to “stop and smell the roses” or to
explore new territory.
There are no tricks to critical thinking. Those who claim to guarantee

you a 5 with gimmicks are doing you a disservice. No one can
guarantee you’ll get a 5. However, the reading and writing skills you
will review, practice, and master will give you the very best chance
to do your very best. You will have the opportunity to learn, to
practice, and to master the critical thinking processes that can
empower you to achieve your highest score.
Acting as your personal writing trainers, we have created a
program to help you reach those goals you listed at the start of this
section. Remember, this book does not replace your AP
English instructor, and it does not replace the work you
must consistently and responsibly study and complete in
your own AP English class.
We highly recommend that you work your way through the entire
book. However, be aware that this training program is designed to
“pump up” all AP English students. Therefore, it will be up to you to
make the important decisions about which chapters and sections of
chapters to complete and how much time you will devote to any
given chapter, section, or activity.
Reaching higher levels of achievement demands training,
practice, and commitment. You’ve already taken the first step in your
training to be an accomplished AP English essay writer. Now, let’s
get to work.
About the Icons Used in This Book

This book contains special graphic elements to help you find and
identify important ideas, strategies, and tips. Here is a guide to the
icons used:
Key Idea: This icon points out a very important concept or fact that
you should not pass over.
Strategy: The strategy icon calls your attention to a problem-solving

strategy that you may want to try.
Tip: The tip icon indicates a hint you might find useful.
Workout: The workout icon identifies practice exercises within each

chapter.
Important terms are printed in bold in this book and key information,
definitions, and concepts are shaded. All this is designed to make
this book as easy to use as possible, especially if you don’t have
much time to prepare for the AP exam.
STEP 2
Determine Your Readiness

CHAPTER 3
Review the Basics of Discourse
IN THIS CHAPTER
Summary: Distinguish among the four modes of discourse
Key Ideas
Understand the term “mode”
Practice with the individual modes
The Four Modes of Discourse

As your writing trainers, we recommend that you begin with the
basics. In any physical training program, if your personal trainer told
you to do five sets of crunches, and you didn’t have the foggiest
idea what a crunch was, you would certainly ask, “What are you
talking about?” Your trainer would not only explain what it is, but he
or she would also demonstrate this exercise for you to practice.
Then, you’d give it a try. Slowly at first, doing only a very few. Once
comfortable, you would move on to the next step. This process also
holds true with our writing training program.
“Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel
others should care about.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The first set of basics is for you to become familiar with the four
modes of discourse. Think of these activities as “breathing
exercises” for AP English writers. Don’t let the professional language
throw you. Remember that a mode refers to a method or form
used, and discourse is the technical term for conversation.
Therefore, a mode of discourse is simply a method a writer
uses to have a conversation with a particular
reader/audience.
You are already acquainted with the four modes of discourse.
They are:
• Exposition—writing that explains or informs
• Narration—writing that tells a story
• Description—writing that appeals to the five senses
• Argument/persuasion—writing that presents a position in
hopes that the reader will accept an assertion
So, there you have it, the four modes of discourse: exposition,
narration, description, and argument.
As a warm-up exercise, let’s look at four sentences that revolve
around the same event. We’re betting you can easily identify the
mode of discourse of each statement.
Warm-Up Exercises
Warm-Up 1
__________ 1. Last night I took the train into the city with a
couple of old friends to see Herman Overact as the
lead in The Crucible at the Humongous Theater, and
we had a terrific time.
__________ 2. Herman Overact’s performance in Arthur Miller’s
The Crucible is an acting event not to be missed.
__________ 3. Herman Overact is playing the lead role in Arthur
Miller’s The Crucible at the Humongous Theater for
the next six weeks.
__________ 4. Last evening, the sold-out audience buzzed with
excitement as it stared wide-eyed at the stage in
rapt anticipation of the appearance of Herman
Overact in Miller’s The Crucible.
That was easy enough, wasn’t it? But, wait a second. Let’s take a
closer look at these rather simple sentences. Didn’t each of them
contain information, and didn’t each assume that the reader would
accept what was stated? Yes, to both questions. If that’s the case,
how can you correctly identify each of the sentences as being a
specific mode of discourse?
Be aware that most writing experts agree that a writer rarely
uses only a single mode of discourse. However, even though
more than one mode may be employed, there is a dominant mode
that fits the author’s specific purpose. The key word here is
purpose—why the author composed each of these sentences. With
this in mind, take another look at these four sentences. The primary
purpose is what determines the primary mode of discourse. [Want to
check your answers? (1) narration, (2) argument, (3) exposition, (4)
description.]
Now, using this basic information, complete the following set:
identify the dominant mode of discourse of each of the following
excerpts. Read each carefully, keeping in mind that every author
writes with a purpose. Whether you’re dealing with an entire book or
with a single sentence, once you determine what the author’s
purpose is in a given context, you know what the dominant
mode of discourse is. Remember to ask yourself: What is the
author’s purpose?
Warm-Up 2
__________Gertrude Stein liked to say that America
entered the twentieth century ahead of the rest of the
world. In 1933, in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, she
put it more strongly—that America actually created the new
century.
—R. W. B. Lewis, “Writers at the Century’s Turn,” appearing in The
Writing Life
R. W. B. Lewis tells his readers about the thoughts of Gertrude

Stein. Therefore, the dominant mode of discourse is exposition
(although you might like to argue about what Ms. Stein had to say
about America).
__________My other hangout, strategically located near

the front door, was under the porch, behind the blue
hydrangeas. I could see the postman’s hairy legs and black
socks, the skirts of my mother’s bridge friends, and
sometimes hear bits of forbidden conversation… .
—Frances Mayes, Bella Tuscany
In this short excerpt, Ms. Mayes attempts to have her readers

sense her immediate surroundings and begin to feel her life as a
child. This is an example of description.
__________… we should not be surprised to find that
[certain contemporary historians] have overlooked a
tremendous contribution in the distant past that was both
Celtic and Catholic, a contribution without which European
civilization would have been impossible.
—Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization
Here Thomas Cahill presents a very arguable assertion. You can

be sure that there are people who will want to agree, disagree, or
qualify his thesis.
__________I, myself, was having a terrible time reading

the paper, so yesterday morning, I went to Birmingham to
get my eyes checked, and lo and behold, I had on Wilbur’s
glasses and he had on mine. We are getting different
colored ones next time.
—Fanny Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Fanny Flagg relates a brief episode that has a beginning, a

middle, and an end. Although quite short; that’s narration.
__________So why do I write, torturing myself to put it

down? Because in spite of myself I’ve learned some things.
Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to
one labeled “file and forget,” and I can neither file nor
forget.
—Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Writing in the first person, Mr. Ellison is telling his reader about
why he has to write. Although this excerpt appears in a full-length
narrative, the dominant purpose of this selection is exposition.
• As your next warm-up exercise, identify the mode of discourse of
each of the following.
Warm-Up 3
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
might have gone farther back and mentioned the Negro contingent in
the army of Xerxes the Great (when Britons were savages) and
about which Herodotus so glowingly writes.
But even if Mr. Wells likes to take a popular crack at history, he is
none the less a first-rate novelist in the tradition of Charles Dickens
and I don't think he imagines himself a historian any more than I do,
so one must be tolerant if his Outline has the earmarks of a glorified
Research Magnificent.
Also, I did not like Mr. Wells's inspired articles on the Naval
Conference. Paradoxically, I found myself sympathizing with the
Daily Mail, which rebuked him for his offensive against Japan. Mr.
Wells injected much violent prejudice into what should have been
unbiased reporting. While Mr. Wells was outlining history, he might
have reserved a little of his English sentimentality for Japan, from the
knowledge that Japan might not have been a "yellow peril" today if
the white powers hadn't broken open her door and forced their
civilization upon her.
Wells's little Liberator reception was a question-time picnic for the
Liberator collaborators—especially for the ladies, to whom Wells is
exceptionally attractive. They asked him many questions about the
war and the peace and the aftermath, about Russia and Europe,
Japan and America and universal peace. Mr. Wells smilingly and
slickly disposed of all problems to the satisfaction of all.
William Gropper, the artist, and I had concocted a plan to ask some
impish questions. But everybody was very pleasant. It was a nice
party. So we said nothing. I was standing, leaning against the
mantelpiece, and Mr. Wells approached me in a sly way as if he
desired a close-up scrutiny of me without my knowing it. I seized the
opportunity to take a good quick look at Mr. Wells's eyes. Journalists
always write about the jolly twinkle in Mr. Wells's eyes. I didn't like
them. They made me think of a fox.
Some years later, after my trip to Russia and returning to France, I
met Frank Harris in Nice. I was in the company of a brilliant
American writer who was meeting Frank Harris for the first time. We
went to the Taverne Alsacienne for our drinks. Mr. Wells had recently
published his William Clissold, which we had all read and were
discussing.
Frank Harris said that what amazed him about H.G. Wells was the
fact that the more he tried consciously to expand his writings on a
world scale, the more provincial they became. I said, "The higher a
monkey climbs, the more he shows his tail." Frank Harris roared.
Then he said that perhaps Wells himself was not aware that his early
novels of fantasy and sentiment were his most universal things.
The American writer, said that an English gentleman had remarked
to him in London that Wells as a writer was a cockney. I didn't like
the reference to class, especially as I had at least two very dear
cockney friends. Harris said that Wells wasn't a cockney as a writer;
that he was a fifth-form public school boy, the same as Kipling. I said
I always thought of Kipling as the bugler of the British Empire, and
that perhaps Wells was the sub-officer.
It was interesting, after another little lot of years had passed along, to
read what Wells had to say about Harris in his Experiment in
Autobiography. Wells's first encounter with Frank Harris interested
me, especially because of the fact that my own meeting with Harris
was one of the high spots of my life. But it appears as if Wells could
not forgive Harris for once being a big and successful editor and
discovering him a poor and unknown writer. He writes of Harris's roar
receding with the years until it sounded something like a bark. But a
lion may lose its voice through age and worry. Wells mentions one
interesting fact, which must be one of the reasons why Harris was
such a great editor. The first story he sent to Harris was excellent;
the second, Wells admits, was bad. And Harris summoned and gave
him a loud talking to over the bad one. Yet when Harris became
editor of another magazine, he remembered only the good story and
wrote to Wells asking him to become one of his special contributors.
And that gave Wells his real start. The point is that many editors
wouldn't remember at all, or if they did, they would remember only
that the second contribution was bad.
The American writer left us for Cannes, and Harris invited me to
drink champagne with him. We went to the terrace of a café on the
Promenade. Harris was not a steady free drinker as he was when I
had known him seven years before in New York. His skilful hands
trembled under the weight and accumulated cares of three-score
years. His hair was dyed, and from the heat of the Midi and of
alcohol some of the color had dissolved and mixed with the
perspiration oozing from the deep lines of his face, which resembled
an antique many-grooved panel with some of the paint peeled off.
Again Frank Harris talked reminiscently and interestingly as always
of his acumen in perceiving greatness in Bernard Shaw and H.G.
Wells and getting them to write for him when they were unknown.
"But I am prouder of Shaw," he said. "Shaw is really a great genius. I
don't always agree with what he says, and he went wrong about the
War, but his 'Common Sense' was a great piece of polemic. Shaw
has intellectual integrity. But I don't think Wells understands what
intellectual integrity means. He is too full of vanity to be a serious
intellect. He is a modernistic fiction writer who is discontented with
his talent and wants to be a social philosopher. But he is impossible
because he has never learned to think."
I said I thought it was a marvelous thing, something like second-
sight, for a man to pick a genius by his first inadequate efforts. Harris
said that it took a genius like himself to discover geniuses, and that
as an editor, he never played favorites. When he found good stuff he
accepted it. But he didn't go back-slapping and printing bad verses
by pretty women. He had had great temptations, but he never let his
desires interfere with his intellectual judgment.
His manner was boastful but not offensively so, for I think Frank
Harris had something to boast about. After all, he was Gaelic, and I
preferred his manner to the hypocritical English way of boasting by
studied understatement. And when he spoke of the enormous
financial as well as artistic success of Shaw and Wells, there was no
envy, but I could detect a shade of personal defeat and frustration in
his voice.
Frank Harris's phrase, "intellectual integrity," kept agitating my
thoughts like a large blue-bottle against a window pane. For a long
long time I had carried something on my mind which I had hesitated
to get off. But now, with the champagne working in my head and a
warm and mellow feeling suffusing me, and with Frank Harris's
features softening a little, I was emboldened to let go.
During my second year as assistant editor on The Liberator a
woman called to see me one day bringing a little book of poems. She
offered me ten dollars if I would review it in The Liberator. I said that
The Liberator did not accept money for printing reviews, but if her
poems seemed worth while, we would review them. She said that
she had paid Frank Harris a thousand dollars to get the book printed,
yet he hadn't even reviewed it in Pearson's. And afterward, she said,
she had seen a literary agent who informed her that the cost of
printing was about two hundred dollars. She thought that Frank
Harris had swindled her. I did not review the verses, because to my
mind, they were not worth while.
Also, I had heard stories of Frank Harris posing as an art
connoisseur and palming off fake pictures as old masters, and of his
getting material for his magazine from writers who thought they
would be paid and then not paying them—tales of petty racketeering
that were more funny than vicious. And so, being champagne drunk
with Harris on a café terrace looking out on the calm blue
Mediterranean, and feeling elastic and free, I, who admired the
extraordinary ways of Frank Harris more than any other intellectual
of my acquaintance, was interested to hear from himself the truth. I
told him the story of that woman who had visited The Liberator and
complained about him.
Frank Harris was wonderful to look at under the influence of the
champagne, his lion-roaring, his face like a pirate's, yet with a
sublime gleam of genuine kindliness in his eyes! What I said he did
not affirm or deny. He just exploded with a mighty sermon about the
artist and intellectual integrity. He said that the way of the artist was
hard, for if he had a talent that appealed to popular imagination,
everybody desired to use him—women and men, politicians,
philanthropists, reformers, revolutionists, organizations,
governments. Many artists won success by sacrificing their
intellectual integrity. He himself had had large success. But
whenever he felt the urge and the bounden duty to declare his
opinion, he could not restrain himself, and so he had not remained
successful. He had not been a puritan about life. Perhaps he had
done things that Jesus would not have done. But he had not given
his soul entirely to Mammon. Perhaps he had taken gifts from
persons who thought they had been swindled and who were better
off perhaps, if they were. But whatever he did he had reserved intact
his intellectual integrity.
It was a great sermon and I felt that Frank Harris was greater
because of it. He was no hypocrite. He had no social pretensions,
although he delighted in the company of smart and fashionable
people. He was aware, that there was plenty of dross inseparable
from the gold of life, and he embraced the whole. Nobody could deny
that he was indeed a follower of the Jesus who dominated his mind,
that he sincerely believed in sin and redemption.
XII
"He Who Gets Slapped"
MY radical days on The Liberator were sometimes rosy with
romance. Friends vied with friends in giving me invitations to their
homes for parties and car rides and in offering tickets for plays and
concerts. And even more. I remember I had a pressing debt of honor
to settle. And one day a staunch friend of The Liberator, Elizabeth
Sage Hare, handed me a check for five hundred dollars. She also
invited me to tea at her house in Park Avenue or Fifth, I don't quite
remember, but it was somewhere in the exclusive Faubourg
Bourgeoisie.
Liberator friends introduced me to a few of those Greenwich Village
tearooms and gin mills which were not crazy with colorphobia. And I
reciprocated by inviting some of them up to the cabarets and cozy
flats of Harlem. I did not invite my friends to the nice homes of the
Negro élite, simply because I did not have an entrée.
Once Sanina condescended to entertain I think four friends—all
men. When we arrived we found Sanina set in a circle of dark-brown
girls, all cunningly arranged to heighten her quadroon queenliness. It
was an exciting tableau, with a couple of sweetmen decorating the
background.
But Sanina knew that I held a genteel position, sitting in an editor's
chair among the whites downtown. (She was a faithful reader of True
Stories.) So more than ever that night Sanina invested her unique
position in Harlem with majesty. She was the antithesis of the Little
Brown Jug of Charlie Chaplin's party. She brought out a bottle of rum
for the glory of Jamaica, and holding it like a scepter, she poured
royally. I believe my friends were thinking that they also would have
to pay royally. But the evening was Sanina's affair. She provided
everything free and formally and with the air of a colored queen of
respectability and virtue. Meanwhile her shrewd brown eyes seemed
to be saying: "I'll show you white folks!" She was a different Sanina
to me. Indeed, she was a creature of two races that night, with the
blood of both warring in her veins.
Our editor-in-chief possessed none of the vulgar taste for cellar
cabarets. Yet one evening Max Eastman said he would like to go on
a cabaret party to Harlem. He was accompanied by another friend.
We were welcomed at Barron's, where white people were always
welcome and profitable business. Barron was a big man in Tammany
politics. But I wanted particularly to go with my white friends to Ned's
Place on Fifth Avenue. Ned and I had been friends when I had run a
restaurant in Brooklyn some years previously. He was living in
Brooklyn and often dropped in at my place to eat. Then my business
went bankrupt and we lost sight of each other. A few years later,
when I was waitering on the railroad, I discovered Ned operating a
cabaret on Fifth Avenue in Harlem. I introduced all of my railroad
friends to the place. Our crew used to rendezvous there and unload
ourselves of our tips.
Ned's Place was a precious beehive of rare native talent and
customers. A big black girl from Brooklyn with a mellow flutelike
voice was the high feature. And there was an equivocal tantalizing
boy-and-girl dancing team that I celebrated in Home to Harlem.
When that boy and girl started to shake together they gave
everybody the sweet shivers. The place was small and Ned was his
own master of ceremonies. With a few snappy flashes he could start
everybody swaying together in a merry mood, like a revival leader
warming up his crowd.
Ned's was one place of amusement in Harlem in which white people
were not allowed. It was a fixed rule with him, and often he turned
away white slummers. This wasn't entirely from pride-of-race feeling,
but because of the white unwritten law which prohibits free social
intercourse between colored and white. The big shots of the
amusement business in Harlem, such as Barron, got by the law, for
they were Tammany men. But even they were surprised and messed
up sometimes by the vice squads. Ned said he preferred to run a
"small and clean business" rather than to start treading in the
quicksands of bribes.
However, I had become so familiar with Max Eastman, and his ideas
and ways were so radically opposed to the general social set-up of
white-without-black, that it was impossible to feel about him as a
black does about a white alien. And I was such a good and regular
customer of Ned's that I thought he would waive his rule for me. But I
thought wrong that time.
We arrived at the door of the cabaret, from where Max Eastman
could get a glimpse inside. He was highly excited by the scene, and
eager to enter. But the doorman blocked the way. I beckoned to Ned,
but his jovial black face turned ugly as an aard-vark's and he acted
as if I was his worst enemy. He waved his fist in my face and roared:
"Ride back! Ride back, or I'll sick mah bouncers on you-all!"
Max Eastman and his friend and I made a quick retreat. Eastman
didn't mind. He said he was happy that there was one place in
Harlem that had the guts to keep white people out. There are no
such places left today. Harlem is an all-white picnic ground and with
no apparent gain to the blacks. The competition of white-owned
cabarets has driven the colored out of business, and blacks are
barred from the best of them in Harlem now.
Always I was inflamed by the vision of New York as an eye-dazzling
picture. Fascinated, I explored all points in my leisure moments, by
day and by night. I rode all the ferries. I took long trips, from the
Battery to the Bowery, from Broadway through Harlem to the Bronx. I
liked to walk under the elevated tracks with the trains clashing and
clanging overhead. There was excitement when the sudden roaring
of the train abruptly blotted out conversation. Even the clothes
suspended in the canyon tenements appeared endowed with a
strange life of their own. In the stampeding hours of morning, noon,
and evening, when the crowds assumed epic proportions, I was so
exalted by their monster movement that I forgot that they were white.
I particularly remember some nocturnal wanderings with Adolf Dehn,
the artist, spanning blocks upon blocks along the East River, and the
vast space-filling feeling of the gigantic gas tanks. One loves in New
York its baroque difference from the classic cities, the blind chaotic
surging of bigness of expression. I remember how, when I worked in
the West Eighties and spent my rest time loitering along Riverside
Drive, the black giants of the New York Central, belching flame and
smoke and dust along the façades of the fine palaces, created a
picture like a caravan of modern pirates coming home in a rolling
cloud of glory. The grim pioneer urge of the great pragmatic
metropolis was a ferment in my feeling.
Often I was possessed with the desire to see New York as when I
first saw it from the boat—one solid massive mammoth mass of
spiring steel and stone. And I remember one week-end when Eugen
Boissevain offered a ride over to Jersey, whence one could see New
York in that way. Max Eastman was with us. We drove up to a
summit commanding a grand view of the city. We stood there a long
time drinking in the glory of the pyramids. Afterward we drove
aimlessly around the country. Finally we became hungry. We
stopped at several hotels and restaurants, but none would serve the
three of us together. At last one place offered to serve us in the
kitchen. So, being hungry, all three of us went into the kitchen. The
cooks were frying and roasting at the stove. Kitchen help were
peeling potatoes, washing dishes, cleaning up garbage. We sat
down at the servants' table, where a waiter served us.
It was one of the most miserable meals I ever ate. I felt not only my
own humiliation, but more keenly the humiliation that my presence
had forced upon my friends. The discomfort of the hot bustling
kitchen, the uncongenial surroundings—their splendid gesture, but
God! it was too much. I did not want friends to make such sacrifices
for me. If I had to suffer in hell, I did not want to make others suffer
there too. The physical and sensual pleasures of life are precious,
rare, elusive. I have never desired to restrict the enjoyment of others.
I am a pagan; I am not a Christian. I am not white steel and stone.
On many occasions when I was invited out by white friends I
refused. Sometimes they resented my attitude. For I did not always
choose to give the reason. I did not always like to intrude the fact of
my being a black problem among whites. For, being born and reared
in the atmosphere of white privilege, my friends were for the most
part unconscious of black barriers. In their happy ignorance they
would lead one into the traps of insult. I think the persons who
invented discrimination in public places to ostracize people of a
different race or nation or color or religion are the direct descendants
of medieval torturers. It is the most powerful instrument in the world
that may be employed to prevent rapproachement and
understanding between different groups of people. It is a cancer in
the universal human body and poison to the individual soul. It saps
the sentiment upon which friendliness and love are built. Ultimately it
can destroy even the most devoted friendship. Only super-souls
among the whites can maintain intimate association with colored
people against the insults and insinuations of the general white
public and even the colored public. Yet no white person, however
sympathetic, can feel fully the corroding bitterness of color
discrimination. Only the black victim can.
It was at this time that I wrote a series of sonnets expressing my
bitterness, hate and love. Some of them were quoted out of their
context to prove that I hate America. Mr. Lothrop Stoddard was the
chief offender in his The Rising Tide of Color.
Here are the sonnets:
BAPTISM
Into the furnace let me go alone;
Stay you without in terror of the heat.
I will go naked in—for thus 'tis sweet—
Into the weird depths of the hottest zone.
I will not quiver in the frailest bone,
You will not note a flicker of defeat;
My heart shall tremble not its fate to meet,
My mouth give utterance to any moan.
The yawning oven spits forth fiery spears;
Red aspish tongues shout wordlessly my name.
Desire destroys, consumes my mortal fears,
Transforming me into a shape of flame.
I will come out, back to your world of tears,
A stronger soul within a finer frame.
THE WHITE CITY
I will not toy with it nor bend an inch.
Deep in the secret chambers of my heart
I brood upon my hate, and without flinch
I bear it nobly as I live my part.
My being would be a skeleton a shell,
If this dark Passion that fills my every mood,
And makes my heaven in the white world's hell,
Did not forever feed me vital blood.
I see the mighty city through a mist—
The strident trains that speed the goaded mass,
The fortressed port through which the great ships pass,
The tides, the wharves, the dens I contemplate,
Are sweet like wanton loves because I hate.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
A chafing savage down the decent street,
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh I must keep my heart inviolate,
Against the poison of your deadly hate!
AMERICA
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
The Liberator was gaining strength in its stride. We were always

receiving praiseful letters and faithful promises of support. And we
were preparing to celebrate our struggling through to a happy New
Year. But suddenly the magazine was knocked off its feet. Our
bookkeeper, Mylius, disappeared, and with him went the four
thousand dollars left from The Liberator's government bonds.
Unfortunately Mylius had been intrusted with the key to the bank's
vault in which they were kept. I always felt that I could have trusted
my friend, Michael, the gangster, with my life, while I wouldn't have
trusted Mylius with my shadow.
Max Eastman was discouraged. Always worried about the raising of
money to run the magazine, he had never had the necessary leisure
for his own creative writing. Most of the money he raised came from
liberal rentiers. And now that the magazine editorially had taken a
stand for Lenin and Trotsky and the Bolshevik revolution, it was less
easy to obtain money from these rentiers, whose class had been
ruthlessly expropriated in Russia.
Max Eastman wanted to relinquish the editorship and go abroad to
live and write as he desired. We called a meeting of Liberator artists
and writers and sympathizers. All of us wanted to carry on with the
magazine. But money mocked at us. None of us had Eastman's
combination of talents for the money-raising job. That had been no
picnic for him, either, in spite of his fine platform personality and
attractive presence.
The only person at that meeting who felt that The Liberator could
carry on without Max Eastman was Michael Gold. Gold was always
critical about the way in which the magazine was run. He thought
that Eastman was too much of an esthete, too Baudelaire-like in his
poetic expression. He maintained that The Liberator should express
more of the punch and the raw stuff of life and labor. Max Eastman
had made up his mind to get out from under. We decided that all the
collaborators should endeavor to keep the magazine going as a
collective enterprise. And upon Eastman's suggestion, Michael Gold
and myself were appointed executive editors. There could have been
no worse combination, because personally and intellectually and
from the first time we met, Michael Gold and I were opposed to each
other.
Michael Gold's idea of The Liberator was that it should become a
popular proletarian magazine, printing doggerels from lumberjacks
and stevedores and true revelations from chambermaids. I
contended that while it was most excellent to get material out of the
forgotten members of the working class, it should be good stuff that
could compare with any other writing.
I knew that it was much easier to talk about real proletarians writing
masterpieces than to find such masterpieces. As a peasant and
proletarian aspirant to literary writing I had come in contact with
reams of stuff, pathetic attempts of working people toward adequate
literary expression. My sympathy was with them, but my attitude was
not mawkish. Because I was also an ordinary worker, without benefit
of a classic education. And I had had the experience of the hard
struggle and intellectual discipline and purposefulness that were
necessary to make a fine stanza of verse or a paragraph of prose.
And Michael Gold also knew. He was still intellectually battling up
from the depths of proletarian starvation and misery. And like myself
he was getting hard criticism and kind encouragement from Max
Eastman. But Michael Gold preferred sentimentality above
intellectuality in estimating proletarian writing and writers.
I preferred to think that there were bad and mediocre, and good and
great, literature and art, and that the class labels were incidental. I
cannot be convinced of a proletarian, or a bourgeois, or any special
literature or art. I thought and still think that it is possible to have a
proletarian period of literature, with labor coming into its heritage as
the dominating social factor, exactly as we have had a Christian
period, a Renaissance period, and the various pagan periods. But I
believe that whenever literature and art are good and great they leap
over narrow group barriers and periods to make a universal appeal.
The intelligentsia of our southern states may boycott a Negro's book
or a Negro's painting. Hitler may burn the creative work of Jews,
liberals and radicals, Mussolini may proscribe literature and art that
he considers anti-Fascist, the Pope may index works that he
interprets as anti-Catholic, and the Communists may damn works of
literature and art that appear to them unfavorable to international
Communism. I don't minimize the danger of the obstruction of talent
and the destruction of art. But if the works are authentic they will
eventually survive the noise and racket of the times, I think.
Michael Gold and I on The Liberator endeavored to team along. But
that was impossible. Gold's social revolutionary passion was
electrified with personal feeling that was sometimes as acid as lime-
juice. When he attacked it was with rabbinical zeal, and often his
attacks were spiteful and petty. One day I was informed that he had
entered the Civic Club (a rendezvous of liberals and radicals) in his
shirt sleeves and with an insulting attitude. I remarked that I didn't
see any point in doing that to the pacifist Civic Club; that he might
have gone instead to the Union League Club.
Someone repeated my comment, and one evening when I was
dining with Marguerite Tucker at John's Italian restaurant in Twelfth
Street, Gold came in and challenged me to box. He had been a
champion of some note on the East Side. I shrugged and said the
difference between us was intellectual and not physical, but that I
was willing to box, if he thought that would settle it. So we laughed
the matter off and drank a bottle of dago red together. However, I
saw clearly that our association could not continue. Shortly after that
we called a meeting of Liberator editors and I resigned.
Meanwhile I had been devoting most of my time to dramatic
criticism. Happy Harlem had come down to Broadway in a titillating
musical piece called Shuffle Along. The metropolitan critics
dismissed it casually at first. There were faults. Technically the piece
was a little too rhythmically lazy and loose-jointed. But there were
some luscious songs and singing: "Shuffle Along," "Love Will Find a
Way," and "Bandanna Land." And there was Florence Mills. Florence
Mills was so effortless in her perfect mimicry and elfin brown voice
that the Negro impressarios were not even aware that they
possessed in her a priceless gold star. For they had given her a
secondary rôle in the revue.
Never had I seen a colored actress whose artistry was as fetching as
Florence Mills's. After the show I went backstage to see her. I said:
"You're the star of the show." No, she said, the stars were Lottie Gee
and someone else whose name I don't remember. I said, "You're the
star for me, and I'm going to say so in my review." She laughed
deliciously.
I thought I'd feature Shuffle Along in The Liberator. I wanted
especially to do this because the Negro radicals of those days were
always hard on Negro comedy. They were against the trifling,
ridiculous and common side of Negro life presented in artistic form.
Radical Negroes take this attitude because Negroes have
traditionally been represented on the stage as a clowning race. But I
felt that if Negroes can lift clowning to artistry, they can thumb their
noses at superior people who rate them as a clowning race.
I asked William Gropper, the cartoonist, to go along with me to see
Shuffle Along and make some drawings. Gropper made some
excellent things, but they were too savagely realistic for the airy fairy
fascination of Negro comedy. Gropper realized this, and didn't mind
my asking Hugo Gellert to take a stroke at them, because I thought
Gellert's style more suitable to the kind of thing I wanted. I did not
rate Gellert's talent anywhere near Gropper's. But Gellert possessed
a more receptive mind and cunning hand for illustrative work. Gellert
made some clever drawings with a modernistic accent. We printed
them with my article, and that issue of The Liberator was a sensation
among the theatrical set of Harlem.
Florence Mills ran away with the show, mimicking and kicking her
marvelous way right over the heads of all the cast and sheer up to
the dizzying heights until she was transformed into a glorious star.
Shuffle Along was conceived, composed and directed by Negroes.
There had been nothing comparable to it since the Williams and
Walker Negro shows. It definitely showed the Negro groping,
fumbling and emerging in artistic group expression. When its best
artists were bought out by white producers and it was superseded by
such elaborate super-productions as Blackbirds, which was
projected and directed by a white impresario, there was no artistic
gain for the Negro group. But the Negro artistes made more money,
and thoughtless Negroes, like all good Americans, think that the
commercially successful standard is the only standard by which
Negro artistic achievement may be judged.
I have no prejudice against white persons leading and directing
Negroes artistically and otherwise, if they can do it with more than
merely technical competence. Negroes using the technique of the
white peoples to express themselves must necessarily have to go to
school to the whites. But it is no easy achievement for any outsider
to get on the inside of a segregated group of people and express
their hidden soul. Many white people see Negroes from a white point
of view and imagine that they know all about the Negro soul and can
express it even better than the blacks themselves. When I saw the
white man's Blackbirds in Paris and remembered Shuffle Along I was
very sad. The Blackbirds flashed like a whip from beginning to end,
rushing the actors through their parts like frightened animals. There
was not a suggestion in it of the inimitably lazy tropical drawl that
characterizes Negro life even in the coldest climate. And that was
the secret of the success of the charming Shuffle Along.
In the midst of my career as a dramatic critic I bumped into one of
those acute snags which remain in the memory even as the scar of a
bad wound that has been healed remains in the body. It wasn't
because I was thin-skinned. When I went to work on The Liberator I
knew that I would have to face social problems even greater than
before, but I was determined to face them out. But what happened to
me hurt more because it came from an unexpected source.
I think that instead of rewriting it, I will let the article I wrote at the
time (for The Liberator of May, 1922) tell the story for me:
"Wouldn't your dramatic critic like to see He Who Gets Slapped?"
So, very graciously, wrote the Theater Guild's publicity agent to The
Liberator. Our sometime dramatic critic, Charles W. Wood, having
deserted us for the season, I elected myself dramatic critic by
acclamation. It would be pleasant to sit in a free front-row parquet
seat along with "The Press," instead of buying a ticket for the second
balcony. And as for the other seat—free seats come in pairs—I
decided to take along William Gropper, Liberator artist of the
powerful punch and vindictive line, and master of the grotesque.
So on the appointed night we presented ourselves at the box office
of the Fulton. It was with keen pleasure that I anticipated seeing this
fantastic play of Leonid Andreyev's, He, the One Who Gets Slapped.
A curious and amusing theme!
The stubs were handed to Gropper and we started toward the
orchestra. But the usher, with a look of quizzical amazement on his
face, stopped us. Snatching the stubs from Gropper and muttering
something about seeing the manager, he left us wondering and
bewildered. In a moment he returned, with the manager. "The—the
wrong date," the manager stammered and, taking the stubs marked
"orchestra," he hurried off to the box office, returning with others
marked "balcony." Suddenly the realization came to me. I had come
here as a dramatic critic, a lover of the theater, and a free soul. But—
I was abruptly reminded—those things did not matter. The important
fact, with which I was suddenly slapped in the face, was my color. I
am a Negro—He, the One Who Gets Slapped....
Gropper and I were shunted upstairs. I was for refusing to go, but
Gropper, quite properly, urged compromise. So, brooding darkly,
madly, burnt, seared and pierced, and over-burdened with hellish
thoughts, I, with Gropper beside me half-averting his delicate pale
face, his fingers, run through his unkempt mop of black hair, shading
his strangely child-like blue eyes, sat through Leonid Andreyev's
play.
Andreyev's masterpiece, they call it. A masterpiece? A cleverly
melodramatic stringing together of buffoonery, serio-comic
philosophy, sensational love-hungriness and doll-baby impossibilism,
staged to tickle the mawkish emotions of the bourgeois mob! So I
thought. I sat there, apart, alone, black and shrouded in blackness,
quivering in every fiber, my heart denying itself and hiding from every
gesture of human kindliness, hard in its belief that kindliness is to be
found in no nation or race. I sat inwardly groaning through what
seemed a childish caricature of tragedy. Ah! if the accident of birth
had made Andreyev a Negro, if he had been slapped, kicked,
buffeted, pounded, niggered, ridiculed, sneered at, exquisitely
tortured, near-lynched and trampled underfoot by the merry white
horde, and if he still preserved through the terrible agony a sound
body and a mind sensitive and sharp to perceive the qualities of life,
he might have written a real play about being slapped. I had come to
see a tragic farce—and I found myself unwillingly the hero of one. He
who got slapped was I. As always in the world-embracing Anglo-
Saxon circus, the intelligence, the sensibilities of the black clown
were slapped without mercy.
Poor, painful black face, intruding into the holy places of the whites.
How like a specter you haunt the pale devils! Always at their elbow,
always darkly peering through the window, giving them no rest, no
peace. How they burn up their energies trying to keep you out! How
apologetic and uneasy they are—yes, even the best of them, poor
devils—when you force an entrance, Blackface, facetiously,
incorrigibly, smiling or disturbingly composed. Shock them out of
their complacency, Blackface; make them uncomfortable; make them
unhappy! Give them no peace, no rest. How can they bear your
presence, Blackface, great, unappeasable ghost of Western
civilization!
Damn it all! Goodnight, plays and players. The prison is vast, there is
plenty of space and a little time to sing and dance and laugh and
love. There is a little time to dream of the jungle, revel in rare scents
and riotous colors, croon a plantation melody, and be a real original
Negro in spite of all the crackers. Many a white wretch, baffled and
lost in his civilized jungles, is envious of the toiling, easy-living
Negro.
XIII
"Harlem Shadows"
MEANWHILE I was full and overflowing with singing and I sang in all
moods, wild, sweet and bitter. I was steadfastly pursuing one object:
the publication of an American book of verse. I desired to see "If We
Must Die," the sonnet I had omitted in the London volume, inside of
a book.
I gathered together my sheaf of songs and sent them to Professor
Spingarn. He was connected with a new publishing firm. Many years
before I had read with relish his little book, entitled Creative
Criticism. I wrote to him then. He introduced me to James
Oppenheim and Waldo Frank of The Seven Arts, and they published
a couple of my poems under a nom de plume. That was way back in
1917. Now, five years later, I asked Professor Spingarn to find me a
publisher.
I had traveled over many other ways besides the railroad since those
days. Professor Spingarn was appreciative of me as a Negro poet,
but he did not appreciate my radicalism, such as it was!
Paradoxically, Professor Spingarn supported and advocated Negro
racial radicalism and abhorred social radicalism. Professor Spingarn
preferred my racial jeremiads to my other poems. Well, I was blunt
enough to tell Professor Spingarn that he was a bourgeois. He didn't
like it. Nevertheless he found me a publisher.
When I told a Yankee radical about myself and Professor Spingarn,
this radical said that it was impossible for any man to be pro-Negro
and anti-radical. He said, he believed that Professor Spingarn was
pro-Negro not from broad social and humanitarian motives, but
because he was a Jew, baffled and bitter. I said, "But Oswald
Garrison Villard is also pro-Negro, and he is not a radical nor a Jew."
The radical said, "Oh, Villard is an abolitionist by tradition." And I
said, "Isn't it possible that Professor Spingarn is also an abolitionist,
and by even a greater tradition?"
If only individual motives were as easy to categorize and analyze as
they appear to be! Anyway, Professor Spingarn got Harcourt Brace
and Company to accept my poems. Max Eastman wrote a splendid
preface, and the book was published in the spring of 1922.
Harlem Shadows was a succès d'estime. The reviews were
appreciative, some flattering, flattering enough to make a fellow feel
conceited about being a poet. But I was too broke and hungry and
anxious about the future to cultivate conceit. However, I was not
discouraged. The publication of my first American book uplifted me
with the greatest joy of my life experience. When my first book was
published in Jamaica, I had the happy, giddy feeling of a young goat
frolicking over the tropical hills. The English edition of my poems had
merely been a stimulant to get out an American book. For to me
America was the great, difficult, hard world. I had gone a long,
apparently roundabout way, but at least I had achieved my main
purpose.
The last Liberator affair in which I actively participated was an
international dance. The winter had been cold on our spirits and our
feelings warmed currently to celebrate the spring. We trumpeted
abroad our international frolic and the response was exhilarating. All
shades of radicals responded, pink and black and red; Left liberals,
Socialists, Anarchists, Communists, Mayflower Americans and
hyphenated Americans, Hindus, Chinese, Negroes. The spirit of The
Liberator magnetized that motley throng. There was a large freedom
and tolerance about The Liberator which made such a mixing
possible. (How regrettable that nothing like the old Liberator exists
today! Social thinking is still elastic, even chaotic, in America. Class
lines and ideas here are not crystallized to such an extent as to
make impossible friendly contact between the different radical
groups.)
Our spring frolic brought that international-minded multitude into
Forty-second Street. But the metropolitan police resented the
invasion. They were aghast at the spectacle of colored persons
mixed with white in a free fraternal revel. So they plunged in and
broke it up, hushed the saxophones, turned the crowd out of the hall,
and threw protesting persons downstairs, lamming them with their
billies.
After leaving The Liberator I took a holiday from work. I had not had
one for over a year. I was in a small circle of friends and we convived
together, consuming synthetic gin. Meanwhile I was thinking about a

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5 Steps to a 5: Writing the AP English

Essay 2021 Barbara Murphy

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THE WORK IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” McGRAW-HILL EDUCATION AND

Step 1 Set Up Your Study Program

Step 2 Determine Your Readiness

Step 3 Develop Strategies for Success

Step 4 Review the Knowledge You Need to Get a High

Step 5 Build Your Test-taking Confidence

5 Steps to a 5, Writing the AP English Essay is meant to be a

MAJOR CHANGES AS OF SEPTEMBER 2019

• Both Courses: The rating/scoring of essay questions will be

Barbara Murphy taught AP Language and other college-level

Estelle Rankin taught AP Literature at Jericho High School for over

Set Up Your Study Program

Introduction to the Training

“The task of a writer consists in being able to make something out of

____ You want to do well in your AP English class.

Questions and Answers About the AP English

Verbal prowess has certainly played a great role in history. An

I have a very good friend who speaks really well. He is an

So, which one did you pick as the AP English paragraph? We

Do your reasons include any of the following?

What Actually Is an AP English Essay?

1. Think through an idea.

The AP English student must be able to write a well-developed,

What’s the Difference Between the AP English

• Compose an essay based on a given topic that must be

As we progress through this text, we will look carefully at the

Major Change in Essay Rating as of September

What Are the Expectations of the AP English

Before addressing this question, it is important to define two

In Chapter 5 we will work with the process of reading and

Both Courses: The rating/scoring of essay questions will be

Note: The construction of essay prompts will remain the same.

For AP English Language

Development with Evidence = 4 Points

Note: Writing that lacks grammatical or syntactical control that

The Argument Essay

Development with Evidence = 4 Points

Note: Writing that lacks grammatical or syntactical control that

The Synthesis Essay

Development with Evidence = 4 Points

Note: Writing that lacks grammatical or syntactical control that

For AP English Literature:

The Poetry Essay Rubric

The Free Response Essay

Although each essay is rated on a scale of 6 to 1, your final AP

Is It Difficult to Write an Effective AP English

Creating Your Personal Writing Profile

Make certain your goals are reasonable and realistic. For

My Personal Writing Profile

Take a few moments to consider your responses. If you

About the Basic Training Program

Why the Basic Training Program?

• Clarify requirements for the AP English Essay for both

We believe that reading should be an exciting interaction between

There are no tricks to critical thinking. Those who claim to guarantee

About the Icons Used in This Book

Strategy: The strategy icon calls your attention to a problem-solving