Hints for Writing the Research Paper:
1) Your introduction should develop the context for the theme that your paper will
cover. It should end with a clear statement of purpose, i.e. your thesis. If you did
your proposal well, this could well include much of the material you wrote there.
Hence, for my research paper on War literature, my introduction would be.
The modern era saw many advances in science and technology, including those that
resulted in even more deadly and powerful instruments of war. Submarines first emerged
(and then submerged) during the Civil War; World War I saw the introduction of airplane
raids and mustard gas; the atomic bomb was invented during the Second World War.
Deployment of all these weapons literally resulted in the deaths of millions, but for many
writers, the fruits of technological and scientific advances were an assault against much
more.
The men who survived these war did not come home unscathed; ninety percent of
Mississippi men who returned from the war had lost at least one limb, for example. As
David Cannadine’s book shows, “At the outset of the 1870s, the British aristocracy could
rightly consider themselves the most fortunate people on earth: they held the lion's share
of land, wealth, and power in the world's greatest empire. By the end of the 1930s they
had lost not only a generation of sons in the First World War, but also much of their
prosperity, prestige, and political significance.” For entire cultures, be they Southerners
or for the British upper class, these kinds of losses also resulted in a crisis of identity.
Writers such as Ernest Hemingway and directors such as Stanley Kubrick create
narratives that examine embattled masculine identity. In The Sun Also Rises, the
protagonist Jake returns home from the First World War damaged psychologically and
physically. Specifically, he’s received a wound that has left him castrated and impotent.
Some narratives use black humor to address the dehumanizing effects of war, such as
Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. These writers use
humor as a strategy to examine the emasculating effects of the bureaucratic machine that
often sends psychologically unprepared men into battle.
This paper, then, will analyze the crisis of masculinity depicted in war narratives and the
strategies that male characters and perhaps the writers themselves use to re-assert male
power and authority in society.
NOTE: My introduction alone is about 1 full double-spaced page; I would have a
hard time writing less than 8-10 pages.
2) In the body of the essay, you want to analyze each of the 3-5 primary sources you
have read. You should write it as a comparison/contrast essay. You want to
support your analysis with evidence from the texts themselves. Remember to
access OWL at PURDUE to see how to cite properly, both internally and
externally your sources. Be sure to introduce well your quotes, to explain clearly
why you have used passages you cite. Be sure to cite well those secondary
sources that either help you to support or to expand upon your thesis.
3) In the practice essays that we have written, you have written some 500 words on
small passages of texts—that’s 2 ½ double-spaced typed pages. You should all be
able to produce at least 2-3 pages of analysis on each of 3 or so primary texts you
have chosen. Additionally, most of you did well on the synthesis essay on the
mid-term: This research paper is most like that kind of essay: You are being
asked to take a position on a text and to support it by analyzing the text itself and
by incorporating information from at least three outside sources. That means,
YOU CAN DO THIS!!
Length: 8-10 pp. typed. FOLLOW MLA FORMAT AS DESCRIBED ON OWL at
PURDUE. Due April 8, 2011