At a Glance #2 for Thesis #2

George Lewis Hughes

English 103: Accelerated Composition – At a Glance (Alfano 91)

Daniel Richards

September 15, 2008

Screening Questions for Topics: Visual Rhetoric Thesis Two: Shellshock as a Bridge Between Nihilism and Society

1. Am I interested in the topic? – As a World-War history buff, specifically from the Annalesian take of the common soldier, the phenomenon of shellshock particularly intrigues me concerning the setbacks of the synthesis between humanity and combat, primarily because of its close affiliations with many other sciences besides the overarching military science to the byproduct at hand. For instance, it incorporates an exploration of the complexities of the human mind, how and where it can go wrong within a given set of circumstances, in which it implicitly ranges from the discipline of psychology to military medicine. These studies especially captivate me because of my own psychological troubles I had encountered in high school and because of the fact that my father, an emergency physician, had begun his own medical career as a Vietnam-era medic who for years had dealt with the intensive trends regarding the focal points of military medicine, respectively.

2. Can I argue a position on this topic? – I should be able to narrow my concentration into a less demanding reservoir for this potentially dense exploration by essentially focusing for now on the general goal of comparing wars of the past to those of the present with regards specifically to the emergence of post-traumatic stress syndrome as a real factor to prolonged combat situations while in the context of its uncensored prospects with respect to its impact on civilian society and its own evolving outlook on war back at home within the umbrella of the national state in itself.

3. Will I be able to find enough research material on this topic? – Fortunately, my topic is not at all uncharted, such that my troubles with finding the necessary background information for reinforcing the authoritative credibility as the backdrop to my own particular argument on the study should be considerably minimal.

4. Does this sort of research appeal to me? – Luckily, I am overall capacious enough as far as literary aptitude goes when it comes to translating the prospectively inevitable technicalities inherent in my topic into a more vernacular text for the upcoming analytical tasks that will be necessary to the fruition of my next research assignment in proper form thereof as exclusively an argument.