Every year I make my AP students write an essay in the first week.

I started doing this because when I moved to Arizona and started teaching AP, I went to a summer seminar in how to teach AP, and the instructor — a very smart man who had been teaching AP for 30 years, and whom I respected quite a lot — told us that we should start hard, in a way: give them a practice test, one of the essay questions from an actual past AP exam, right at the beginning and grade it as you would an AP test — no mercy. It shows the students what the test is like, both through the use of an old question and the AP’s generally high standards, and through the use of fairly intense pressure on them to perform; this will motivate them, he said, to work hard in order to be more prepared for the actual test. So I do that: and it works quite well, most of the time. A number of my AP students are the most successful, and the most lauded, students at the school, and I like giving them a test that they don’t automatically ace, as they usually do in their other classes; it puts them off balance, which is usually where they need to be to learn and grow. Also, while I have a well-earned reputation as a generally easy-going sort of cat, I want them to know that the AP is not easy, and so in academic terms, I am not an “easy” teacher.

So, an AP essay, in the first week.

One of the things I do to try to mitigate that difficult assignment is to take the test with them. I know it doesn’t make it any easier if I’m writing an essay while they are writing an essay, but I think it does two things: one, it shows that I am teaching something that I really know how to do, in a practical, everyday sense, and maybe even something I like doing (It is. I like writing essays. I think they just generally don’t believe that I do.); and two, it shows them that I’m not giving them assignments just to torture them, I think they are valuable — valuable enough to do them myself.

Now, most years, this is not very hard for me: I’ve written a lot of essays, I’ve read a lot of literature, I analyze everything all the time. But this year, man. I don’t quite know what it was, but I struggled with both essays, the synthesis essay I gave my AP Lang students, and the open response question I gave my AP Lit class. Okay, I know some of what it was: in the case of the Lang essay, I had trouble with the topic as it was presented in the packet of information (The synthesis prompt asks the students to read six sources which represent two sides of a debate, and then to “join the conversation.” They need to present their own opinion on the issue, using at least three of the sources as references to place their opinion in relation to the rest of the debate.), because one side was clearly right, but also really badly argued, which left me the unfortunate options of choosing the wrong side, or using bad arguments to support the right side; and then in the case of the Lit essay, I asked my students to use the book they chose to read over the summer to answer the question if they could, and so I used the book I read as potential new material for the class — and I didn’t (and don’t) have a good enough grasp of that work to use it well for the essay. Basically I picked a bad topic for Lang, and a bad answer for Lit.

So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to use this blog to write the essays I should have written for these two prompts. Partly as a way to vindicate myself as an essayist (Though to be clear, I showed my Lit class today the essay I struggled with, so they could see that I struggle too; and I’ll do the same with my Lang class tomorrow, because I don’t think everything I write has to be perfect), because I should have written better essays; but mainly just because I think these are two genuinely good topics for essays, and I want to do the subject matter justice.

This week I’m going to do the Lit essay. I will also be including the bad one I wrote, which isn’t terrible; but there’s a better answer I could have given, which I’m going to write now.

(Also I don’t think I’ll get this done tonight, Monday, so this week’s will almost certainly be posted tomorrow and maybe even Wednesday. Sorry. School, man. It takes up your time.)

You know what? I’m going to make it a thing. I’m going to type (because my handwriting is atrocious, especially when I’m trying to stick to a time limit with my students) the bad essay I wrote in class and post it tonight, and tomorrow I will come back and finish the good essay. And do the same thing next week, with the other one.

So here we go: the response I wrote in class to the AP Literature Free Response prompt. (As you’ll see, this essay gives a thematic statement, and asks the students to apply it to any full-length work they have read, using the theme given to analyze the work. The perfect work to answer this question with happens to be the book I have read more than any other, and know better than any other; but that’s not the one I wrote about.)

Also, here is the test in my handwriting, so you will understand why I am typing this.

Okay? So here we go.

First, the question:

AP English Literature and Composition 2023 Free Response Question #3:

Many works of literature feature a rebel character who changes or disrupts the existing state of societal, familial, or political affairs in the text. They may break social norms, challenge long-held values, subvert expectations, or participate in other forms of resistance. The character’s motivation for this rebellious behavior is often complex.

Either from your reading or from the list below [Side note: Ummmm, if you haven’t read the book you select to write about, you’re pretty well boned on this essay. So it really should just be the rest of this direction:], choose a work of fiction in which a character changes or disrupts the existing state of societal, familial, or political affairs. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how the complex motivation of the rebel contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole.

So the best work I know (though there are several good ones on the provided list of suggestions, including Antigone, Invisible Man, Kindred, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Paradise Lost) to answer this question is Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. The work I used to answer it was Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, which musical film buffs will know as the original version of My Fair Lady.

Here is the essay, complete with the part where I just started cursing because I wasn’t sure exactly how to write this, and then the title I came up with (because of the cursing, so let me tell you, that’s some effective brainstorming) and the rest of the essay.

You know what? Fuck this. Fuck this prompt, fuck this test — and fuck you.

“FUCK YOU, I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME.”

— Zack de la Rocha

Language is one of the primary determining factors for a number of society’s categories. How we talk shows, or even determines, who we are and how we get treated. I talk about this every year, when I teach diction: how formal language and the use of specialized jargon helps to present me as a teacher, as a person worthy of (but frequently denied) respect. Casual diction, featuring the use of contractions, and slang, and even profanity or “inappropriate” language shows me as — something else.

But does it make me a rebel?

Zack de la Rocha, lead singer and lyricist of the band Rage Against the Machine, is in many ways a rebel. When the band performed their timeless classic “Killing in the Name Of” on the BBC, de la Rocha was asked to leave out a key word in the final refrain, which I used to title this piece. Clearly, asking him to change that particular statement was rather foolish: de la Rocha not only clearly enunciated the entire refrain, he flipped off the camera while he responded to the BBC’s attempted censorship. Violating rules by itself is not rebellious: but when you violate rules as a means of resisting the oppressive power structures that dominate our society, it is certainly rebellious.

Zack de la Rocha’s motivations for this rebellious act are really quite simple (though his motivations in forming the band, writing and singing the songs he does, are not), but more often, rebellious motives are complex. In the play “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw, all of the main characters (Except for poor, pitiful Freddy) are rebellious in one way or another. Professor Higgins and the Colonel [Note: I could not remember the Colonel’s name, so I just used his title throughout. It’s Pickering. Colonel Pickering.] both defy the social order of Great Britain, as does Eliza Doolittle; Eliza also defies the misogyny and elitism which her two “benefactors” partake in unthinkingly, especially Higgins. Mrs. Higgins defies expectation in taking Eliza’s side over her son’s — thus also defying her class role in becoming a partisan for the flower girl — and Mr. Doolittle breaks stereotypes, social order, and all expectations by becoming an accepted member of the upper class, and by not being a dick despite the twin facts of his alcoholism and his neglect of his daughter. However, while they are all rebellious, not all of their motivations are complex, though some are.

Higgins’s motivations may be the simplest among the upper class characters: he wants to prove that he is smarter and better than everyone else. We can see this in his every scene, from his initial appearance when he shows off, and insults everyone at the market, to his final argument with Eliza when he is somehow simultaneously offended and offensive in telling Eliza he loves her but will never love her and love is stupid anyway. All he wants is to be the best, to be the possessor of the most respected and respectable opinion. Fuck him.

The Colonel’s motives are more confusing. He doesn’t want to be the best, nor does he want to prove that Henry is the best; he doesn’t really want to win his bet, he seemed genuinely curious as to whether or not it could be accomplished. Then as time goes on, and he fosters a paternal love for Eliza, his goal seems to be helping her — though in the third act he, like Higgins completely disregards Eliza and her accomplishments by focusing exclusively on the result of the bet with Higgins. Is that because he is comfortable with the elitism that motivates the bet? Is it because he is a kind man who wants to meet Higgins on his own ground? If we are seeing this play as a feminist or Marxist critique of the patriarchy or the class structure, then clearly the Colonel, for all his attempts at being genuine and kind, is simple one of those who work forces.

The same who burn crosses.

[Note: These last two sentences are lines from the Rage Against the Machine song, which is about how police and other soldiers of the power structure are racist and bigoted and attack marginalized people under the guise of enforcing state power. I’m just saying that the Colonel is part of the problem, in ignoring Eliza as her own person with abilities and accomplishments, treating her only as the product of Higgins’s abilities and accomplishments. And if you got that, I apologize for teachersplaining — but it occurs to me as I type this that the audience who would be that familiar with both Rage Against the Machine and Pygmalion is vanishingly small. It didn’t even include me until a week ago.]

Mrs. Higgins seems to be in the same category as the Colonel: generally a solid pillar of the oppressive social order, encouraging her son to act properly and to marry, frowning on but never actually opposing the exploitation of Eliza; but then towards the end, when the Colonel slips, it is Mrs. Higgins who steps up to help Eliza. But while this makes her, like the Colonel, likable and sympathetic, it’s clear that the underlying allegiance to the power structure remains as Mrs. Higgins wants to protect Eliza: rather than empowering her to take control of her own life. This makes both Mrs. Higgins and the Colonel complicit, rather than rebellious, because they see Eliza as an especial exception, rather than just one instance of a whole oppressed class, and by making an exception of her, they prove the rule.

Eliza’s case is more interesting. She participates in the experiment as part of a rebellion against the social order, not merely to prove her superiority, but because she finds fault in the order — why should she be any less than the toffs? She also breaks the misogynistic stereotypes by going to Higgins’s house, intending to hire him, and then continuing to live there in violation of the sexually oppressive morals of Edwardian society, again as an act of rebellion. But it’s no surprise that her acts are more clearly — and cleanly — rebellious, as she is the victim of the power structures she pushes back against. Her motivation is, naturally, selfish, therefore not rebellious — but she also displays a strong sense of justice, all the way from the beginning when she bewails her treatment at the market by all the wealthy people who treat her as an object. She does at that time use the oppressive patriarchal norms as a shield — you can’t treat me this way, I’m just a poor girl (Nobody loves me); but by the end, she objects to her exploitation by Higgins and the Colonel, as well.

And this idea leads to the most rebellious figure within the play, with the most complex motivations: Shaw himself. The playwright, in adapting the Greek myth to an Edwardian England setting, is attacking the mythology of the society he is depicting: because the man who crafts the perfect woman is not only the villain — he is indifferent to his creation, where Pygmalion fell in love with his Galatea. Shaw may be saying there is no love in England that the patriarchal egotism and contempt for the other leaves no room for love of any but the self. He also breaks down the norms of the theater for which he is writing, because where a comedy is traditionally to end in a marriage, and a tragedy in the hero’s fall, this play ends in the heroine’s rise — but without a marriage. What’s more, we are treated to a discussion of why the tale should not end in a marriage, why it is better without a marriage (because Higgins insists he is more honest and honorable for treating everyone badly) — and that’s how it ends, so either Higgins is right, or he has imposed his views on the audience as he imposed them on Eliza.

But then in the additional narration added to the play, Shaw does give us a marriage, though seemingly one that is only economic in character and theme. Thus breaking his own thematic conclusion, as well as his society’s.

Perhaps the most critical rebellion here is Shaw fighting against himself. In using language to criticize language by breaking it down to meaningless idiosyncrasies and stereotypes even as he breaks Eliza’s speech into meaningless phonetics; in using drama to criticize drama, by creating a comedy that rebels against comedy and a myth that rebels against mythology, Shaw undercuts his own authority, even his own argument. He rebels against himself, and like Higgins, rejects any connection to his own creation — and thus, perhaps, personifies God, the Devil, and Cain, who is not his brother’s keeper. nWhen Shaw looks up, flips the middle finger, and says “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me,” he is not speaking to the BBC, he is speaking to himself. And the only result is paradox.

Good stuff, right?

Well no.

Though actually, as I read through all of this, I realize that there are some genuinely interesting ideas here: I was just limited by, first, the time frame, and secondly, by the fact I couldn’t use the text to look up specific details, or the internet to look up general concepts and ideas. Give me a couple more hours and my usual resources, and I could have made this into something actually interesting. 

I would want to change the thesis, first of all because the one I have here is terribly awkward. “In the play “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw, all of the main characters (Except for poor, pitiful Freddy) are rebellious in one way or another. Professor Higgins and the Colonel both defy the social order of Great Britain, as does Eliza Doolittle; Eliza also defies the misogyny and elitism which her two “benefactors” partake in unthinkingly, especially Higgins. Mrs. Higgins defies expectation in taking Eliza’s side over her son’s — thus also defying her class role in becoming a partisan for the flower girl — and Mr. Doolittle breaks stereotypes, social order, and all expectations by becoming an accepted member of the upper class, and by not being a dick despite the twin facts of his alcoholism and his neglect of his daughter. However, while they are all rebellious, not all of their motivations are complex, though some are.” I hate that last sentence, which was the result of me trying to include the prompt’s demand for complex motivations, clashing with the fact that not all of the characters have complex motivations: Higgins, the phonetics professor who helps Eliza Doolittle learn to speak like an upper class Englishwoman, really is just an arrogant twerp who wants to be right all the time; and I never should have brought up Eliza’s father, who is not a useful character, just a moment of comic relief. And if I was going to bring him up, I shouldn’t have called him a dick (or “not a dick.” Not better.) 

But also, this thesis says that all of the characters are rebellious: and that’s not true. Higgins does try to break the social order of England by helping Eliza, from the lower class, to become superficially part of the upper class; but he’s bending the rules of that social class, not trying to break them, not least because he doesn’t actually want Eliza to join the upper class: he just wants to trick everyone into thinking she is part of the upper class once he teaches her to speak in a certain way. That’s not rebelling against the social class, that is using the exception to prove the rule, showing that without Higgins’s own genius, the social classes would continue to correctly segregate the lower from the upper classes based on their patterns of speech. Colonel Pickering is the same, and Mrs Higgins does sort of defy family by protecting Eliza — which I would keep, because it is interesting — but again, it’s not like she changes the situation in the long run, or questions the values that put Higgins and Eliza at odds. She just feels sorry for the poor girl and thinks her son is a cad, which he is. 

I also don’t like how I moved from Eliza to Shaw by saying that this idea brings us to the biggest rebel of them all: and that’s not true, because there’s no particular reason why Eliza would link us to Shaw. It’s just that I was running out of time and I was tired of analyzing how these characters are or are not rebels; I wanted to get to Shaw and wrap the whole thing up. That idea, that the real rebel is Shaw himself, was the best way I could think of to resolve the difficulty I had (and still have) in figuring out the ending of the play, which seems to ruin every message the play itself could have: Eliza does not join the upper class; Higgins does not soften his misanthropy; British society does not break down its bigotry. The play just sort of ends with this “So that was a thing that happened, 23-skiddoo, let’s go have a drink!” I find it very frustrating. But I pretty much hate my ending more, because I was just starting to open up new ideas about what Shaw’s choices mean, when I just had to stop, because time was running out. So I did the thing I tell students never to do: I brought up new information in the conclusion, and didn’t explore it enough, even though there is a lot to explore there.

But that’s also the good part of this: because the end of this play is a genuinely confusing choice on the part of the playwright, and those choices are absolutely the best things to analyze and figure out. I don’t know if Shaw was really echoing (or prefiguring, since he wrote his almost a century before de la Rocha) Rage Against the Machine, but it’s an interesting thought. If language breaks down, and the norms of literature break down, then the standards of society that oppress Eliza both as a poor speaker of low-class British English, and as a woman, can also break down, because they are just as arbitrary as the other standards. That’s an interesting possibility, one I would like to explore. Did Shaw make Higgins into such a prick because he was trying to criticize all the arrogant middle aged white British men who were surely watching the play? Yeah, maybe; that would be interesting to think about and talk about. I wish I had. Maybe, when my class reads the play, we’ll talk about all of this; and as my students often do, maybe this class will help me figure this out. If they do, I may rewrite this and make it good.

But for now, I’m just going to write on this same prompt using the work I definitely should have used: Fahrenheit 451. I will post that essay tomorrow.

For now, enjoy this song, which I love, but which I forgot entirely was from My Fair Lady. I associate it with a pair of raccoons singing about a La-Z-Boy. And as always in movies like this, please enjoy the absurdity that is a film trying to make Audrey freaking Hepburn seem unattractive if she has dirt on her face. Sure, guys. Sure. Dirty-face-Audrey is super ugly. You bet.

(Also, here is the version with the raccoons, which I still love.)