Literature

Literature
For this assignment you need to employ the deconstructive method to either Albert Camus’ “The Guest” or H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Both of these texts revolve around a plethora of structural binaries, most obviously host/guest and human/Martian, but there are many others just as worthy of critical analysis. For this assignment, you will need to carefully review the steps of deconstructive criticism on pages 112-17 of Texts and Contexts. After reviewing this section, you need to work through the steps that it lays out: isolate what issue/concept your paper will examine; figure out the normative position that the text is working within; determine what binaries are utilized by the text in relation to that issue and its normative position; assign the hierarchical relations that are attached to those binaries; think through how this hierarchical privileging leads to a particular textual attitude and resolution of the problem of your issue in relation to or against the normative principles; and determine how the text can be seen to deconstruct this through oppositional readings, conceptual instabilities and moments that work against the closure/resolution of the text. Finally, you’ll want to consider the results of this deconstruction and how the text thus reveals alternate meanings, ambiguity and/or ambivalence. As deconstruction is often more of an approach than a motivated criticism, you should feel free to couple it with one of the other lenses that we have explored this semester (Marxism, postcolonialism, feminism, queer theory, and/or new historicism) in order to refine your critical stakes and your issue/concept [For example, as a guiding critical question, you could consider: How does The War of the Worlds reinforce masculine and patriarchal concepts of humanity? How does queerness help to explain or unsettle the relationship between Daru and the Arab in “The Guest?”].
Formatting: Your paper should have traditional spacing and margins (double- spaced, 1inch margins on all sides), and use 12point Times New Roman. All pages should be numbered with your last name at the top right hand corner. Also, all papers must be stapled. Papers should include properly formatted MLA citations and a works cited page.