📚AP English Literature
1. In Arna Bontemps's poem "Hill Country," published in 1927, the speaker addresses a young woman who has ignored her native landscape. Read the poem carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Bontemps uses literary elements and techniques to convey the complex relationship between the addressee and her native landscape.
Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible interpretation.
Select and use evidence to support your line of reasoning.
Explain how the evidence supports your line of reasoning.
Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your argument.
Hill Country
The hills are wroth1; the stones have scored you bitterly
Because you looked upon the naked sun
Oblivious of them, because you did not see
The trees you touched or mountains that you walked upon.
But there will come a day of darkness in the land,
A day wherein remembered sun alone comes through
To mark the hills; then perhaps you’ll understand
Just how it was you drew from them and they from you.
For there will be a bent old woman in that day
Who, feeling something of this country in her bones,
Will leave her house tapping with a stick, who will (they say)
Come back to seek the girl she was in these familiar stones.
Source: Arna Bontemps, Caroling Dusk, 1927
1 wroth: angry or wrathful
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