War Genre

Literary and Cultural Analysis Essay

Using your reading and class notes, compose an essay that analyzes one of the examples of the War
genre and makes an argument about what the work is critiquing in contemporary society.

Assignment Goals
 Utilize textual evidence to make an interpretation of a work
 Demonstrate ability to conduct a close reading of short segments of a text
 Use close readings as support for an argument about the broader meaning of a work
 Make connections between literature and contemporary cultural issues

Basics
 Times New Roman 12 pt. font, 1” margins all around
 MLA format (work titles should be italicized, quotations should have page attributions, etc.)
 1000-1250 words; Longer quotations should not be included in the word count.
 Conducts a close reading of short passages from the work
 Works Cited page
 Outside research—you must cite at least two sources aside from the text (including, but not
limited to: historical accounts, literary analyses, interviews with authors, etc.)

Organization
 Introduction: introduce the text, summarize plot points that are relevant to your thesis, and
state your thesis
 Each body paragraph should have a topic sentence that connects to a particular part of the
thesis. Never begin a paragraph with a quote.
 After your topic sentence, contextualize your evidence, then quote.
 Explain in several sentences why this quote supports your thesis.
 Conclusion: make a broader claim about what the work says about a current issue/event or
about contemporary life and what lesson we should take from it.

Possible Prompts
 Examine the role of one major historical context in relation to one of the works.
 Consider how masculinity functions in the context of one of the works.
 Address how the representation of violence in the work might connect to a particular historical
event or political issue in the recent past.
 What should we derive from war stories?
 Storytelling, truth, and concerns about civilian audiences play a significant role in War stories. Using
a passage that depicts the tensions between truth and fiction, telling versus experiencing, tellability
and hearability, etc., make an interpretation of how the work deals with truth and narrative.
 Make an argument for how a particular symbol or motif relates to the values embodied by the War
genre.
 Explain how a work alters tropes associated with War stories, and how this affects meaning.