AP Lit Homework

For those of you who gleefully celebrated Senior Skip Day despite the written drubbing I offered the experience in an earlier post (or those few who were legitimately ill or on Coach K's northern odyssey) here is the AP Lit homework that we will be discussing extensively on Monday.

I can't imbed pdf files from home, and since I still can't log into the blog from school due to Rules and Regulations That Have Not Been Rethunk, here it is in all of its cut-and-pasted glory:

AP Literature

Macbeth Unit

Read the following poem and relate it to the brief speech in Act V, scene v from which Frost took the title in a brief essay of 150-200 words. Treat this as an articulated journal entry; how does the content of THIS piece relate to the existential dilemma discussed in the play? How does Macbeth’s view of the world compare or contrast to Frost’s?

(Yes, this may be difficult; writing about poetry often is. However, the AP Literature exam is one-third to one-half poetic analysis, so let’s get going!)

"Out, Out—"
by Robert Frost
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside them in her apron To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap— He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all— Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man's work, though a child at heart— He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off— The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!" So. But the hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright. No one believed. They listened at his heart. Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.