What Is This Essay Supposed to Do?
Ultimately, you should make attempt to develop a new understanding of your topic which is, after all, the goal of any good piece of criticism. That understanding will take the form of an insightful thesis which you will support through the research that you have performed and your own critical thinking and reading. But in addition to sharing your thesis, this essay will also reveal how that argument in some way responds or adds to ongoing conversations. In other words, you are not only sharing what you want to say, but what your aims are.

Those aims are largely for you to determine, based on what you believe you can accomplish through this scholarly approach.  Are you weighing in on an ongoing debate in popular or scholarly conversations? Providing a new perspective? Changing the terms of the conversation? Using your scholarly lens to reveal shortcomings in conventional wisdom about your topic? Evaluating a works accuracy or the effectiveness of its message based on what youve learned from scholarship? Your argument should have a role to play in a larger conversation (about your topic, or within the academic discipline), and those aims should be clear to readers.