Browsing through Barnes & Noble, you see each aisle filled to the brim with books according to their sectioned genre. From romance to young adult to mystery to nonfiction, there are a variety of options to choose from.

Then you stumble upon the classics. Jane Austen. William Shakespeare. Charles Dickens. Many classic literature authors, with many of their works, are notable even centuries later. These classics offer a different perspective of the world as we know it, and what better way to delve into the themes of these books than to learn about them in the Advanced Placement (AP) course, AP Literature and Composition.

Ayala’s AP Literature teacher, Ms. Vivian Yeh, taught this course to six periods throughout the past year and chose three main works for the year, as well as a student choice between two dystopian novels. First semester, students read the plays “Fences” by August Wilson and “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. In the second semester, students started the Romanticism unit with the novel “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, and after spring break, students had a choice to read between two dystopian novels, “1984” by George Orwell or “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley.

Of these works, “Frankenstein” has been a staple for all four years that Yeh has been teaching the course, since the themes in the novel are so versatile to what the AP exam would test students on.

“The language [of ‘Frankenstein’] was a little bit of a struggle, just like Shakespeare is, but once you get used to it, right in the end you kind of see the patterns of what Shelley is doing,” Yeh said. “It’s just the way that it opens up avenues for philosophical discussion.”

With many of these works spanning different centuries, students may find it difficult to understand the language of the time. With “Fences” being set in the middle of a time where it highlights African American struggles, “Hamlet” being written in old English, “Frankenstein” with formal British English, and the dystopian novels with lots of new age technological terms, the challenge was difficult but necessary for growth.

“‘Hamlet’ is one of the most renowned plays by Shakespeare and I think that after reading it, students could understand both modern English literature and Shakespearean (old English) literature,” Joy Zhu (12) said.

Each work is selected carefully and Yeh wants every book to impact each student in different ways.

“I want it to also mirror our demographic population, and I think that’s part of the reason why so many students like [the short story] ‘The Paper Menagerie’ because it really resonates with them, and we have a high Asian American student population,” Yeh said.

At the end of the day, all of these major classics are to help students prepare for one of the three Free Response Questions (FRQs), the theme essay. In this FRQ, students receive a prompt where they get to choose a novel or play of their choice. 

“The reading that we did throughout the year covered a variety of major themes that could possibly be tested on,” Alyssa Cambreros (12) said. “Themes of the importance of human connection, isolation, nature vs. nurture, corruption, mortality, and many more can be drawn back to through the major works that were covered throughout the year and can be utilized during the exam.”

AP Literature is a course that may be challenging, but it pays off in the end. The works that are chosen all work collectively to help students prepare for the AP exam by all having themes that are complex and interweave together. It’s the matter if the student wants to put in the work.

“If you’re gonna do it, embrace the work, and if you don’t, you don’t have to take it,” Yeh said. “Just understand that progress is not linear and rather on focusing on the number of the grade, focus on the accumulation of skills you gather from it.”