This assignment will ask you to use a modern genre – the meme – to analyze one of our first scifi novels: Either War of the Worlds or Slaughterhouse Five.
In this assignment, we’re practicing our skills of thesis writing and rhetorical analysis. For the meme you pick, think about its “logic” — that is, how the humor works: what makes it funny? Who might find it funny? Is there irony operating here?
Next, and more importantly, you will use the meme to make an argument about these novels, and your analysis should focus on unpacking that argument. Maybe, for example, you want to make an argument about our narrator in War of the Worlds, and you think a meme perfectly captures his characterization; your thesis, then, would be the meme you created shows … why the narrator isn’t trustworthy? How Wells sympathizes with the destructive Martians rather than his whiny narrator?
I recognize that this is hard: it’s asking you, in some ways, to analyze and compare two genres: meme and novel. Focus on the novel, first, and think about things that seem strange, or ironic, or comic, and then try to find a meme to capture your insights.
Guidelines:
Your analysis should be at least 700 words.
You should have a thesis in the first paragraph that sets up your reading of the meme and makes an argument about one of our novels.
And you should include “evidence” form the texts (meme and novel) – both words and pictures – to prove your claim.
Note: an effective meme requires not only creativity, but a thorough understanding and analysis of the chief tensions in our novels. In a way, by reducing the text to a meme, you’re making an argument about the text.
Purpose (or Skills Cultivated)
to critically read a literary text, drawing out implicit questions, characteristics, or meanings.
to rhetorically analyze a meme example, demonstrating how it is working, that is, how it produces meaning.
to produce a clear, cogent thesis combining insights about both text and meme.
