An AP Literature FRQ #3 practice.
Many writers use a country house, a plantation, a village, or a discrete local community to represent a microcosm of a larger society.
Choose a novel or play in which a specific setting functions as such a microcosm. Then write a well-crafted essay in which you analyze how the social, political, or economic dynamics within this setting reflect larger cultural conflicts and contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole.
In Octavia Butler’s Kindred, the enslaved people on the Weylin plantation serve as a microcosm of the broader enslaved community. Some characters embody youthful rebellion while others personify reluctant submission, providing representative examples of how slavery uses violent and dehumanizing mechanisms to quash all defiance.
Characters like Nigel form as a microcosm of those younger enslaved people whose rebellious spirits have not yet succumbed to the cruelty of slavery. Although expressly forbidden, Nigel still asks Edana “Dana” Franklin to teach him how to read. He believes that literacy begets knowledge which in turn begets dignity, demonstrating his desire to fight against the dehumanizing effects of slavery. His actions reflect the widespread efforts of enslaved people across the country to read and write, as many of them believed literacy would provide the best chance at rebelling against the system.
However, characters like Sarah serve as tragic examples of the irreparable psychological damage slavery inflicts upon enslaved people to counteract rebellion and keep them in their place. Sarah bears four children, but the Weylins sell away three and only keep the last one, Carrie, because she is deaf, mute, and thus more dependent on her mother than any other child on the plantation. Thus, the Weylins weaponize Sarah’s love and worry for Carrie to dissuade her from any form of retribution, as any punishment she incurs could catch Carrie in the crossfire. They trap her in an impossible dilemma: she can either get revenge for her three sold children but lose Carrie, or keep Carrie but leave her other three children unavenged. Her situation reflects the general pattern of slaveowners manipulating enslaved parents into obedience by selling some but not all of their children.
Alice captures both these aspects of slavery: she also begins as a rebellious youth who goes as far as running away with another slave, but after Isaac’s brutal death, Rufus’ rapes, and his refusal to free their children, Alice decides she has suffered enough and hangs herself, seeing no better way out but death.