Written by Valerie Person

After completing year 30th year of teaching but my 15th year of teaching AP Literature and
Composition, the 2025 Lit reading is notable for multiple reasons for me. It was a return to
reading for AP Literature and Composition as I stepped away in 2024 to read for AP Language
and Composition. After the experience of scoring 5 years in AP Lit and Comp, I knew the value
of learning from scoring. Some call it Nerd Camp, others AP Friend Reunion; regardless,
scoring for AP is like marinating my family’s fuzzy chicken. It gets better with time, and when it
comes off the grill, look out. Summer 2024 scoring was hard, though. My mom had just been put
in Hospice after Mother’s Day; I was stuck in a hotel reading for AP Lang virtually and felt so
very, very alone. I opted to return “home” to AP Lit and Comp for 2025 where I was on more
familiar territory with the hope of finding comfort. In the five years I had scored for AP Lit, I had
not yet scored for frq3, so I dared to hope I’d be assigned the open-ended question. Prayer was
answered as I woke up that first Saturday morning to find I had been assigned the Memory
Prompt. The reading itself proved a much-needed gift—a week of reading and scoring student
papers that have been healing for me. After the two toughest years of my 30 year career, I had
lost my way. The week of reading student’s intimate takes of literature was the “axe” Kafka
references that broke up the frozen sea inside me. Each day helped thaw out my soul and
drizzled in joy that was balm to my grieving heart. So based on the essays I read and scored,
what are my take-aways?

Let’s start with the choices of literature students made. Based on frequency of choice correlated
to less effective essays that I personally scored, the top three titles were Fitzgerald’s Great
Gatsby. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In full disclosure, I love and
teach Frankenstein, but I’m rethinking how I approach it in the future with my students. Students
risked falling into the trap of single-story thinking in using universal, canonized titles. Most were
not able to avoid the trap and fell in, some almost by default. To be clear, I did read some
outstanding essays with these three titles, but they were few and far between. To add a point to
it, we read to reward what students do well. I love that the AP scoring guide is NOT anchored in
a deficit mindset. With some exceptions, most of the essays I read were solid down the middle
essays, with the Row A point awarded (students are doing well overall with that and articulating
a defensible thesis) and typically the 3 on Row B.

Many of the student essays, however, struggled to get to that 4 on Row B and did not merit the sophistication point on Row C. The battle I saw with the majority of these essays was that students danced that line between too much plot summary and an emerging line of reason but with not enough commentary/analysis to warrant getting up to a 3 and 4 on row B. For example, students were able to provide some textual evidence for Jay Gatsby’s obsession with the memory of Daisy, but taking that further and discussing the “so what?” of his actions is where most of the essays stopped. Typically, the
responses that did earn a higher score using these titles were ones that took a different route to
the prompt. For example, I read a Great Gatsby paper that set up their paper to examine impact
of memory on individuals but then extended to analyze impact of memory collectively on society.
Beside being well-written in general, it offered a convincing analysis of the American Dream’s
impact on society’s memory. I read a couple of essays that dug into the significance of Gatsby
changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby, pulling in 20th-century American history of
immigration to supplement the argument that achieving the American Dream was harder if not
impossible because of our country’s collective memory. My take-away is that it’s better to go deep rather than wide. Following out a line of reason to the hinterlands resulted in stronger scores rather than trying to cover say three main examples.

Here’s where I’ll insert another hurdle. Those essays that students named specific literary devices in their thesis did not work out well for the most part. Essays where students cherry-picked the devices and then searched for evidence to support those devices were weaker essays overall in the ones I read. My
take-away? Strategies that have students look for meaning first and do close examinations of
scenes serve students better as compared to having students look for examples of devices and
literary elements. Start with meaning. And the meaning is not in the label of the device.

The top 3 literary titles based on frequency of times utilized were Toni Morrison’s Beloved,
Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and August Wilson’s play Fences. A close-running fourth
was Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Although not every essay written on one of these four titles was an
automatic sophistication point, the majority did earn that point, and more times than not, I
awarded that point due to the complexity of the thinking the essay demonstrated. What does
that say to me? It encourages me that a lot of contemporary literature is rooted in complexity,
offering rich opportunities for our students to grapple with conflicts of injustice through works
that are inclusive of voices historically left out of the canon. For example, I read very few
Beloved or Fences essays that did not get the sophistication point. Students automatically
articulated the complexity of slavery’s impact on not only Sethe but on American society.
Students skillfully crafted and fine-tuned lines of reasoning with Troy Maxon’s memories at the
center but extended it to the later generations with abundant evidence and precise commentary
against a backdrop of American Civil Rights. Teachers who taught Morrison’s Beloved and
Wilson’s Fences have done an exceptional job in that challenge IF the essays I read were any
indication of such. The Kite Runner essays were just as exceptional but with the added global
significance as seen through an American lens.

Reading these essays gives me hope that this younger generation does critically see and think
through a lens of empathy and restorative justice. If I’m asked for advice, here’s my response:
root your approach to literature in empathy. When students read through that lens, they set
themselves up to see complexity, to move beyond a view of the world’s mores as right and
wrong or black and white. They embrace that life is messy; it’s complicated. The more we can
do as teachers to help them get comfortable in the gray, the more we can support stronger
analysis and application of the humanities. Teaching AP Literature and Composition has
privileged me with the views of both a bird-in-the-sky as well as being on the ground, sitting right
beside students to confer. To be a small part of facilitating the impact of literature on our
younger generations has been an honor. I am grateful!

Written by Eric Rovie

The 2025 Set 1 Q3 prompt focused on characters who were “significantly affected by memories of the past.” for better or worse.  Students were asked to choose a work in which the character was affected by a memory and analyze how the “impact of the memory on the character contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole.”  This was my second consecutive year as a Table Leader for Q3 (last year I was on the Set 1 “indecision” prompt) after not having read Q3 since 2017, so it was interesting to see a new prompt and more new texts.  Here’s a brief summary what I saw this year:

What students did well:

In general, students seemed to understand what was being asked of them with this prompt.  In last year’s indecision prompt, many students would equivocate on what was meant by “decision” or “indecision”, making it harder to trace their line of reasoning.  This prompt seemed easier for students to tackle head on: some kind of memory and how it impacted a character seemed like a pretty easy concept for most writers to latch onto, even writing from memory.

Students were generally successful in coming up with more than one example of how the memory provided a long-standing impact on the character.  While students are not asked specifically to come up with multiple pieces of evidence as they are in Row B of Q1 and Q2, it certainly helps to develop their line of reasoning if they can show how multiple moments in their character’s life were reflective of the impact of the memory.

Where students struggled:

There were, unfortunately, quite a few students who simply gave up or ran out of time.  Some essays stated “I have not read any of the books on the list” which is unfortunate because the lists are merely recommendations and students should not panic if they don’t know the specific books on the list.

Students who scored on the lower end (1-1-0 and 1-2-0) often generated a clear thesis about a character who was affected by a memory but then offered little more than plot summary without much to connect the plot beats mentioned to the memory itself.  

One of the mantras for AP Lit is “Answer the Prompt”, so students who failed to address memory in any fashion would often struggle, usually scoring 0-1-0.  Some students seemed to have prepared essays on other topics in advance and wrote complete essays on topics that had nothing to do with memory.  These essays, even when well written, could not score above 0-2-0 because they didn’t have a thesis that responded to the prompt nor a line of reasoning. 

Another mistake that was recurring were the students who wrote about memories that affected more than one character or wrote about memories affecting multiple characters from several texts.  The prompt explicitly asked students to “choose a work of fiction in which a character is significantly affected by a memory” but when students didn’t respond to the prompt directly, their line of reasoning tended to fall apart.  A well developed essay that would score high in Row B was focused on one character whose memory impacted their development and the meaning of the work as a whole.  Another common line of reasoning error comes when students write on book series: focusing on one volume of the Harry Potter series tends to work better for students-when attempting to discuss multiple texts, they often collapse into plot summary.  Students who write on book series that they know well (Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Dune) often also tend to “fanboy” or “fangirl” their essays, focusing on broad strokes summary  or laudatory evaluation of these texts instead of aiming the argument at a particular character’s memory.

Finally, unlike the Q1 and Q2, students don’t need to focus on literary elements of voice (detail, imagery, tone, syntax, diction) in their Q3 essay.  They will likely not be able to discuss specific elements of voice because they don’t have the text in front of them.  Their discussion of the text will be at the macro level rather than the micro level analysis expected in the poetry and prose prompts.  Students who tried to discuss, for example, the imagery in The Great Gatsby often struggled to tie that back to their thesis about memory.

Text choices:

There is frequent consternation by AP Lit teachers about the books that are “overused” on the AP Lit exam.  It is sometimes claimed that Readers will be less receptive to essays about these “overused” books than other books, and this is simply not true.  As Readers, we read every essay as a response to the prompt with no concern about whether a text has “literary merit” or is “overused.”  I read essays written about manga (Attack on Titan was one of several), young adult fiction (The Hate U Give showed up several times), comic book series (Batman’s memory of his parents deaths), popular romance novels (The Notebook), video games (The Last of Us), TV series (The Last of Us again as well as WandaVision), movies (Twisters), short stories (a particularly good essay was written about James Joyce’s “The Dead”), poems (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was an inspired choice with a high scoring essay), non-fiction texts and memoirs (The Woman Warrior and The Glass Castle), plays, and novels.  Students were not penalized for writing about works out of the canon or works that were not written works.   Some of the more frequently used texts this year included The Great Gatsby, Frankenstein, Beloved, The Things They Carried, Fences, Of Mice and Men, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Homegoing, MacBeth, Hamlet, and The Road.  

Sophistication:

As usual, the two most prominent avenues for the sophistication point came either “Identifying and exploring complexities or tensions within the selected work” or “illuminating the student’s interpretation by situating it within a broader context.”  In both cases, students need to include these sophisticated elements throughout the essay and not just as brief mentions at the beginning or end of the essay.  An essay on Beloved, for example, that used Sethe’s memory of slavery and Sweet Home to connect more broadly to the haunting memories of American slavery would be situating the essay within the broader historical context.  Similarly, an essay that pointed out the differing responses that might arise from a particular memory could receive the point in Row C by playing into those tensions.  A strong essay on The Road might point out that the Man’s memories of his wife, for example, vacillate between nostalgic love and bitter anger depending on the moment and that those memories are partially what fuel the Man to protect the Boy.

Classroom Guidance:

1. Remind students that “the list” should not discourage them from writing.  Read the prompt, jot down a few ideas of texts, and ignore the list at first
2. Row B is Evidence and Commentary.  Where students failed to move from a 3 to a 4 in Row B, it’s usually because there is evidence (examples from the text) but little-to-no commentary on the evidence.  Don’t just state what Hamlet does, explain WHY what he does is important from the perspective of the thesis.
3. There were essays that had extended use of quotes, including page numbers, in their body paragraphs.  These essays were flagged for possible security violations-students cannot use books or digital texts to write their Q3. 
4. Transitions between the examples can help clarify the Line of Reasoning.  Work on placing evidence in a logical progression and transition between the evidence.  

Eric Rovie teaches AP Lit and AP Lang at Brookwood High School in Snellville, GA, where he also leads the New Teacher Mentoring program for his school. He also works for Gwinnett County Public Schools as a Gifted Endorsement instructor, training GCPS teachers to teach gifted students.  He is also a veteran AP Literature Reader and Table Leader and a College  Board Consultant for both AP Lit and AP Lang.  Previously, he was a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Webster University, Georgia State University, Agnes Scott College, and Saint Leo University, and has published book chapters and articles on topics in ethics, the history of philosophy, and political theory.  Eric has also worked as a staff writer for The Onion, The AV Club, PopMatters, and Chunklet.