AP World History Essay Skills

POINT OF VIEW ANALYSIS

What does point of view encompass? The way a person or group sees thing. Point of view is composed of two elements:

a. Frame of Reference: the personal background of the person or group including personal experience, education, family, beliefs, values, interests, etc.

b. Historical context: the influence of the time period on that person or group, including the beliefs or events during that time.

How do you analyze point of view?

Key Question: Why does the author say what he says in the way that he says it? This question requires you to do the following:

1. Paraphrase what the author said 2. Identify the tone and attitude (Is it persuasive? Critical? Emotional?

Technical/Factual? Desperate? Glorifying? Supportive? Satire?) 3. Explain why the author has that tone taking into consideration the following

characteristics of the author: § Gender and/or age § Occupation/Social Class § Nationality § Time period/When § Geography/Where § Religion, Political Philosophy And: § Intended audience (Public or private? Corporation? Family member?

Court officials? Etc.) § Purpose/Intended outcome § Medium (Letter, photograph, speech, official government document, art,

graph, map, religious text, journal, poetry, literature, etc.) Note: Analysis of point of view requires more than identifying that there is a bias in the document. Everything has a bias. Point of view requires you to understand the tone, purpose, and historical context of the document and explain why the document is written the way it is written.

Examples of Point of View Analysis written by former AP students: Document 1 gives a direct teaching from Jesus, who was a poor, laboring man, that rich people lack spiritual purity. Jesus preached equality for all, and he found that merchants broke this equality by possessing and caring about wealth, and not sharing it with the poor. Thus his religion was built against the striving for material wealth, and against the practice of merchants. Islam early on believed that trading was a virtue as described in the Qu’ran passage in Document 2. The Qu’ran consists heavily of Muhammad’s ideas, and Muhammad was a merchant so he will speak highly of trade

AP World History Essay Skills Since document 9 was written by a commissioner working for the British government, not a worker, the author could be omitting bad details or glorifying the conditions as to not reveal the reality of the factories overseen by the British. This document is a contract and is written in a persuasive tone and tries to appeal to workers by stating that as an indentured servant they will receive rent, medical care, etc., although from Document 8 and Document 5 it is clear that indentured servants were often treated like slaves. The author is an editor for a South African newspaper and therefore, is probably of European descent. He is probably in a position to benefit economically from the use of indentured servitude therefore he calls for an increase in laborers. The author’s tone is desperate because in order for his colony to compete with other colonies, they need an adequate number of servants to keep up production. Zhi Dun’s argument supporting Buddhism in Document 2 in understandable, given the politically tumultuous time in which it was written. When political leaders cannot be trusted to provide security, those without material resources are more likely to turn to spiritual teachings, especially ones that make sense of meaningless suffering. In Document 3, an anonymous Chinese scholar justified Buddhism and Confucianism’s dissimilarities in the favor of Buddhism, at one point considering the Buddha a phoenix and the sages of China’s past swallows, obviously inferior birds. Thus, the scholar reveres Buddha, even going so far as to insult Confucianism. This is consequent of this scholar living during a time when the Confucian ideology has failed.