Final Monologue – KOREAN WAR!!
At this point, you should have done a significant amount of groundwork in preparation of your final monologue: you have researched potential sources; read, analyzed and selected your sources; and researched and created a basic historical narrative. Now, you will use all of your previous research and preparation to create a four- to five-page first person monologue written in the voice of the individual you selected at the beginning of this process. What Should Your Monologue Contain? Your monologue should NOT be simply an account of an event written in first person. Instead, your monologue should
make an argument about the event, context, or period in which your individual finds themselves, as well as demonstrate a level of fluency with the cultural, political, economic, and social realities of the era, as well as the appropriate historical terminology. Use your primary sources as a window into the way people during this time thought about their world, and try your best to reflect that in your writing. While there is definitely freedom to be creative and imaginative in this assignment, you should consider following the general structure below:
1. Establish your individuals identity and the circumstance. Your opening paragraph(s) should firmly ground the reader in the historical period. Use details and evidence from your primary and secondary sources. You should also introduce whatever controversy, event, or circumstance your individual is experiencing.
2. Fully describe the event or historical moment. This may take several paragraphs. Remember that you are to engage with the historical narrative from the perspective of your individual, and that means embracing all the limitations, biases, and misconceptions a person in that historical moment would have.
Remember that people are the products of their times and places; you may not agree with the way your individual thought about certain thingsand thats okay. The purpose of this assignment is to encourage you to try and understand how people thought and felt about the world they lived in, even if we dont feel the same way today.
3. Describe and explain your individuals personal role within the event or circumstances. What decisions have they made, or are they making? How do they feel about the event? What disagreements or objections do they have to whatever is going on? Why are they making these decisions? Why do they feel the way they do?
4. Look forward. What does your individual think will happen next? What do they hope will happen? Why? Remember, you have the advantage of hindsightbut your individual does not. Their vision of the future may be very, very different from what will actually happen. What lessons does your individual think should be learned from this event? Why does this event matter to them?
And just a note: while some of you may choose to write from the perspective of someone illiterate or someone living in a preliterate society, please know that all normal grammatical and spelling conventions should be observed in your monologue. Do not use your individuals level of literacy as a justification for your own laziness in proper editing.
Technical Requirements
Your monologue will:
Be four- to five-pages in length
Be written in 12-point Times New Roman font
Be double spaced
Have one inch margins
Have an original title
Adhere to all normal mechanical conventions (spelling and grammar)
Have a properly formatted Works Cited page (which will NOT count towards your page length)
Use proper MLA formatting and in-text parenthetical citations