AP Lit - Prose Prompt - The Inheritance of Loss
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.
Loneliness, isolation, and a sense of loss permeate the excerpt from Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss. The passage follows the daily tasks of Sai, the Judge, and the cook while a mist settles around their home and everything about the language and style feels weighted and oppressive. By using figurative language, selection of detail, and 3rd person point of view, Desai establishes a rustic, rural setting and an ominous sense of isolation.
Both the setting and mood are established through a selection of detail that makes each character seem apart from humanity or society, at least temporarily. The initial description of Sai has her reading an article from an “old National Geographic”. That detail implies enough proximity to civilization that magazines are available, but not so near a town that a recent edition is available. It is possible that she has access to recent copies and is simply choosing to read an old edition, but that seems unlikely in the context of the details in the rest of the passage. The author seems to add details a little at a time, each one like a brick that eventually forms a wall that leaves the reader with a sense of isolation. For instance, the Judge is playing chess alone, against himself. The cook seems to be fighting a lonely battle against wet firewood, scorpions, and “arthritic knees”. Even the math tutor, Gyan, seems set apart by being late and never making an appearance. Adding to the isolation comes the details of Sai’s description of the Judge sleeping and identifying that this is how he would look “if he were dead”. The contrast to the emotional and physical isolation, hinted at with details that suggest intimacy between Sai and Gyan, only serve to heighten them. The detail of the mist taking Sai’s fingers “into its mouth” is immediately linked to her thinking of Gyan. Similarly Sai leaves a “film star kiss” on the mist covered mirror and says “hello”, half to herself and half to someone else (presumably Gyan). The oppressive mist enhances the sense of physical and emotional isolation, and is further explored using figurative language.
Figurative language, in the forms of simile and metaphor, work together to establish a kind of danger in the excerpt. The passage has several figurative descriptions of the natural surroundings and each used something large and frightening for it’s comparison. The mist is compared to a “water creature” with “ocean shadows and depth”. The kitchen is “cavernous” with “charred beams” and thickets of soot that “clumped bat like” on the ceiling. The forest at the edge of the garden “rose thirty feet into the gloom” with trees that were “moss-slung giants” that were “tentacled” by orchids. Even the mentions of the giant squid seem to be a metaphor for the dark, lonely life Sai lives with both physical and emotional isolation. The figurative descriptions work in tandem with the 3rd person perspective to further enhance the mood of the scene.
Literature written in 3rd person often has a certain voyeuristic quality that gives the reader a freedom to step inside the minds of characters. In this passage, however, the point-of-view enhances the mood and setting by placing the reader inside the isolation with the characters. The perspective, spent mostly with Sai, places the reader in the suffocating mist and under the looming forest and mountain. This use of perspective amplifies the mood of passage because, while Sai, the cook, and even the fearful dog Mutt are familiar with the territory the reader is not. The result is a mood that is claustrophobic and disorienting.
The rural, rustic setting, along with the emotional isolation are established through the use of figurative language, details, and point-of-view. Each element depends on the others to be effective; used as a collection, as they are in this passage, they create both a mood and setting that are entirely clear to the reader.