Our latest humanities project was poetry on war, peace, enlightenment, and violence. This project sounds simple but what there is a lot of work just to write a simple poem. We had to first learn the basics of poetry. We studied the types of poems and the poetic devices. Poetic devices are the things that make a poem a poem. Meter is a good example of this. Meter is the number of syllables per line. You never notice this when reading the poem but it makes it flow better. The simple things in poems make the poems a lot better.
I got my inspiration from the thought of what a soldier is thinking during combat. I researched a ton about how some of the wars were started and how they were finished. After speaking to a man who was in the war, I could really get more of a perspective on how soldiers mind think from the beginning of war to the end. He really talked about how he was talked into what he should do while he is in the war and what he could never do as in thinking about the war or the thought of killing a man. After hearing this I knew exactly what to write my poem on.
I learned how to present in front of an audience during this project. I have always had to present but during this project I really had to memorize what I was saying. In the past I would have note cards that had simple phrases that would help me remember my speech but when saying a poem you don’t have that option. I had to learn how to present my poem with meaning and not like this is what I have to do. here is my poem
Time of War
Afraid to end up in the ground,
Life can fade with a single round.
Living in fear of painful death,
Hoping it’s not his very last breath.
Running and avoiding land mines,
Constantly checking vital signs,
Trying to reach his objective,
Hopes his gun is not defective.
He prays for the lives it will take,
But still he prays for it to break.
How could he take someone’s life,
When he too could have a wife?
Sadly that’s the way he was taught.
Kill someone without a bad thought.
Never given details of why,
Never explained who is this guy?
But miserably he was there,
Looking into death’s evil stare,
Though the trench filled with other boy’s blood,
Men losing their boots in the mud.
And then there was no more violence.
The noise went completely silent,
Sound disappearing as he fell,
And taken away from this @#!*% .
for our project we were told to write a story about our perspective about the Vietnam war. this is what i wrote-
Vietnam War Story
Soldiers in the Vietnam War were briefed about the mission, given equipment, hopped on a helicopter or walked miles for a mission that would have little effect on the war, and then returned to base. If they were killed during the mission, they would be put in a bag and shipped back to America only to be replaced by another 19 year old that had no business in a war. They were lab rats for American politicians who had never set foot in Vietnam. Even though the soldiers in the Vietnam War had little say in what they did compared to politicians, they had the greatest stories about the war.
People who had never seen combat were making the calls. This fact is illustrated in war stories told by soldiers like Jack Cunningham in the book Surrender Was Not an Option:
When the Soldiers do fallow what they are told the soldiers are responsible for their actions, even if they were fulfilling orders given to them. This is what happened with the My Lai Massacre. The My Lai Massacre was a mass murder of 347-504 unarmed citizens in southern Vietnam. Many of the casualties were women, children, babies, and elderly people. Most of the victims were also beaten, tortured, and even sexually abused. 26 US soldiers were charged at first but only Lt. William Calley was convicted. In a testimony of Calley he stated:
A: Because that was my order, sir. That was the order of the day, sir.
Q: Who gave you that order?
A: My commanding officer, sir.
However, there are stories about friendship. American Soldiers became friends with the locals and created bonds that could not be broken. A great example of this is in the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien:
Many missions carried out during the Vietnam War had no effect on the overall picture of the war. A squad would leave during the night to set up for an ambush just to get back to base the next morning to find that the war had moved on to a different region. However, there were missions that changed the war completely. A good example is the Tet offensive. When the Vietcong attacked with over 80,000 troops assaulting more than 100 towns that had been controlled by the Americans, it put our military to the test. After months of fighting, the Americans and Southern Vietnamese prevailed but with great consequences from the people back home. The Tet offensive helped set off the antiwar movement which played a big role with the hippy movement as well as ending the war. This helped the Vietcong win the town formerly known as Saigon, but now known as Ho Chi Mihn City after the northern ruler of the communist Vietcong. There were many reports after the Tet offensive. Most were saying the same thing:
… Even though the offensive was a military failure for the North Vietnamese Communists and Vietcong (VC), it was a political and psychological victory for them because it dramatically contradicted optimistic claims by the U.S. government that the war was all but over.
Writing this paper I realize that even though the soldiers don’t have a say in what they do, they try to make good things happen out of what they are told to do. The Vietcong soldiers were told to attack over 100 cities against the US which was a suicide mission but in the end they were victorious. They took dirt and turned it into diamonds. This makes me question the price of victory. Was the Vietnam War worth thousands of lives and billions of dollars? Personally, I think it’s not right to just have lab rats running around killing people for politics. Drafting 19 year olds holding a gun and putting him in combat is not right. If a man is in war it should be by his choice. But my opinion doesn’t change anything. The past is the past and we can’t change it. No matter how much you wish the war never happened, it did and the soldiers will keep doing what they are told to do.
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Pendent Publishing, 1990. 30-34. Print.
Cunningham, Jack. Surrender Was Not an Option. New York: Blue Wall Publishing, 1989. 37. Print.
"Tet Offensive." US states history. Ed. Paul Brown. N.P., 14 Mar. 1997. Google. Web. 24 Feb. 2011. <
Cunningham, Jack. "Surrender Was Not an Option." Experiences in Vietnam. CAP. NFSC. BFSDF, 29 Apr. 1989. Google. Web. 24 Feb. 2011. <
"Lt. William Calley." Law Net. N.P., 17 July 1988. Google. Web. 24 Feb. 2011. <
"My Lai Massacre." Wapedia. Wikipedia, 27 Sept. 1999. Google. Web. 24 Feb. 2011. <http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1862.html>.http://www.capveterans.com/>.http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/myl_Calltest.html>. http://wapedia.mobi/en/My_Lai_massacre>.
Essay Self-Assessment
•What did you want to focus on as your thesis in this essay and how well do you feel you supported your main idea?
I focused on how soldiers don’t have a say in what they are doing. Soldiers are told what to do and have no opinion. I talk about multiple incidents involving soldiers that are facing people that have little combat experiences making calls, including one man who faced war crimes for fallowing orders.
•How well did you integrate and interpret primary sources into your writing to support your point of view?
I think that I did a good job putting in primary sources in my paper. I used examples like the Tet offensive and the My Lai Massacre. Many of these events were changing points in the war. I also put in multiple book quotes in my writing which I thought added a different perspective in it.
•Explain how your paper is organized in a way to support your argument.
I mostly had writing in my paper that proved my point. I realy never said much about how they could make good decisions. I need to start putting in both perspectives and then giving my opinion about the two.
•What process did you use to proofread this paper, and how well proofread is it overall?
◦For the writing? I did a class critique
◦For the citations?
•What specific part of this paper are you most proud of and why?
One part that I am proud about is the part with the My Lai Massacre. I thought that I brought in a lot of good points that made my perspective almost a fact.
•Anything else you think might be important when you think about how well you did on this paper/project?
I left out an important part about the other side of the My Lai Massacre. I left out the side of the commanding officer’s side of the story. It talked about how he had never given such orders.
Project Reflection
•What does it mean to tell a true history? (Cite more than one piece of evidence from this project to support your answer).
I think it is not possible to write a true war story. There is no possible way to put every opinion in a story about a war. There’re just too many stories to fit.
•What does it mean to tell a true war story? (Cite more than one piece of evidence from this project to support your answer).
To write a true war story you must have all perspectives about the war. This is nearly impossible to do athough because there are around 6 billion people that have an opinion about the Vietnam war.
this project was about colonialism in Africa. we were all assigned a country in Africa and we had to interview a person from there. after that we wrote about it. here is what i wrote-
Austin Rogers
Madagascar
My country is Madagascar. I used to think that Madagascar was just that big island that never got to be a part of Africa. I thought that there was little to no population and all that was there were lemurs. BUT NO. Madagascar is a nation that people not only live but thrive unlike some of the other countries in Africa. A thing that I didn’t know and you probably didn’t know is that Madagascar was colonialized by the French in 1883 and was under the French rule for until 1960. When the French landed in 1890 the country was led by the Merina kingdom. The Merina kingdom was a family owned monarchy that was dedicated to what the people wanted. The 103 year old monarch ended after the Fanco-Hova war when France took over. Skip forwards a few hundred years and in the 1950’s the people wanted to rebel against the French. That is when the Democratic Social Party of Madagascar was formed. The DSPM wanted a government that was self-ruled but still wanted to be friends with France. Finally the DSPM got what they wanted on June 26th, 1960 Madagascar got full independence from France.
Even after their independence Madagascar was still having problems with their government. Madagascar's first president was Philibert Tsiranana. He was president until 1972 when he resigned in because of antigovernment actions. The next president was Gabriel Ramanantsoa who resigned in 1975, handing over the job to Richard Ratsimandrava. He was assassinated 6 days later. Finally a new government was created in late in 1975, under Didier Ratsiraka. During the 27 or so years of President Ratsiraka's rule, Madagascar started to become a socialism based government. But in 2002 after a heated election between Ratsiraka and Ravalomanana which Ratsiraka lost, Ratsiraka supporters cut off transport routes from a port city to the capital city, a place where there were many Ravalomanana supporters. Violence soon fallowed until July 2002 when Ratsiraka finally fled to France. After being re-elected in 2006, Ravalomanana's government was dissolved in March of 2009 with a military coup, which was soon got under control. New elections are scheduled to be held around May, 2011.
I interviewed a girl named Sylbia Choi. She goes to Penn University and is from the nation’s capital, Antananarivo. When I asked her about what it is like there the answer surprised me. She said it was a lot like it is in the states and that they could have anything they ever wanted. Which sadly when you think of Africa you think of this continent that struggles and people are deprived of necessary things. Madagascar is one of the most stable countries in Africa and but you never hear about it on the news.
So how does this help me overcome otherness? I no longer see Madagascar as that big island with lemurs but a country that is truly underrated. No one hears or sees anything about Madagascar. I now see Madagascar as country that is a success in a continent that has been known to struggle.
King Leopold's Ghost
in class we read KLG to learn about our next project. we learned about imperialism and colonialism in Africa. After we read the book we were assigned a country to research about how the were colonized/imperiarlised. I was assigned Madagascar. Then we interviewed a person that live in the country. to see the video of my project please see it on YouTube. here is my essay for KLG-
Austin Rogers
King Leopold’s Ghost Essay
Leopold created an imperialist system for profit and power, all while successfully hiding it. The imperial system he created was brutal using violent was to make sure that every penny could be made from the Congo. King Leopold need a way to make what he was doing seem like it’s for good while using slavery to get what he wanted.
The Imperialist system used brutal ways to get things done in the Congo. Inside the Congo it was not uncommon for slaves to be beaten, raped, and even murdered for not doing a job correct. The slaves had to work hard jobs like gathering rubber. The only way to carry the liquid rubber from the tree to the camp was to rub it on to your skin. When the rubber dried it would be peeled off. As you can imagine this would be very painful, which made the natives not want to do it, which lead to the brutality of the Belgians.
Another that surprisingly brought brutal was to the Congo was supplies. There was a limited amount of ammunition for the weapons. So the Europeans were told to only use bullets to kill the natives. For one to prove that the bullet was used for willing they would have to bring back the hand of the dead. However the Europeans didn’t always follow this rule. Explores wanted to hunt but couldn’t without bringing back a hand. So they would find a native and chop of the hand to show that the bullet was used for good purposes.
The brutality of the system was unnoticed because Leopold hid it so well. On page 67 of King Leopold’s Ghost it says that King Leopold was creating the “confederation of free negro republics” which is a cover up for what he was really doing in the Congo. Leopold created this to make everyone think that he was anti-slavery, even though he used slaves to do all of the work in the Congo. Everything that Leopold did that seemed good on the outside was to cover for the dark things that were happening in the Congo.
Another way Leopold kept everything hidden was a famous African explore named Henry Stanly. Stanly’s job was to make what the king was doing in the Congo a good thing. In 1879 Stanly gave a speech in New York that said that the king’s intentions were to found a chain of outposts for giving any travelers information about the area. The only problem was that there were no out posts for the travelers that provide information. This was just another way that kept every one thinking that it was a place that a travel destination, not a country driven by terror.
What king Leopold did in the Congo was wrong, even though he made the rest of the world believe that it was for good. He hid slavery by creating a foundation to stop worldwide slavery. He convinced the world that the Congo was a place for knowledge and a wonderful travel destination when really he was just making an Imperialist System to terrorize the Congo.
Enlightenment Project Final
Describe one thing you would do differently if you could go back to the beginning of this project?
If I could go back and redo one thing about this project I would make my guillotine bigger so it could cut more. Also I would spend more time learning about the French Revolution. If I could go back and do this I think my project would have turned out a lot better.
What advice would you give to another student who is about to complete a project that is as open as this one?
Advice that I would give to some one on such an open project would be to pick something that you will enjoy doing. I liked this project because I liked building the guillotine and learning about them. I have also had projects that I didn’t like and it was a struggle to get them done.
What do you think a teacher would say about your performance on this project?
I think they would say that we did a good job on the guillotine but not so well on the studying of the French Revolution.
What is one thing you always want to remember about enlightenment or about something you learned during this project?
One thing that I would like to remember is that we made a guillotine for school.
