Reading the Question 3 Prompt

What Question 3 actually is

Question 3 is the literary argument essay: the only free-response question on the AP English Literature exam that supplies no text. You are given a general statement about literature, told to choose a novel or play of literary merit that you have read, and asked to argue how something in that work contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole.

Because no passage is printed, students read the prompt as an invitation to write about a book. It is not. It is a question with a specific shape, and the shape has three parts:

1. a general claim about how literature works;
2. an instruction to select a work containing the named situation;
3. the actual question — almost always some version of how does this contribute to an interpretation of the work as a whole?

Where the points live

The third part is where the essay is scored. An essay that proves the general claim is true of literature in general has answered part one and earned nothing. An essay that shows the chosen novel contains the named situation has answered part two and earned nothing. Only an essay that argues what the situation does to the meaning of that particular work is answering the question.

Practical consequence: before you think of a single book, underline the verb phrase in part three, and write it at the top of your planning space. Every body paragraph must be answerable against that phrase.