Day of Tears

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 below bulleted outlines. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Flat characters are one-dimensional, very cut-and-dried, and do not change over the course of a narrative. Dynamic characters are complex, full of contradictions, and change over the course of the narrative.

• Identify three characters from Day of Tears and state whether they are dynamic or flat characters. (topic sentence)
• In the body of your essay, analyze your chosen characters, explaining what makes them dynamic or flat. Use examples from the text to support your analysis.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, explain whether you think it is realistic or unrealistic for authors to include some characters who don’t change and some who do.

2. Dialogue can help reveal characters’ emotional and mental states. How effectively was this done in the novel?

• Does the dialogue in this novel reveal characters’ emotional and mental states? (topic sentence)
• In the body of your essay, provide 2-3 examples of dialogue that does a good job of revealing what characters are thinking and feeling and/or 2-3 examples where the author could have done it better.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, discuss whether the author’s use of dialogue fostered empathy in you as a reader.

3. In Chapter 13, Emma says, “Seems like whenever something important happened in my life it was accompanied by rain.”

• What does rain represent in this novel? (topic sentence)
• Select 2-3 instances of rain in the novel. In the body of your essay, analyze each scene and explain how it reveals the rain’s symbolism.
• In your conclusion, explain how the rain motif supports the novel’s theme of Slavery as an Inhumane Practice Against Nature.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. Was the author’s choice to write a novel almost entirely in dialogue an effective format for this story? What elements were lost? What elements were gained? How do those trade-offs impact the overall effectiveness of the novel and the narrative’s ability to engage the reader?

2. Analyze the dialogue between Sampson and his son Charles in Interlude 8, Chapters 9-10, and Interlude 10. Compare how the two men choose to perceive their circumstances. Analyze how Lester depicts each man’s attitude toward fear. What messages and truths about the human experience might Lester be trying to communicate to readers?

3. How does Lester depict the kitchens in the slaveholders’ homes? What does the kitchen symbolize in this novel?