Final Essay

Your primary project in this assignment is to make a nuanced argument about the
ethical project of the text in question. By analyzing and interpreting key passages of
the text and drawing from historical information, you will craft a research essay that
grapples with the ethical issues raised in our class surrounding the representation of
violence and the ethics of war.
You must meet with me to gain approval for your final essay topic.
Requirements
Times New Roman 12 pt. font, 1
margins all around; MLA format
(longer work titles should be
italicized, quotations around short
story titles or chapter titles,
quotations from the text should
have page attributions, etc.)
Addresses a work you did not use
for the Midterm Paper or the
digital Final Project
Clear, arguable thesis supported
by evidence from the text
4-7 outside sources (including, but
not limited to: historical accounts,
literary analyses, interviews with
authors, etc.)
Approximately 4000 words (12-15
pages)

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
Show ability to think and write
creatively about literature
Deepen understanding of both
historical and contemporary
contexts for the work
Understand the work as a unique
ethical project

Texts

Films

All Quiet on the Western

Front
Maus I & II
The Things They Carried
Redeployment
The Farming of Bones
Half of a Yellow Sun
Persepolis
The Stone Virgins
Deogratias
Safe Area Gorade

The Thin Red Line

The War Game
Full Metal Jacket
Jarhead
Restrepo
The Act of Killing
Swimming to Cambodia

Shorter Works
Major Themes/Problematics
The Value of Personal Narratives
Unspeakable Experience

Identity
Speech/Silence

Poetry of WWI, WWII,

Vietnam, and Iraq
The Battle of Buron
Kamikaze
A Guided Tour Through
the Museum of
Communism
The Cat-Keeper of
Warsaw
Issue of Preacher
Armenian Genocide
Survivor Testimonies
The Golan Heights

Final Essay

The Hearable/The Tellable

Justifications for War/Violence
The Role of Media/Images
Globalization
Terror
Freedom

Agency
The Construction of the Nation
The Nature of Morality in War
Marginalized People
Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders
Trauma

Broad Areas of Inquiry

Analysis of how the text adheres to and/or violates particular conventions of the
war genre, with attention paid to the historical and geographical context of the
production and setting of the work.
What one short story is saying about our relationships with people (and animals)
at home and abroad, and what the narrators interactions say about our attitudes
towards war.
How a character deals with the psychological effects of returning home.
What one short story can tell us about what it means to own a story, and what it
means to tell a story. What is tellable? What is hearable? What is recounted in
dialogue? What is left out and why?
How one text comments on the network of support staff who are generally
overlooked, particularly in terms of identity. What is the narrators job, and what
is his relationship to that work? How does it affect how he
interacts with others?
What the text highlights in terms of concerns about
infrastructure.
How the work influences our understanding of the broader
implications of war.
Argument about the relationship between humans and the
natural world, with particular consideration paid to how the
narrator figures the natural world in relation to war, to
humanity, and to the human spirit. How the natural world is
placed in ethical opposition to man and/or war.
Analysis of the relationships between people at home or on
the front, and what one characters interactions say about
our attitudes towards war.
How the work negotiates the dynamics between soldiers,
their enemies, civilians, and the reader/viewer or between perpetrators, victims,
and bystanders.
Analysis of the interplay between decontextualization and context in the case of
one conflict.
The symbolic role of one major recurring object/animal/situation and how it
affects our understanding of the conflict.
The U.N. Convention on Genocide and the role of the definition of genocide,
war, and other state-sanctioned violence in relation to the text/conflict.
The relationship between the conflict and how it is represented in media within
the text.
How gender is constructed in relation to the conflict. How are mens and womens
roles differentiated? Are these conventions violated?
How the author/director/etc. uses sympathy and/or empathy to comment on our
relationship as Americans to the conflict.

How sexuality is policed in relation to the

conflict.
The role of race in relation to identity and
threat in the conflict, and how one character
grapples with their identity.
The construction of the nation as an
imagined community.
Inquiry into the meaning of a war that does
not look like war.