well, first of all, break down the essay, question, ways of thinking basically relates to the four different paradigms-philosophical, scientific, religious and economic, then you think about why writers are at the forefront of change-simply often because they use their textual forms as vehicles to critique, respond to, challenge the ways of the thinking of the period, in this case, the Cold War period. I think in your essay question you not only have to answer the how, but also why they cannot help but challenge accepted ways of thinking-i.e. because those ways are outdated, because of the revolutionary changes in social perceptions brought about by the moral profanity of dropping an atomic bomb with devastations lasting beyond that generation, because of the frustration individuals felt in the secrecy that many bureaucracies seems to conceal information-i.e. USA initially concealed certain information about the atomic bomb from the public to help its propaganda campaign to compel its citizens to believe that its actions were necessary to end WWII
so to structure this essay, obviously you have several choices, you can explore all 4 different types of ways of thinking and relate poem and related text to each way of thinking in an integrated paragraph-as well as related it to each other and also mention the context-which can be quite challenging since you just started this module, and having learnt only 3 poems-could lead to unequal discussions as well in 4 paragraphs, or you can choose two dominant ways of thinking and just use two poems and related text in a 4 para structure, ie. 1st ways of thinking-para 1-poem, para 2-related text, then do the same for the 2nd way of thinking you want to focus upon
I think you will find that having more than 1 related text may help if your related text does not relate to your prescribed text for all aspects of the ways of thinking-but basically in your essay you have to introduce the context specific to that way of thinking and you have to propose reasoning and evidence from the text why writers are at forefront of change and cannot help but challenge accepted ways of thinking-often they initiate-brings certain issues into people's consciousness
despite not being familiar with your prescribed or related text-I think the best way would be for you to now have a go at writing this essay, sample essays for after the bomb is really hard to get-particularly good quality ones and all essays often structure differently, so write an essay, and get your teacher/tutor or you are welcome to pm me to have a look over it and check out this website
http://checkin425.edublogs.org/ -it will give you some ideas of essay structure and the level of writing that is expected at the extension English level-any more questions, welcome to pm me-hope this helps
