Monmouth College
Monmouth, Illinois
History 112, Fall 2008

• Hand in a thoughtful and thorough essay with perfect grammar and beautiful prose in answer to one of the following questions. Your essay should be no shorter than five pages--and that is five pages to the bottom of page five. This essay is due at the beginning of class on the date specified on the syllabus, 8 December 2008.
• I encourage you to work with each other on this exam. Discuss the book among yourselves, and talk through your essays.
• Do not plagiarize each other’s exams, however. If you do, both of you will be asked to rewrite your papers, and a penalty may be assessed. If you plagiarize from the book, you will also have to rewrite your paper, and a penalty may be assessed.  If you have plagiarized on an earlier exam in this class, and you plagiarize on this one, you will receive a zero for the assignment and I'll have to turn your name in to the dean.
• Direct quotes from the book must be inside quotation marks. The page number from whence the quote came must be noted in parenthesis after the period (that is, outside of the sentence, Chicago Manual Style, not MLA). The Scots Guide contains the College’s plagiarism policy, which I follow strictly.
• If you have any questions at all, call me, e-mail me, or stop by my office. I will be happy to look at a draft of your essay. I’ll be happy to look at your thesis statement, or your outline, or your opening paragraph--whatever will help you to write a really excellent essay.
• Please write in the number of the exam question you are answering.
• You may not use any outside sources for this exam.  It must be based only on Bellavia's book.
• This is a 50 point exam.

1. THE ENEMY:  Write a thorough and thoughtful essay that explains the enemy, as Bellavia and his thought of them.  Who was the enemy?  Was it a worthy enemy?  What was the war about, according to Bellavia?

2. THE MAN:  In part, Bellavia's book is a coming of age story, just as you studied in your first book in ILA.  Describe Bellavia's coming of age.  What were the transitional moments of his life?  How did his military service fit into the larger pattern of his life?  How did he make sense of it?

3.THE WAR:   House to House is a memoir of a specific kind of fighting:  urban, house-to-house combat.  Write an essay that explains the strategies and weapons, the dangers, the advantages, and the disadvantages of house-to-house fighting as Bellavia described it.