In your second formal assignment, you will write a thesis-driven essay that proposes and develops an answer to an interpretive question you pose about Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You will argue your thesis not through an analysis of the novel, however, but instead through an analysis of one of the three film adaptations of Body Snatchers that we are studying in unit II of the course: Siegel’s 1956 Invasion, Kaufman’s 1978 Invasion, or Ferrara’s 1993 Body Snatchers. In other words, you will use one of these three films to interpret their source material, Finney’s novel.
Guidelines and instructions
The first step you’ll need to complete for this assignment is identifying an interpretive problem in Finney’s novel: i.e., what scene or passage from the text uses style and/or form in such a way that introduces ambiguity or difficulty that requires further reflection to resolve and, in so doing, produce meaning?
The second step will require you to identify the corresponding scene in whichever film adaptation you’re writing about and, through your analysis of this scene, consider how it offers an answer to your interpretive question. That is, how does the scene visually depict and thus interpret the textual ambiguity or difficulty? How does the scene render the corresponding passage meaningful using the elements of film style and/or form (mise-en-scene, cinematography, and/or editing)? In answering these questions, you will arrive at your paper’s thesis statement. The more successful essays will adopt a narrow focus in terms of the interpretive problem and corresponding scene (e.g., you should try to localize your problem to a several paragraphs of the novel: the more precise, the better).
The final step will be writing the essay itself. I strongly recommend you complete the first two steps before you begin writing. Your introductory paragraph must establish the interpretive problem you’re taking up, the interpretive significance of this problem, and your solution, i.e., your thesis. The body paragraphs will develop and explain your thesis through your analysis of the corresponding scene. You should feel free to reference the text as needed in your body paragraphs to clarify your thinking, but your analytical focus should remain on the film scene. Your concluding paragraph should return to the interpretive significance of the problem you identified and reflect on its implications for the film adaptation. In other words, how does the film’s resolution of the novel’s interpretive problem affect, overall, the adaptation’s relation to the source material? For example, does it change how the movie portrays a character, a particular event, a theme, an image, etc.?
Requirements
Your essay must be between 800 and 1,100 words in length. You must use double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font. Unless your TA has instructed you to use a particular file format, please use a format compatible across different operating systems (e.g., .rtf or .pdf).
