Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Freedom is a constant theme in the novel: freedom from control, freedom from fears, and freedom from drugs. Compare Gantos’s early years of freedom with his imprisonment.

• How does the experience of imprisonment compare to his earlier thirst for adventure and danger? (topic sentence)
• Using examples from the text, describe Gantos’s attempts to achieve freedom in his early years and compare it to his feelings during his incarceration.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, explain how Gantos might describe freedom now and reference events or details in the text that support your point.

2. One predominant color that Gantos uses in his narrative is yellow.

• What meaning is associated with yellow in the novel? (topic sentence)
• Explain why Gantos uses yellow to describe his own appearance, and what the color comes to represent in that context.