Your second major paper for the course is a critical analysis of George Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Your goal in the paper is to establish an argument that presents a particular way of interpreting the film. Your essay should use elements from the film (descriptions of characters, scenes, and specific dialogue) to establish your argument. You will use some summary to establish context, but the majority of your text needs to be a presentation of your own arguments on the film. That is, summary isn’t the point. Your argument about how we should view the film is the point.
To provide context for some of the current views around Romero’s work, I am requiring that you also read and make use of Deborah Christie’s “A Dead New World: Richard Matheson and the Modern Zombie” in your critical analysis. You can use her work to support your own arguments or to show an opposite view (planting a naysayer), but you will need to somehow incorporate her essay into your work.
The paper must be three pages minimum, MLA format, and must incorporate at least one direct quote from the film itself and from Christie’s text. You can (and probably should) use more than one quote from both sources, but a minimum of one is required.
