Open Prompt Part One: 2003 Student Responses

2003 Prompt:
According to critic Northrop Frye, “Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning.” Select a novel or play in which a tragic figure functions as an instrument of the suffering of others. Then write an essay in which you explain how the suffering brought upon others by that figure contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole.

LLLL:
Overall, this person’s essay was wonderful. Something that you often find in free response essays is redundancy and rigid formatting. However, the writer manages to answer the prompt thoroughly without deliberately mentioning it. He (or she) first defines The Great Gatsby as a tragedy and links it to the era of the roaring twenties. Then, in the next paragraphs talks about how Jay Gatsby’s role as a tragic hero affects the people around him negatively, parallel to the concept of the prompt. By the end of the essay, the writer’s concept is clear and soundly backed with evidence from the novel. The only critical comment I have is that I would have preferred to have the main idea of the essay spelled out clearly in the introduction rather than subtly in the body paragraphs.  Additionally, is it appropriate in an AP free response to provide ideas gradually throughout the piece rather than directly stating it at the beginning, or is it better to provide ideas in a complex manner?

C:

Great introduction, cuts to the chase by stating that Shakespeare’s work, King Leon, illustrates a tragic hero who acts as a conductor of destruction to his surroundings. I really liked how the writer touched on similarities found in Hamlet, bringing in an outside source touches on how the theme can commonly be found in other works. Additionally, talking about another work that was written by the same author, William Shakespeare, indirectly describes the common themes specifically found in said author’s works. I wish the writer had gone into more detail on the topic of the deaths of Reagan and Cordelia. Something I noticed about this essay is that it was written on the assumption that the reader is familiar with the work. Now, being someone who has never read King Leon, I found it hard to fully understand the writer’s evidence from the work. The overall writing style of the essay is not developed, and similarly, the actual content of the essay is shallow. The ideas and examples that are given successfully answer the prompt, but fail to look into the work as a whole and the relevance of its theme. 

FF:

The writing style of this essay is too simple and direct. Although, this helps the reader understand the concept through concise sentences, its simplicity is boring, predictable, and one-dimensional. The essay does not explore any other aspects of the play other than how McMurphy was damaging to the patients well-being and does not explore the complexity of the tragic hero’s character. Also, the writer includes too many details from the plot that are irrelevant to the main idea. In wasting time telling the story, he failed to go into depth with how the prompt relates to the general meaning of the play until the very last paragraph. Failure to present the ideas consistently throughout the essay results in a rush of idea processing at the end. For example, being someone who has never read One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the concept of the combine could have been explained further. Assuming that the combine is a large part of the work, it also should have been incorporated sooner in the essay and intertwined with the larger theme. Finally, the writer only briefly mentions the societal conditions of the setting of the work, which could have helped explain why McMurphy was a tragic hero not only in the plot but also in that specific era.