AP English Comp

Part 3 Literary Questions


The Color Purple

  • Author : Alice Walker

  • Setting : Rural Georgia 1910s - 1940s

  • Celie was given to Mr. ___ by her stepfather after he kept trying to marry Nettie

  • Shug first thought Celie was really ugly

  • Harpo falls in love with Sofia

  • Mr.____ does not approve because she is very independent

  • Sofia goes to jail after refusing to be a maid for the mayor’s wife (she then tries to beat them up)

  • Squeak goes to see the warden and try to convince him that she’d be worse off working for the mayor than in jail.

  • The climax is when Celie confronts Mr. About the letters

  • Squeak leaves with Celie and Shug to go to Memphis

  • Nettie ends up in Africa in a village Oilinka she faces different kind of oppression from the villagers

  • Celie told her to go to the reverends house because he was a good man and to watch her children


Symbols in the Color Purple

  • Pants : represent female empowerment and freedom

  • Purple : beauty and divine presence

  • Letters : communication and self-expression



One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

  • Takes place in 1960s

  • ^ in Oregon Mental Hospital

  • Ken Kesey wrote it to highlight the problems within the mental institutions

  • It is a satirical novel

  • The Combine is society

  • The group meetings are used to humiliate the patients and belittle them

  • McMurphy is there because he pretended to be insane so he wouldn’t have to be at the work camp

  • McMurphy takes the patients on a fishing trip

  • She uses the staff that are submissive to her

  • McMurphy wants the patients to know what it’s like to be human, to find their own identity

  • Billy kills himself at end

  • Bromden ends up killing McMurphy after he ends in a vegetable state




Symbols:

  • Electroshock therapy table : crucifixion cross, represents the oppressive power of Nurse Ratched, forced conformity

The Novel is an exploration of individual freedom against the oppressive systems. Shows that rebellion can be crushed but it can inspire liberation and a reclaiming of humanity.


The Crucible

  • Author : Arthur Miller