The Literary Argument, Q3 Open Question

Question 1

A Q3 prompt asks about a character whose private conscience brings them into conflict with public law. Which work supplies the clearest material?

Accepted Answer

Antigone, in which Antigone buries her brother despite Creon's decree

Answer

Pride and Prejudice, in which Elizabeth revises her judgment of Darcy

Answer

The Great Gatsby, in which Nick observes Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy

Answer

Mrs. Dalloway, in which Clarissa prepares for a party while reflecting on time

Question 2

Prompt: a setting that confines a character helps shape meaning. A student chooses Jane Eyre. Which claim treats the novel as a whole?

Accepted Answer

Jane's movement through Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield, Moor House, and Ferndean tests whether any home can preserve her self-command.

Answer

The red-room scene frightens Jane so badly that she faints as a child.

Answer

Bertha Mason is confined in the attic during the Thornfield section.

Answer

Lowood's harsh rules are enforced by Mr. Brocklehurst early in Jane's schooling.

Question 3

Prompt: choose a work in which the past intrudes on the present. Which thesis answers the task rather than merely describing Beloved?

Accepted Answer

In Beloved, the past returns as an embodied demand, so Sethe must confront what slavery made her do before she can imagine freedom.

Answer

Beloved is a novel about slavery and its aftermath told in a non-linear order.

Answer

Morrison presents painful memories of Sweet Home through several characters at 124.

Answer

Sethe often remembers Sweet Home, and those memories affect the novel's mood.

Question 4

Claim: Fences shows Troy Maxson handing his son the limits he resents. Which evidence list is drawn from across the play?

Accepted Answer

Troy's blocked baseball career, his refusal of Cory's football recruiter, and the fence Rose asks him to build

Answer

Troy's complaint to Bono about the sanitation job, his tale of wrestling Death, and his Friday payday banter

Answer

Troy and Cory's porch fight, the struggle over the baseball bat, and Cory leaving home

Answer

Troy's confession about Alberta, Rose's speech about her eighteen years, and Troy grabbing Rose's arm

Question 5

Prompt: a minor character alters the outcome. Why is The Great Gatsby weak if a student remembers only Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick?

Accepted Answer

The prompt requires an arguable figure outside the center whose choices still change the ending.

Answer

Nick himself is the minor character the prompt wants, since his narration alone changes how Gatsby's story is understood.

Answer

Meyer Wolfsheim's business dealings with Gatsby are the specific choice that causes Gatsby's death at the novel's end.

Answer

Gatsby's death happens before the novel's final chapter, so it is not an outcome.

Question 6

A prompt asks about ambition that destroys the person who pursues it. Which work most directly fits?

Accepted Answer

Macbeth, where Macbeth's desire for the crown drives murder, tyranny, and his fall

Answer

Their Eyes Were Watching God, where Janie searches for voice and self-possession

Answer

Pride and Prejudice, where Elizabeth's judgment changes through courtship

Answer

The Odyssey, where Odysseus struggles to return home after war

Question 7

Prompt: how does a work use a false appearance to develop meaning? For Othello, which claim ranges across the play?

Accepted Answer

Iago's staged honesty turns appearance into evidence until Othello destroys the trust he thinks he is defending.

Answer

The handkerchief is planted so that Othello believes Desdemona has betrayed him.

Answer

Iago warns Othello to beware of jealousy while secretly producing it.

Answer

Othello strikes Desdemona in public after accepting Iago's insinuations.

Question 8

Prompt: choose a work in which a created being exposes its creator's failure. Which thesis answers the prompt for Frankenstein?

Accepted Answer

In Frankenstein, the creature's misery exposes Victor's moral failure: he can animate life but refuses responsibility for it.

Answer

Frankenstein is a frame narrative about a scientist who makes a creature.

Answer

The creature learns language by watching the De Lacey family.

Answer

Victor studies natural philosophy and later assembles a living body.

Question 9

Claim: In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie's marriages trace her developing voice. Which evidence spans the novel?

Accepted Answer

Logan Killicks's farm, Jody Starks's store porch, and Tea Cake's life with Janie on the muck

Answer

Janie's pear tree vision, Nanny's slap, and Nanny's arrangement of the marriage to Logan

Answer

The mule's mock funeral, Janie's insult about Jody's body, and Jody's death

Answer

The hurricane, the rabid dog's bite on Tea Cake, and Janie's shooting of Tea Cake

Question 10

Prompt: a character is changed by exile or displacement. Why is Hamlet weak if the student only recalls the graveyard scene?

Accepted Answer

A single late scene cannot support an argument about how displacement shapes the work as a whole.

Answer

The play has no scenes outside Denmark, so it cannot include displacement.

Answer

Hamlet's brief voyage to England already supplies enough evidence, since he is displaced from Denmark during that trip.

Answer

Hamlet's feigned madness alone demonstrates his displacement from his former identity at court.

Question 11

A Q3 prompt asks about a community's judgment of an individual. Which work gives the most sustained material?

Accepted Answer

The Scarlet Letter, where Puritan Boston publicly marks and monitors Hester Prynne

Answer

Heart of Darkness, where Marlow recounts a journey into the Congo

Answer

Waiting for Godot, where two men wait beside a road

Answer

The Old Man and the Sea, where Santiago battles a great marlin alone at sea

Question 12

Prompt: a work uses inheritance to shape conflict. A student chooses King Lear. Which claim addresses the whole tragedy?

Accepted Answer

Lear's division of the kingdom turns love into a public contest, and the broken inheritance spreads disorder through family and state.

Answer

Cordelia refuses to flatter Lear in the opening scene.

Answer

Gloucester is deceived by Edmund's forged letter against Edgar.

Answer

Lear rages on the heath after Goneril and Regan reject him.

Question 13

Prompt: choose a work in which storytelling shapes identity. Which thesis fits Invisible Man?

Accepted Answer

Invisible Man makes narration an act of self-definition, as the speaker revisits imposed roles to claim the meaning of his invisibility.

Answer

Invisible Man is told in the first person by an unnamed narrator.

Answer

The narrator joins the Brotherhood after experiences in college and New York.

Answer

Ellison's novel includes episodes in the South, Harlem, and an underground room.

Question 14

Claim: Things Fall Apart presents cultural collapse as both external pressure and internal fracture. Which evidence is drawn from across the novel?

Accepted Answer

Okonkwo's status in Umuofia, the missionaries' arrival, and his final break with a changed clan

Answer

Okonkwo's wrestling fame, his yam harvests, and Ikemefuna's arrival in his household

Answer

Okonkwo's accidental killing of Ezeudu's son, his flight to Mbanta, and Obierika's visits during his exile

Answer

The burning of the church, the arrest of the clan leaders, and Okonkwo's killing of the court messenger

Question 15

Prompt: a physical object becomes the focus of conflicting values. Why is A Doll's House weak if the student remembers only the slammed door?

Accepted Answer

The door is a powerful final image, but the prompt needs sustained evidence about an object and competing values.

Answer

The Christmas tree that Nora decorates in Act One already tracks the play's competing values on its own.

Answer

The macaroons Nora hides from Torvald are enough evidence of the objects the prompt requires.

Answer

Nora's exit resolves all conflict before the ending.

Question 16

A prompt asks about a character whose divided identity reveals a larger social conflict. Which work supplies strong material?

Accepted Answer

The Joy Luck Club, through mothers and daughters negotiating Chinese and American identities

Answer

The Importance of Being Earnest, through comic mistaken identities and courtship

Answer

No Exit, through three characters confined together in one room

Answer

The Road, through a father and son traveling through a devastated landscape

Question 17

Prompt: how does a work make silence meaningful? For The Crucible, which claim reaches beyond one scene?

Accepted Answer

Public confession and refusal to confess both become tests of integrity in a town where speech can save or destroy a life.

Answer

John Proctor tears his signed confession near the end of the play.

Answer

Mary Warren cannot maintain her testimony against the girls.

Answer

Elizabeth lies in court to protect Proctor from shame.

Question 18

Prompt: choose a work in which a journey changes what home means. Which thesis answers the question for The Odyssey?

Accepted Answer

The Odyssey makes home a moral and social order Odysseus must restore, not merely a place he reaches after travel.

Answer

The Odyssey is an epic about Odysseus traveling back to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

Answer

Odysseus encounters the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens, and other dangers.

Answer

Penelope waits in Ithaca while suitors occupy Odysseus's household.

Question 19

Claim: In Wuthering Heights, narration makes passion seem both intimate and unreliable. Which evidence spans the novel's structure?

Accepted Answer

Lockwood's frame, Nelly's long embedded narration, and the repeated revising of Catherine and Heathcliff's story

Answer

Lockwood's first visit, his snowbound night at the Heights, and his dream of Catherine at the window

Answer

Catherine's "I am Heathcliff" speech, Heathcliff overhearing part of it, and his disappearance that night

Answer

Heathcliff's return, his marriage to Isabella, and Catherine's death

Question 20

Prompt: a work uses a symbolic setting to examine moral corruption. Why is Pride and Prejudice a weak fit?

Accepted Answer

Its conflicts turn more on manners, judgment, and marriage than on a setting that symbolizes corruption.

Answer

It has no social settings that affect characters' choices.

Answer

It cannot be used because it is a novel of courtship.

Answer

Its Pemberley chapters make great wealth the novel's main symbol of corruption.

Question 21

A prompt asks about a character who resists a role assigned by family or society. Which work offers the clearest Q3 material?

Accepted Answer

The Awakening, in which Edna Pontellier resists the roles of wife and mother prescribed by Creole society

Answer

Heart of Darkness, in which Marlow listens to accounts of Kurtz in the Congo

Answer

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, in which two minor figures await their scripted fate

Answer

Lord of the Flies, in which schoolboys form rival groups on an island

Question 22

Prompt: a work's ending redefines what came before. A student chooses Atonement. Which claim addresses the whole work?

Accepted Answer

The final revelation makes the novel's earlier narrative an act of attempted repair rather than simple remembrance.

Answer

Briony misreads Robbie and Cecilia at the fountain early in the novel.

Answer

The wartime sections follow Robbie in France and Briony as a nurse.

Answer

The ending reveals that Briony has become a successful writer.

Question 23

Prompt: choose a work in which guilt shapes a character's choices. Which thesis answers that prompt for The Kite Runner?

Accepted Answer

In The Kite Runner, Amir's guilt over betraying Hassan drives both his avoidance of the past and his later attempt at redemption.

Answer

The Kite Runner begins in Afghanistan and later moves to the United States.

Answer

Amir and Hassan grow up together, but their social positions are unequal.

Answer

The novel includes a kite tournament, political upheaval, and a return to Kabul.

Question 24

Claim: Ceremony presents healing as a return to story, land, and community. Which evidence list is broad enough?

Accepted Answer

Tayo's war trauma, Betonie's adapted ceremony, and the final refusal to complete Emo's violence

Answer

Tayo's memories of Rocky, the jungle rain he curses, and his time in the veterans' hospital

Answer

Betonie's hogan, his explanation of why ceremonies must change, and his story of the witchery

Answer

Tayo's meeting with Ts'eh, his search for the spotted cattle, and his capture by the ranch patrolmen

Question 25

A prompt asks about a character whose act of mercy changes the moral direction of a work. Which choice gives the most material?

Accepted Answer

Les Misérables, where the bishop's mercy toward Jean Valjean redirects Valjean's life

Answer

Oedipus Rex, where Oedipus investigates the plague in Thebes

Answer

The Metamorphosis, where Gregor Samsa wakes transformed into an insect

Answer

The Glass Menagerie, where Tom remembers his family after leaving home

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BLASTROOM

The Literary Argument, Q3 Open Question

Ways to Play

Device Games: Students play on their phones

Blast Go

Board Games: Teacher-led, projected to the class

Like what you see?

Zombie Escape

Avalanche

Maze Blast

Cave Climb

Blast Out

Mystery Auction

Tour Guide

Food Truck Rush

Tug of War

Bug Blast

Alien Blast

Glacier Rush

BlastRace

BlastQuiz

BlastBoard

Seek & Destroy

Mystery Blast

Checkers

Texas Hold 'Em

Da Bomb

Castle Siege

Hot Potato

Market Mayhem

King of the Hill

Bank Heist

Top Corner

The Literary Argument, Q3 Open Question

Ways to Play

Device Games: Students play on their phones

Blast Go

Board Games: Teacher-led, projected to the class

Like what you see?

More like this

Zombie Escape

Avalanche

Maze Blast

Cave Climb

Blast Out

Mystery Auction

Tour Guide

Food Truck Rush

Tug of War

Bug Blast

Alien Blast

Glacier Rush

BlastRace

BlastQuiz

BlastBoard

Seek & Destroy

Mystery Blast

Checkers

Texas Hold 'Em

Da Bomb

Castle Siege

Hot Potato

Market Mayhem

King of the Hill

Bank Heist

Top Corner