The short stories included in Italo Calvino’s “Marcovaldo, or the Seasons in the City” (1963) are set at the time
of the so-called Italian economic boom (1955-1963 ca.).
The protagonist, a blue collar worker embedded in a society marked by mass-production and widespread
consumerism, is constantly in search of a ‘lost paradise’ of nature, which appears to be a nostalgic mirage born
of industrial progress. In other words, the nature that Marcovaldo imagines never existed.
Assuming that “Marcovaldo” is not simply a book for children, but that it can be read and interpreted at a
deeper level, two questions can be asked:
How does Marcovaldo’s experience relate to that of Italian people of the time?
Is the message that the book conveys still valid nowadays?
Genre
The genre of this essay is an academic paper. Depending on your topic and your focus, you may choose one
of the three types of academic paper:
• An analytical paper breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea,
and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience.
• An expository (explanatory) paper explains something to the audience.
• An argumentative paper makes a claim about a topic and justifies this claim with specific evidence. The claim
could be an opinion, a policy proposal, an evaluation, a cause-and-effect statement, or an interpretation. The
goal of the argumentative paper is to convince the audience that the claim is valid based on the evidence
provided.
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