AP Lit - Prose Prompt - The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
The following essay is meant as a study guide only and definitely is not an invitation to cheat. With that said, feel free to borrow from it, paraphrase it, and adopt ideas from it that you like. Sometimes the best way to learn to write well is to read how someone else might have written a response to the same prompt. For many of the AP students I interact with, the primary challenge is learning to form an argument that builds on itself in a logical way. You may find reading my response helps you formulate a strategy for answering the prompt. Learning to integrate evidence in a way that makes sense to the argument is another key skill that can boost an essay score. Read this carefully and see how it compares to your own writing.
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Last reminder; if you're doing a "cut and paste" with this essay then that's plagiarism and that can have huge consequences. Plus, your AP teacher will know. Trust me. They know your writing, your voice, and they know when you turn in an essay that doesn't sound like you.
A sense of social propriety acts as a kind of buffer in society, protecting people from the bad behavior that might result when people act without first considering the consequences. Social norms, usually taught from a young age, help to steer an individual toward behavior that is acceptable to society. The excerpt from Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, using a scene where an argument devolves into violence, to demonstrate social propriety when it is under strain. The author uses dialogue, narrative pace, and tone working in concert with each other to highlight each character's struggle against anger and to maintain their own honor.
The author's use of tone, as supported by both dialogue and narrative pace, help demonstrate the sense that social norms are acting as a restraint on each character's rising anger. The tone itself seems to cycle between reveling in the comedy and violence of the exchange, and coming back to something more deliberate and thoughtful. The tone of the first paragraph, primarily driven by the author’s use of dialogue, juxtaposes the comedy of the insults with the anger that causes them. There is also a sense of two “gentlemen” having an argument that probably has more to do with establishing a social pecking order than it does with Emilia’s honor. In fact, another reader’s interpretation of this passage might well focus on the particular irony of these two characters arguing about Emilia’s honor while conspicuously failing to include Emilia in the argument. While that analysis would be interesting, it would likely fail to fully address the way propriety acts as a restraint. The tone of the second paragraph, this time relying heavily on pacing, contrasts the farcical nature of the argument, the very real threat of violence, and the sense that each character may already regret the situation. The tone reflects an increased intensity with the insults coming faster, the argument gaining momentum in a way that makes a duel seem inevitable.
The pace of the narrative helps establish the tone throughout the excerpt, relying heavily on dialogue in the first paragraph, and illustrates each character’s struggle to maintain social norms. The first paragraph focuses heavily on dialog, but the author’s use of the word “sir” particularly affects the pace. As the conflict between the characters begins, and with each character referring to the other as “sir”, Smollett structures the dialog such that each “sir” is separated from the remaining dialogue with an attributive statement such as “answered the other” or “said Peregrine”. In addition to giving the dialog a comedic punch, the separation of “sir” serves as a momentary pause button, slowing down the narrative pace. As the conflict heats up, along with the possibility of violence, the narrative pace speeds up as well. For instance, lines 26-32, were they written as dialog of the same style as the first paragraph, might have occupied an entire page of text. Instead, the author speeds the pace by summarizing the dialog and the action. As a result, the pace helps the reader understand that the two characters aren’t thinking things through and, thus, are losing their sense of propriety. Lines 29-33 imply all the dialogue required for the two character’s to issue and accept a formal challenge, stop at an inn, move to a suitable field, and prepare themselves to do violence on one another. The pace of the narrative remains quick throughout the second paragraph and mirrors, for the reader, the speed at which the argument had become potentially lethal. The speed of the narrative mirrors the speed of the argument and reinforces that, even when turning to violence, their sense of honor acts as a guide that will prevent them from killing each other.
The dialog of the excerpt helps establish the tone, but it also demonstrates the particular facets of each character's struggle to maintain propriety. While the second paragraph relies on summarized dialog to speed up the narrative pace, the dialog of the first paragraph helps explicitly demonstrate each character’s struggle. Again, Smollett uses the word “sir” to show the internal conflict. Both Gauntlet and Pickle begin with an effort to act with honor and show the other respect. Before the conflict has begun, in line 1, Gauntlet addresses his opponent as “Mr. Pickle”, and Pickle’s response begins with “Sir, I should be glad…”. At this point in the dialog Pickle is sufficiently offended to elevate the interaction to a kind of formality, and potentially anger, that the use of “sir” might indicate. By line 5, the author has inserted “answered the other” between Gauntlet referring to Pickle as “sir” and the rest of his statement. In terms of propriety, using “sir” would indicate formality and a kind of respect. However, the pause between the “sir” and the rest of the statement hints at a kind of sarcasm that turns the honorific into an insult. By line 16 the characters are sufficiently angry that they’ve even abandoned the use of the word “sir” entirely, even as an insult. The use of dialog helps the reader understand each character’s struggle to maintain social norms.
The passage was written at a time when, at least for higher social classes, there were strict rules that guided a person's behavior in public or any social setting. The author helps to illustrate the way people might be bridled by those rules even in the heat of anger through the use of dialogue, narrative pace, and tone.