1999 AP English: Literature and Composition Exam



1999 AP English: Literature and Composition Exam

Question 2

Sample CC

In the excerpt from The Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy, a third-person narrator depicts the actions of a man who is carrying a dead wolf. Throughout the passage, the point-of-view shifts somewhat to reveal the emotional impact of the wolf’s death upon the man. References to God and religious imagery intensify the meaning of the wolf’s death and force the man to confront the power of life.

At first, the narrator focuses on the man’s action, characterizing the man by his actions rather than by his thoughts or observations. There are many run-on sentences, using “and” to constantly describe his motions as he sets up camp. The narrator strays away from his actions only once in the first paragraph when describing the cries of the coyotes. The story is told in the present tense and long sentences so that the reader is actively involved, unable to step back from the story. The language is not highly descriptive, just straight forward in relaying the man’s actions.

However, in the second paragraph, the narrator begins deviating from the straight forward story-telling. The forked sticks steaming in the firelight are transformed into a religious image with the simile “like a burning scrim. . . where celebrants of some sacred passion had been carried off by rival sects or . . . fled into the night at the fear of the own doing.” There is an implication here that the man is responsible for the death of the wolf in “the fear of their own doing.” This religious thought causes the man to shiver and pull the blanket tighter about him, perhaps in fear of the night.

When the man falls asleep, he is like “some dozing penitent” and his hands are “palm up,” more religious images, as if he is in supplication to God. The coyotes are calling again. They were described earlier as having cries which “seemed to have no origin other than the night itself.” Thus, the coyotes and the night are joined together to symbolize the man’s guilt and regret for his actions. The night surrounds him; the “yapping” of the coyotes plague him. His actions also reflect his sympathy and regret for the wolf—he closes her eyes with his thumb, a sign of respect for the dead. He puts his hands to her forehead and imagines her alive—accompanied by “starlight” and the “sun’s coming”, dispelling the night / his regret. The language here is descriptive, upbeat even; in contrast to the simple, unelaborate diction of before. The wolf is seen as one of “all nations of the possible world ordained by God.” Her running freely causes “the cries of the coyotes” to clap “shut as if a door had closed upon them.”

He holds her and his guilt is expiated somewhat. He is confronted by life, which is “at once terrible and of a great beauty, like flowers that feed on flesh.” The personification and alliteration in describing flowers that eat flesh creates a terrible and striking visual image. The narrator shifts to a first-person plural point of view, interpreting the events and their meaning. Life is described, a power is described and compared to wind and rain in its shaping of the earth. The diction becomes more fast paced, clauses piled upon sentences in trying to describe the indescribable. The man has confronted this power in the death of the wolf—this power “which cannot be held and is no flower but is swift and a huntress and the wind itself is in terror of it and the world cannot lose it.” The power is personified and nature is personified as all things, even humans, are equal before this power.

The hint of the religious nature of the power is alluded to earlier by the religious imagery. Similes and metaphors are utilized in attempting to convey the description of the man’s experience. His actions are no longer of importance—it is only this power. The sentences lose their strict order, becoming only fragments of sentences, subjects without verbs. The power which the man has encountered in the loss of the life of the wolf forces him to come to terms with the immense meaning of life, God’s creation, and the “rich matrix of creatures”—the connection between all things.

Sample K

A writer seeks to convey a dramatic experience by using word choice, imagery and tone to cause the reader to feel emotion toward the character in the piece. The emotion a reader feels is a product of the impact that the writer’s techniques have. In The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy techniques of word choice, imagery and tone are used in 3 ways to convey the main character’s experience. He creates a setting of images, then a personal connection, and ends with an almost spiritual closing; all concerning a man and a wolf.

McCarthy’s setting of the cold and lonely mountain plains is conveyed with words such as “escarpments,” “grassy swale” “rim lands” and “wilderness.” These are the bases for the imagery created by phrases like, “Coyotes were yapping along the hills. . . and were calling from . . . the rimlands above him where their cries seemed to have no origin other than the night itself.” McCarthy gives a picture to the reader of the campsite hastily set up and the firelight that flickers in the dark. The images then set the tone of his piece—somber and whispering like the grasses, lonely and mournful like the howl of the coyote. The reader now sits alone on the prairie, with the mountains somewhere in the distance, watching the man, and the dead wolf.

After the setting is established, McCarthy makes the personal connection between the main character and the subject of his conflict—the dead wolf. Words such as “cradled,” and his use of “fur” rather than “coat” or “pelt” suggest his feeling for the animal. McCarthy creates images of happier times and the grief that the main character feels with phrases such as “He cradled the wolf in his arms and lowered her to the ground,” and “he sat by her and put his hand down on her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes that he could see her running in the mountains . . .” the tone is that of reminiscence, sorrowful and sad.

Finally, McCarthy gives a spiritual account of the character’s feelings. His word choice and imagery change from particular to broad spectrum—“what blood and bone are made of but can themselves not make on any altar nor by any wound of war.” He gives the image that a soul has been released, and that once again the wolf is free somewhere—“But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower but is swift and a huntress and the wind itself in terror of it and the world cannot lose it.” His tone is now noble, almost triumphant in the shadow of cold death.

Cormac McCarthy uses tone, word choice and imagery in his novel The Crossing in 3 ways to convey the impact of a dramatic experience upon his readers, and throughout the course of the journey, the reader feels the impact completely.

Sample Z

The main character in McCarthy’s, The Crossing, is greatly afflicted by the death of a wolf which he carries with him to bury. The tone, established in the first paragraph, is almost weary. The main character goes through the action of setting up camp, but his mind and heart are not in it. In line 4 he “dropped the reins”, and in line 8-9 “he walked the horse back to the creek and left it standing.” His thoughts are somewhere else and the scene is almost surreal, as shown by the imagery of “their cries seemed to have no origin other than the night itself.” (lines 13-14) He also falls asleep from both physical and mental exertion.

Upon waking, his thoughts automatically go to the wolf. His thoughts are remorseful as he realizes “the coyotes were still calling all along the stone ramparts of the Pilares,” and if the wolf was still alive, “where she ran the cries of the coyotes would have clapped shut . . . . and all was fear and marvel.” His thoughts meander on and he mulls over what it is that makes the wolf who she is—what the essence of her is. The syntax of lines 57-64 helps convey the steady stream of his thought—almost as if one thought runs into another, as shown by unpunctuated, run-on-sentences.

In the end, he comes to a spiritual reaffirmation that the essence, or spirit, of the wolf is indomitable. It goes on, as shown b lines 61-64. “But which can never be held, . . . and the world cannot lose it.”

Sample RRR

The longing to hold the spark present in life but forever lost in death is a common yearning. The idea of a permanent loss seems impossible. Through McCarthy’s manipulations, the reader realizes the persona’s yearning for what can never be: the return of the past.

Diction such as “stiff” and “cold” make the reader realize the wolf is already dead. The persona cradles her gently as if she were sleeping. “Yapping” refers to the coyotes cries which seem to be more annoying than dangerous. By describing the teeth of the wolf as “cold” and “perfect,” the author is trying to stress how creatures seem unchanged even in death. “Fear” and “marvel” express the theme of the passage which set the mood.

Mood is probably the most stressed element of the passage. The references of blood and coldness add to the idea of death. The fact that it is dark and coyotes are yapping but there seems to be no origin heigthen the feeling of surrounding danger. The waiting for dawn in order to bury the wolf adds a sense of pathos for the persona for having to endure such a feat. When the persona wakes up and it is “still dark”, the reader may perceive this as a way of being able to recapture the past since death is dark and no thing’s changed. The mood adds to the helplessness of the persona to his situation.

Through the use of flashbacks, the reader can perceive how active and essential the wolf was to nature. The running in the mountains and the rich matrix of creatures express how carefree and unbound the wolf had once been. Now, she’s bound by death and can never be released. The persona recognizes this and wishes to return things as they once had been yet it’s impossible. Death is irreversible and it must just be accepted rather than denied.

The persona, at first, seems to just realized the wolf is dead. As the knowledge sets in, the persona seems to care more about the wolf. When reflecting on her life, he views her former purpose in life and longs to view her in such beauty. He cradles her head once more and closes her eyes to prolong the peaceful moment just a while longer.

Sample I

Spending time in a natural environment often brings people closer to nature. The character in the passage from The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy has an experience which affects him in this way. He tends to the body of a dead wolf while camping outside overnight and feels a connection to this animal.

The narrator of the passage is not the man who has this experience but an omniscient third person narrator. He describes the setting, the man’s actions, and the man’s thoughts. The sentence structure McCarthy employs reflects this understanding of what the man thinks and feels. In the second paragraph, the sentence which begins “He got the fire going” is a run-on; it continues without punctuation, describing the man’s procedure for preparing for bed, for nine lines. That there is not s much as a comma to separate these actions suggests that the man is not particularly concerned with them; he does not regard each one as significant because he is focused on the wolf. A later noticably long sentence in lines forty to forty-seven also reflects his preoccupation with this animal, by in a different way. This sentence also lacks punctuation (though it does contain one comma), and therefore a break in thought, but it is about the wolf. The man feels so tied to it that he thinks about it at length, first reaching out to it physically (he “put his hand upon her bloodied forehead”) and then mentally (“he could see her running in the mountains”). Just as the reader is connected to the man because the narrator conveys his thoughts, the man is connected to the wolf because he believes he understands its thoughts.

McCarthy writes that the wolf “was one among and not separate from” “all nations of the possible world.” In this

statement, he conveys the connection between all of the creatures on earth. He uses other methods to reinforce this idea as well. The narrator’s initial descriptions of the man and wolf, for example, are similar. The man’s “trousers were stiff with blood” and the wolf is “stiff...with the blood dried upon it (her fur).” The repitition of this detail links the two beings. The meaning of this connection between all living things is signifacant to the man in terms of his link to the wolf; though the horse does move to “the edge of the fire,” where the man and wolf lie, when the man makes up he “could not see” the horse and instead focuses on the wolf. He is aware of the coyotes’ presence as well but the noise they make seems to “have no origin other than the night itself”; they are not with him while the wolf is physically close.

.

The conclusion of the passage, though obviously related through the narrator, clearly relate to the main character’s feelings regarding his situation. Holding the head of the dead wolf to which he feels so close causes him to consider what he is searching for in holding a lifeless body. The man seems to be upset, as the narrator portrays what seem to be the protagonist’s thoughts in sentence fragments. McCarthy repeats the word “What” at the beginning of two sentences and one clause, marking an attempt to deal with the idea of the wolf’s spirit, an intangible presence which he does not name.

Sample Y

McCarthy is able to convey the impact of the experience on the main character in this passage. He does this by creating a dark and lonely scene and by greatly describing everything

To begin with McCarthy sets the scene. It takes place in an isolated forest at night. The main character is alone and is carring a dead wolf. The main character build a small fire. By having him alone in the cold darkness the author sets a lonely, dim, bleak outlook.

The author also describes the main character’s actions. This show that he must have a strong attachment to the wolf by the way that he nurtures it so. He washes the blood out of the animal’s fur and wraps it up in a blanket. This shows how much remorse is in the main character.

Towards the end of the passage it seems as though the main character feels hopeless. The death of the wolf made him realize things about the world. The main character realizes what he thought had the power to good in the world is what really caused the terror

To explain the impact of the experiences on the main character, McCarthy used these techniques. He carefully described everything including the setting. He created the setting to be dark, lonely and cold to help the reader feel the way that the main character did. These are a couple of the techniques that McCarthy used.

Sample D

In the selection from The Crossing, author Carmac McCarthy uses a third-person narrative to show how the related experience makes an impact on the main character. McCarthy never gets into the character’s head or relates his thoughts directly to the reader, but through his use of imagery and detailed description of the meticulous actions of the man, he conveys to the reader the sense of the man’s quiet sense of loss and intangibility of the powers of a beautiful natural creature.

From the very beginning, the reader gets a sense of the care with which the main character handles his cargo, a dead and bloodied she-wolf. It is not quite dawn when we meet him “cradling the wolf” in his arms. She is wrapped in a sheet that is covered in blood, as are his trousers. He “lifts” the wolf out of the sheet and places her on the ground with the utmost care and tenderness. This is all done silently. In fact the only sound that the reader is made aware of is the “yapping” of coyotes in the hills, but other than that it is as quiet as a cemetery or a church.

Without the use of any dialogue, McCarthy describes the character’s isolation. He is cold and shivering in the dark, even moreso when he wakes up to find that his horse is gone, although he doesn’t seem to mind much. From the beginning of the passage, the reader feels that the character has a specific task—which we later find out is to bury the wolf. But he falls asleep to wait for dawn, with his “hands up before him like a dozing penitent.” This suggests that he is doing this out of “penitence,” out of a desire for a catharsis, and relief.

The greatest impact on the main character seems to come in the third paragraph. The first thing he does, before looking for his horse, is that he reaches over to the wolf and touches her fur, her eyes, and her “cold and perfect teeth.” He closes her dead eyes, and then closes his own, so that he can imagine her in her once-glorious natural state, “running in the mountains.” He imagines her as a queen or goddess of sorts, for whom all other wild animals are “richly empaneled on the air,” though she feels that she is one of them. He reaches for her and wants to see and understand the thing of “beauty and terror” that he holds. He feel obviously humbled by the fact that he cannot, nor will he ever be able to, grasp the power and “swiftness” of the wolf, the now-dead “huntress.”

This is not at all passive description, though the main character never says anything explicitly, he acts with such tender, humble, affection toward the dead she-wolf, that the impact that it has on him cannot be missed. He wants to be part of a world that is glorious and natural and all-inclusive, and that is not a desire to be taken lightly.

Sample X

In McCarthy’s novel, the narrator describes how a man deals with the death of a part of nature, a wolf. The main character feels compassion for this animal and handles her corpse very gently. He obviously has a lot of respect for this animal if he took the time to travel with its body and search for a place to bury it. His actions suggest that he feels personal loss in that he “cradled” her in his arms and “lowered” her to the ground. These words give the reader a sense of gentleness.

The most intense point in the passage comes when dawn breaks and the man squats over her and “touched her fur.” This is another example of how careful he was with her body. He then closes her still open eyes out of respect and visualizes what her life must have been like. He can “see” her “running in the mountains, running in the starlight” and describes her as being one of the creatures of the “rich matrix” of nature and “not seperate from.” After the meditation, he takes her head in his arms and tries to understand and capture her essence as a huntress and free spirit, but he “reached to hold cannot be held.” The cries of the coyotes in the passage also help create the mournful tone. They seem to be crying over the loss of one of their own.

Finally, the passage seems to give a sense of hope by adding that “the world cannot lose” this kind of freedom. Even though her body is dead, her spirit lives in all of nature.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download