1987 AP Test Essays

Essay #1 Leisure 

             Leisure means the accessibility of having spare time, the author writes about an old man who has no objective in his life. “Old Leisure” is what the author named him, Eliot refers to him as a human being who lives a simple but relaxing life and lists all the wonderful activities Old Leisure has done to keep himself in company.  “He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman of excellent digestion,” Eliot describes Leisure in a positive way, acting as if she has watched Leisure for a long time. The last lines of the poem shows that Leisure’s life has become so attached to Leisure that he won’t be responsible enough to go to church.  

            The way “old Leisure” was described was how he lived a life, smelling the apricots and felt amusement. Eliot describes leisure as if it’s he is her friend; she talks about his leisure of being able to live a normal life with museums, sleeping, and eating dinner. “He fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners, and slept the sleep of the irresponsible,” the life Old Leisure lived was unbelievable to the author in a way she was offended when his sleep missed the Sunday church.  From the art museums to Sunday sermon were all Leisure’s activities, Eliot scolds, “Fine old Leisure!” because Leisure is irresponsible, he did not go to church on Sunday. Eliot is trying to say, with all the time in the world, how Old Leisure could miss Sunday church. The author describes Leisure as if he was blessed and lucky to be living a quiet, ease life.

            The author George Eliot describes calls an old man, “Old Leisure” because of the plentiful time and days he has with his life. He lives such a luxurious and inattentive life therefore the author makes a comment when he has all the time in the world, how can his miss church. Eliot makes a comment about how irresponsible he is to forget church, but it’s because he’s lived a life without any responsibility. Old Leisure lives day by day, the author says, “life was not a task to him,” meaning that life was not difficult for old Leisure. Eliot describes Old Leisure in an envious and aspiring way. 

Essay #2: Modification 

“Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.” In the book, Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the Joad family suffers from the Great Depression, struggling to survive they work in a brutal condition to tame fields of grapes. The family goes through a series of events such as death, starvation, and ultimately losing everything they once had in their possession changed their attitudes from the beginning to the end.  As the family’s journey continues on, the author modifies the reality of Joad’s poverty and instead makes the idea of “American Dream” as the theme.

The Joad family starts off as a fairly normal, not rich, but an average family; as the Great Depression hits, the family continues to move until they have found a stable job. As for in reality, the Joad’s are suffering from poverty, they have no job, no money, or the necessities to live. Steinbeck instead blurs the problems and focuses on the Joads working hard to feed their loved ones and ultimately searching for the “American Dream.” The struggling of working in the grape plantation develop, Steinbeck continues to overlook the poor, money-less family. Joad’s called their work, “the grapes of wrath,” because that’s what will help them escape from the Great Depression, but it’s actually what leads to their so called, “American Dream” which in fact was a bittersweet dream to the Joads.

Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath with an intention of one theme which was endeavor the American Dream, although the book itself was about undertaking poverty and living life with empty pockets. The life events relating to the fact they family was poor and starving because of the Great Depression was modified in order to overlook the power of poverty and focus on the Joads’ lack of necessities they had to overcome to get to the end. The reason for Steinbeck to write this way was to stand out the hardship and to put poverty on aside, so it doesn’t become the center of attention. The modification allowed the novel to be uprising rather than concentrating on poverty.