In Memoriam: Analytical Essay Prompts

The following twelve prompts are designed to guide close analysis of Alice Winn’s In Memoriam. Each prompt foregrounds a specific element—character change, causality, relationships, contrasting scenes, themes, symbols, structure, foreshadowing, or the ending—and offers a defensible thesis direction along with targeted evidence from the novel. Use these as starting points for original argumentation, always grounding your claims in the text.

For broader context on the novel’s central concerns, see the themes in In Memoriam and character pages.

Prompt 1: The White Feather and the Performance of Masculinity

Why it matters: Chapter One’s white feather scene catalyses Gaunt’s enlistment and introduces the novel’s critique of compulsory masculinity. Analysing this moment reveals how public shame drives private action and how the novel ties masculinity to visible honour.

Sample thesis direction: The white feather incident does not simply shame Gaunt into enlisting; it exposes how the hypermasculine wartime code forces men to deny their true selves, setting up the long arc of Gaunt’s struggle between external bravery and internal fear.

Evidence leads:

Chapter One: Gaunt receives a white feather from a stranger; his mother and sister pressure him to enlist.
Chapter Three: Gaunt confesses to Hayes his terror of cowardice before battle.
Chapter Fourteen: Ellwood receives a white feather while on leave and snarls at the woman, showing the same shame turned to rage.
The theme of masculinity and vulnerability deepens the analysis.

Prompt 2: The Oak Tree Scene and the Limits of Intimacy

Why it matters: In Chapter Seven, Gaunt initiates oral sex under an oak tree but immediately turns cold and sarcastic. This scene is the first physical consummation of their desire, yet it also introduces the emotional push-pull that defines their wartime relationship.

Sample thesis direction: The oak tree encounter shows that for Gaunt, physical intimacy can only happen when it is framed as impersonal or dangerous; his subsequent coldness is a defence against the vulnerability that true closeness would require.

Evidence leads:

Chapter Seven: The walk, the act, and Gaunt’s “sarcastic” demand for a poem.
Chapter Eight: Gaunt’s avoidance and self-harm after their first full sexual encounter.
Chapter Three: Gaunt’s earlier secret relationship with Sandys, which he insisted was “no emotional attachment.”
Contrast with Chapter Nine’s idyllic intimacy during Divisional Rest.

Prompt 3: The Letters as Epistolary Warfare

Why it matters: Letters are the primary means of connection between characters separated by war, but they also become weapons of control and repression. Examining the letters between Gaunt, Ellwood, and Maud reveals how characters use writing to manipulate, confess, or conceal.

Sample thesis direction: In In Memoriam, letters do not bridge distance so much as expose the gaps between what characters feel and what they dare to write—especially for Gaunt, whose wooden letters belie his inner turmoil.

Evidence leads:

Chapter Three: Gaunt sends Ellwood a cold letter ending their correspondence; Maitland censors Ellwood’s love letter.
Chapter Five: Ellwood’s pleading letters to Gaunt remain unanswered; Ellwood writes instead to Maud for news.
Chapter Twenty-One: Ellwood’s published poem “In Memoriam H.W.G.” reaches Gaunt in the POW camp, a letter he can never answer.
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Maud reveals Gaunt wrote to her every day, a contrast to his silence with Ellwood.

Prompt 4: The Iliad Performance and the Mask of Escape

Why it matters: In Chapter Twenty-One, the prisoners stage a Greek play to conceal their tunnelling. This theatricality mirrors the larger theme of performance—of masculinity, of heterosexuality, of sanity—that runs through the novel.

Sample thesis direction: The Iliad performance functions as a double metaphor: it literally hides the escape tunnel while figuratively allowing the prisoners to adopt heroic personae, yet the act of playing a role also foreshadows the fragility of all performed identities in war.

Evidence leads:

Chapter Twenty-One: The play occurs while the tunnel is being dug; the Iliad parallels the war’s violence.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Gaunt performs heterosexuality by kissing Elisabeth; later, Devi and Pritchard accept his true self.
Chapter Forty-Five: Ellwood wears a black silk mask in Brazil to hide his disfigurement—another performance.
Memory and poetry as consolation offers further context.

Prompt 5: Maud Gaunt’s Refusal as Feminist Counterpoint

Why it matters: Maud repeatedly refuses marriage—to Ellwood in Chapter Fourteen and again in Chapter Thirty-Six—and instead pursues nursing and later a political career. Her choices provide a contrasting arc to the male characters’ compulsory heroism.

Sample thesis direction: Maud’s refusals are not rejections of love but rejections of the wartime script that demands women become wives or widows; her path to Berlin and activism argues that survival can be a form of resistance.

Evidence leads:

Chapter Fourteen: Ellwood proposes impulsively; Maud demurs and states her wish to be a politician.
Chapter Thirty-Six: Maud visits Ellwood in hospital, refuses his proposal again, and reveals she has a place at Berlin university.
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Maud confronts Gaunt, admits she knows about his love for Ellwood, and reconsiles with him.
Chapter Forty-Six: She works with Magnus Hirschfeld to abolish Paragraph 175, connecting personal freedom to legal change.

Prompt 6: The Tunnel and Claustrophobia as Psychological Symbol

Why it matters: The tunnelling sequences in the POW camp (Chapters Twenty through Twenty-Six) are among the novel’s most visceral. For Gaunt, the tunnel triggers panic attacks that recall the gas at Ypres, making it a symbol of both physical escape and psychological entrapment.

Sample thesis direction: The tunnel’s narrow darkness forces Gaunt to confront the claustrophobia of his own trauma; his willingness to keep digging despite the panic shows that survival requires reliving the very experience that broke him.

Evidence leads:

Chapter Twenty: Gaunt attempts to dig but suffers a panic attack; Maitland’s buried body haunts his thoughts.
Chapter Twenty-Three: The tunnel collapses and floods; Gaunt dives in to rescue Devi.
Chapter Twenty: Devi and the other prisoners discuss the tunnel as a form of hope; Gaunt’s claustrophobia mirrors his inability to escape his memories.
The theme of psychological trauma and shell shock is central.

Prompt 7: The Battle of the Somme and the Football Episode

Why it matters: Chapter Twenty-Eights description of Ellwood’s battalion kicking a football as they advance on July 1, 1916, is based on a real anecdote. The football symbolises the absurd gap between official heroism and the reality of mass death.

Sample thesis direction: The football is not a sign of bravado but of the army’s attempt to impose meaning on meaningless slaughter; Ellwood’s later disillusionment shows that such rituals cannot protect soldiers from trauma.

Evidence leads:

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Ellwood gives his men a football to kick; the advance is preceded by a false-optimism speech.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Lantham has a breakdown; wire-cutting fails.
Chapter Thirty-One: Gaunt and Pritchard learn of the 60,000 casualties; Ellwood’s Company is decimated.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Ellwood dissociates and continues fighting, his mind drifting to medieval battles.

Prompt 8: Burgoyne as Antagonist and Catalyst

Why it matters: Burgoyne’s bigotry, theft of Ellwood’s poetry, and threat to expose Gaunt and Ellwood make him the novel’s most explicit villain. Yet his death—drowning in a flooded shell hole—is anticlimactic, raising questions about the role of malice in war.

Sample thesis direction: Burgoyne’s hatred is rendered petty by the war’s indiscriminate violence; his drowning, rather than punishment, illustrates how the war erases even the most focused cruelty.

Evidence leads:

Chapter Two: Burgoyne burns Ellwood’s poetry and makes anti-Semitic remarks.
Chapter Eleven: Burgoyne witnesses Gaunt and Ellwood kissing and threatens them.
Chapter Fourteen: Roseveare reports Burgoyne’s death by drowning.
Chapter Ten: Gaunt and Ellwood argue about Burgoyne on the eve of battle, tying his menace to their relationship.

Prompt 9: Ernst Grisar’s Perspective and the Dehumanised Enemy

Why it matters: Chapter Thirty shifts to the German machine-gunner Ernst Grisar, who recognises Ellwood as an old friend just as he prepares to kill him. This rare German viewpoint forces the reader to see the enemy as human.

Sample thesis direction: By giving Ernst Grisar a voice, Winn argues that the machinery of war demands soldiers dehumanise one another to survive; Ernst’s memory of Ellwood in Munich is the only counterweight to the killing.

Evidence leads:

Chapter Thirty: Ernst operates the machine gun, imagining the British as ants; he recalls Ellwood visiting him.
Chapter Thirty: Ernst sees Ellwood drop into the trench—Ellwood refuses to surrender and demands to be killed.
Chapter Thirty-Two: Ellwood and Roseveare survive, but Ernst’s face is shot off, linking their fates.
Chapter Eighteen: Gaunt is rescued by a German soldier, Hohenheimer, who also shows mercy.

Prompt 10: The Closing Image—Brazil, the Mask, and Calling Him Sidney

Why it matters: The novel’s final two chapters set in Brazil (Forty-Five and Forty-Six) resolve the emotional arc. Ellwood wears a mask, Gaunt finally calls him “Sidney,” and they argue about staying or leaving. The ending is open but committed.

Sample thesis direction: The ending in Brazil does not promise happiness but a shared exile; by calling Ellwood “Sidney,” Gaunt claims a future that is built on surviving the war together, not on forgetting it.

Evidence leads:

Chapter Forty-Five: Ellwood receives news of his mother’s death; Gaunt calls him “Sidney” and says “this means I’m keeping you.”
Chapter Forty-Six: They argue about living in Brazil or returning to England; Gaunt promises to stay forever.
Chapter Forty-Six: Ellwood quotes Shakespeare for the first time since his injury; he struggles to say “I love you” but makes a start.
Chapter Forty-Three: Gaunt sees Ellwood’s scar as beautiful because it saved his life.

Prompt 11: The Unfinished Letter and Hayes as Witness

Why it matters: In Chapter Sixteen, Hayes reveals a letter from Gaunt addressed “My dearest, darling Sidney.” This unfinished letter is the only direct written confession of Gaunt’s love, and its revelation to Ellwood changes their dynamic.

Sample thesis direction: The unfinished letter functions as a posthumous confession that Gaunt could never deliver; Hayes’ role as intermediary highlights how class and privilege shape who gets to have a private life in war.

Evidence leads:

Chapter Sixteen: Hayes shows Ellwood the letter; Ellwood learns Gaunt’s true feelings after believing him dead.
Chapter Six: Hayes shows Ellwood the horrors of the trenches; he is a working-class contrast to the public-school officers.
Chapter Seventeen: Hayes’s own mental breakdown and fear of madness; Ellwood comforts him.
Chapter Forty-Four: Hayes loses both legs; Gaunt offers him a job at the bank, bridging class divides.

Prompt 12: Tennyson’s In Memoriam as Structural Frame

Why it matters: The novel’s title and epigraph invoke Tennyson’s poem, which is about grieving a lost friend. Throughout the narrative, characters recite or reference Tennyson, creating a literary echo that comments on their own losses.

Sample thesis direction: Winn uses Tennyson’s In Memoriam not as a model for successful mourning but as an ironic counterpoint: where Tennyson finds consolation in faith and memory, the characters find only hollow recitations that cannot heal their trauma.

Evidence leads:

Chapter One: Gaunt and Ellwood read the “In Memoriam” list of the dead; the title’s double meaning is established.
Chapter Ten: Gaunt and Ellwood recite Tennyson’s poem on the eve of battle.
Chapter Twenty-One: Ellwood’s poem “In Memoriam H.W.G.” is published, believing Gaunt dead—a direct reworking of Tennyson.
Chapter Forty-One: Ellwood cannot bear to look at his face; Gaunt quotes Thucydides instead of Tennyson, showing the limits of poetry.
The theme of memory and poetry as consolation provides deeper analysis.