Practice AP Question With Answer!

Sample AP Question:

Choose a theme of the poem that the artist wants to convey to the audience. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the theme and discuss how literary devices contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole.

• The poem conveys the theme that you do not know what you have until you lose it. The last stanza uses repetition in words, line structure, and vowel sounds at the ends of the lines. The structure of each line in the last stanza provides the reader with examples of situations in which someone repeatedly takes positive things for granted.

• The word choices in the entire poem add to the attitude of the author and meaning of the work. “Staring at the bottom of your glass” clearly creates a depressing situation, as it can be assumed that the subject of the poem has been drinking to ease some sort of pain. “You see her when you close your eyes” provides context that the subject misses a woman he/she once knew.

• The last stanza then adds to the meaning of the entire piece, that you don't know what you have until it’s gone, through the repetition of sentence structure and meaning. “Only know you love her when you let her go; And you let her go...” makes for an important statement on the meaning of the work and the subject of the piece.

***For the student to achieve maximum points they must include at least 2 of the above points. We recognize they have forty to write and will take that into account when grading.