THEMATIC QUESTIONS:
What is truth?
What is beauty?
What is real?
What is justice?
What is honor?
What is love?
What does it mean to live a good life?
What does it mean to be a hero?
What does it mean to have courage?
Make a card listing your top ten literary themes and carry it with you. Look at it
often. Make these themes serve as the lens through which you view the world. You
will start to hear these themes in songs, see them in movies, and even recognize them
on TV shows. More importantly, you will be better able to recognize them in the
literature you read. The result of “practicing” themes is that when you read those
complex passages and poems on the AP Lit exam, you will be able to recognize the
“so what” quickly.