ABSTRACT
Didacticism is the instructional quality of something, but extreme forms of intellectually controlled fiction related to the real world can be called "didactic." Allegory and satire are didactic forms of texts; in these genres, readers accept that there is some sort of lesson to be gleaned from the story. Fiction writers make rational appeals by going "behind" to reveal true workings of the character's mind and heart or through overt action; those are rational appeals, mechanisms for telling information. Marsha Skrypuc introduces factual information about the Armenian Genocide through textual features that are external to the narrative: maps with descriptors that provide a chronology of events and a historical note. In Daughter of War, Skrypuch makes central the choices and experiences of different Armenian and Muslim characters to illustrate the disparate motives and values of individuals living in the Ottoman Empire. In most instances of genocide, actors within the international community can be identified within genocidal processes.
