2004 Student OPEN Prompt Responses (Question #3)

2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes’ observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how the author’s treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole.

STUDENT #1 Essay-Score: 8

Student #1 explains the main character’s journey to figure out if he lived in the best possible world in Voltaire’s Candide to answer this prompt. In introductory paragraph, Student #1 states the central question in the novel, “‘Is this the best of all possible worlds?’” The following paragraph explains the story briefly by describing how the main character, Candide, was banished from his castle and set out to travel the world. This summary is effective because it explains how Candide finds the “model society” he was looking for in El Dorado. This is a place where “greed and lust do not exist”, but the Student expresses how Candide was still unsatisfied due to “the greed he had brought with him from the outside” and he left the mythical utopia. His superficiality hinders him again from achieving happiness when he finds his long time love, Lady Cunégonde and is repulsed by her aged appearance. The student concludes this paragraph stating that in the end, none of the characters are successful in their search for happiness. In the third and final paragraph, the student explains how the novel’s answer is “neither answering nor dismissing.” Candide responds to the question with “we must tend our garden.” Student #1 explains his answering as meaning “that this is the best of all possible worlds, but those who inhabit this world must work to maintain it.” This student directly answered the prompt and offered clear analysis of the novel. The commentator critiqued the student’s use of colloquial language (i.e. “kicked out of his castle”) as a reason worthy of point deductions. However, I think this essay was one of the most fluid and clear I have read.

STUDENT #2 Essay-Score: 6

Student #2 states that in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the question “What does it mean to be free?” is posed through “the limits that slavery and civilization place upon the novel’s characters.” The first body paragraph simply states that both Huck and Jim suffer from different types of slavery and run away together. In the second and third body paragraphs, Student #2 explains how the two boys are deprived of freedom because society forbids their interracial-friendship. Even after the two boys’ masters are killed, and they are technically free “Jim is still restricted by society’s discriminations against blacks and Huck is restricted by the conventions of modern society.” The concluding paragraph is pretty much ineffective. The Student has yet to directly explain the extent of which the novel answers the question, “What does it mean to be free?” Instead, they marvel at what a pressing question this is in “a country where we place so much emphasis on freedom.” Although failing to answer the entire question, what saved this student’s score was their ability to locate the central question prompted by the novel and hint toward its complexity. 

STUDENT #3 Essay-Score: 3

 According to the commentator, Student #3 used an “excellent example” to discuss Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. However, this does not come across through their essay. First of all it takes too long for the student to state the central question the novel poses “does anything ever stay the same?” Student #3 explains that in the main character, Okonkwo’s village, “another society began to have influence on theirs.” Okonkwo “fought” for his village and its people to resist the change, but it is unclear how this was done and what changes occurred. Unfortunately, the student does not dig any deeper in the novel to uncover greater analysis of the central question beside Okonkwo’s desire to save his village. This, along with many grammatical errors and the use of “+” instead of “and” contributed to this student’s low score.