The one thing that impacted me the most was All Quiet on the Western Front. This really was the thing that completely changed my perspective on war and really got the ball rolling on the whole project. The morbid feel of the book and the way it made war look like something that is not beautiful but something grotesque and repulsive completely changed my viewpoint on war itself. I am not saying that I think war is a terrible thing, because war does serve a purpose, and it is likely that a side effect of the human race is war, and I think that war is just something that will happen, and fighting against it will have no effect. I am merely stating that I no longer look at war as something that is beautiful, but something that is unavoidable, yet necessary. The part that is most fresh in my memory from this project is probably Slaughterhouse Five. This is because between the two books, I found Slaughterhouse Five much more interesting. This is mostly because it added an element of fantasy to it with its use of “Tralfamadorians,” an alien which we came to the conclusion that were made up to help the main character of the book, Billy Pilgrim, cope with the stresses that war had put on him. Also, Slaughterhouse Five had a slight sense of comedy, while still keeping the morbid feel that was in All Quiet on the Western Front. This made the book a much more enjoyable read for me as the overall feel on AQotWF started to become tedious to read as you went deeper into the book. I think if I hadn’t been introduced to this project, my viewpoint on war would be much different that it is currently. This project had opened up new ideas, as most projects do, and helped to me to get a deeper understanding of a subject that is widely known, but not truly known.
My personal truth of war after this project is that war is an unavoidable cause of death and destruction. War serves it purpose, and I believe war is going to happen whether or not it is wanted, as no one really wants war, but I think what I would think the war truly is if I were in a war is that it is a tool used to cause mass death and destruction. War is an incredibly valuable topic to study because war is a huge part of all of our lives, and it is very active. Wars can break out in a matter of months, and it drags thousands of men with it. Being educated about war is an incredibly important thing to learn about and understand, because it is very possible that war can happen in our lifetimes, and when it does, we will be able to connect to it and be able to understand it better than many others because we understand what it can be like from a soldier’s viewpoint. I think war has not impacted me incredibly personally. As stated before, I can come out of this project with a much larger knowledge of war itself, and I will always be able to carry that knowledge with me in life, but it has not changed me on a more personal level.
I think I enjoyed, like I said in the first paragraph, Slaughterhouse Five the most by far. I really enjoyed just the way it was written very strategically, and you could tell it was incredibly well thought-out. I never did finish TTTC, as I had just forgotten to finish it, though it seemed, from what I had read, to be a very interesting, slightly comedic in a messed-up sort of way, book. Personally, All Quiet on the Western Front was my least favorite book of the three. Its morbid feel really bored me as I get deeper into the book. Of course, I do believe that the book is a beautiful piece of work in its own right, but the way it is written so morbidly throughout the entire book really lost me. It also felt slightly predictable. Poor Paul just had really bad luck, and I wasn’t truly surprised when all of his comrades died. I think reading about a subject is a very valuable way to obtain knowledge about it. Especially in cases such as war, where you can get first-hand accounts about what those who lived it feel about it. You can get a lot of different opinions on the subject, and it can help you form your own. I also think that there are other ways to understand subjects. Video, presentations, and other things such as expos can all be a great way to understand a subject. For example, you can just give off a list of reasons why McDonalds is an unhealthy choice, but making an interesting video about what is actually in a McDonalds hamburger or fries can catch someone’s attention more so than just writing a list of facts. The value of these novels to me is that they were all incredibly important in forming my own opinion about what war truly is to me. All of the reading we did was at least a little biased towards whether war is a good or bad thing, and I was able to take this information and biases and form an opinion of my own. I don’t know if the CoW writing made me a better writer. It did help me to figure out how to write factual fiction, where there are events and such that truly happened, but they are written from someone who is fictional. Yet, other than that, I believe I received no other true gain from writing this story, though I do love to write and it was definitely fun to write about a subject that I had previously little knowledge of.
My creative vision was to make a collage that had that was going to be about how war is truly about death and destruction. I wanted to do a collage because writing was my strong point, but I already had a strong piece of writing, and I wanted to have something that would catch people’s attention more than just two pieces of writing sitting on a table. Art is definitely not my area of expertise, as I am a terrible artist, painter, and so on, so I thought that making a collage, as it is art, but it does not require actual artist work. Originally, I wanted to make a collage in the shape of a face, and it would be speaking my quote, which basically encompassed my entire idea of death and destruction. I decided I didn’t really like the idea of making this big, awkward face, so I scratched that idea and went on to making what would be a chalk outline of a soldier, as if it would be on a crime scene, but after some peer input, that idea just really turned into the chalk being a more prominent guideline for the collage itself. I also wanted to put some nice red fabric over the black to add just a sense of refinement to it, but it that was much easier said than done, and that idea turned out to be a failure. If I would have done anything differently, it would have been to not fail as hard on the nice fabric on the outside. I feel like this would have added that last touch, as I have said before, of refinement. Most of the people just seemed to be impressed with my work. They seemed to have similar opinions to what I had, and some thought the idea was really cool. I don’t remember anyone being angered by what I had on display, so I would say the public was quite positive in terms of the way my project was laid out.
My grates asset to contribute to the class is my willingness to be helpful. I always at least try to help those nearby with whatever they are doing if they really need help on something that they are struggling with. Obviously, I am not always of much help, but it’s the thought that counts I would say. I have benefitted from the class so far. The CoW project helped me dust off my writing and art skills and get me ready for the rest of the year. I can now kind of get a feel for what humanities will be like and I should be able to manage myself much better this year because of it. I think the thing that is going well so far is that I am able to get things done. A lot of the time I will get distracted because I get interested in the subject that s group is talking about, and end up getting off topic, but when I get down to work, I really can get things done. The thing I would like to see change about our class is the times when it feels like homework is overbearing. Sometimes I will have tons of other homework, and then humanities stacked on top of it all can be really stressful. Otherwise, I enjoy the class quite greatly. I personal like writing assignments when it comes to big projects, but I know that not a lot of people are into just sitting down and writing pages and pages on a certain subject, so I feel as if writing is not the first choice one might have for a larger-scale project. I am not sure exactly how to make a project fit so that some may learn through writing and others learn a different way, but I am just stating writing is my most comfortable area when it comes to larger projects. Overall, I am quite happy with the outcome of this project and can’t wait to move ahead into another!
My personal truth of war after this project is that war is an unavoidable cause of death and destruction. War serves it purpose, and I believe war is going to happen whether or not it is wanted, as no one really wants war, but I think what I would think the war truly is if I were in a war is that it is a tool used to cause mass death and destruction. War is an incredibly valuable topic to study because war is a huge part of all of our lives, and it is very active. Wars can break out in a matter of months, and it drags thousands of men with it. Being educated about war is an incredibly important thing to learn about and understand, because it is very possible that war can happen in our lifetimes, and when it does, we will be able to connect to it and be able to understand it better than many others because we understand what it can be like from a soldier’s viewpoint. I think war has not impacted me incredibly personally. As stated before, I can come out of this project with a much larger knowledge of war itself, and I will always be able to carry that knowledge with me in life, but it has not changed me on a more personal level.
I think I enjoyed, like I said in the first paragraph, Slaughterhouse Five the most by far. I really enjoyed just the way it was written very strategically, and you could tell it was incredibly well thought-out. I never did finish TTTC, as I had just forgotten to finish it, though it seemed, from what I had read, to be a very interesting, slightly comedic in a messed-up sort of way, book. Personally, All Quiet on the Western Front was my least favorite book of the three. Its morbid feel really bored me as I get deeper into the book. Of course, I do believe that the book is a beautiful piece of work in its own right, but the way it is written so morbidly throughout the entire book really lost me. It also felt slightly predictable. Poor Paul just had really bad luck, and I wasn’t truly surprised when all of his comrades died. I think reading about a subject is a very valuable way to obtain knowledge about it. Especially in cases such as war, where you can get first-hand accounts about what those who lived it feel about it. You can get a lot of different opinions on the subject, and it can help you form your own. I also think that there are other ways to understand subjects. Video, presentations, and other things such as expos can all be a great way to understand a subject. For example, you can just give off a list of reasons why McDonalds is an unhealthy choice, but making an interesting video about what is actually in a McDonalds hamburger or fries can catch someone’s attention more so than just writing a list of facts. The value of these novels to me is that they were all incredibly important in forming my own opinion about what war truly is to me. All of the reading we did was at least a little biased towards whether war is a good or bad thing, and I was able to take this information and biases and form an opinion of my own. I don’t know if the CoW writing made me a better writer. It did help me to figure out how to write factual fiction, where there are events and such that truly happened, but they are written from someone who is fictional. Yet, other than that, I believe I received no other true gain from writing this story, though I do love to write and it was definitely fun to write about a subject that I had previously little knowledge of.
My creative vision was to make a collage that had that was going to be about how war is truly about death and destruction. I wanted to do a collage because writing was my strong point, but I already had a strong piece of writing, and I wanted to have something that would catch people’s attention more than just two pieces of writing sitting on a table. Art is definitely not my area of expertise, as I am a terrible artist, painter, and so on, so I thought that making a collage, as it is art, but it does not require actual artist work. Originally, I wanted to make a collage in the shape of a face, and it would be speaking my quote, which basically encompassed my entire idea of death and destruction. I decided I didn’t really like the idea of making this big, awkward face, so I scratched that idea and went on to making what would be a chalk outline of a soldier, as if it would be on a crime scene, but after some peer input, that idea just really turned into the chalk being a more prominent guideline for the collage itself. I also wanted to put some nice red fabric over the black to add just a sense of refinement to it, but it that was much easier said than done, and that idea turned out to be a failure. If I would have done anything differently, it would have been to not fail as hard on the nice fabric on the outside. I feel like this would have added that last touch, as I have said before, of refinement. Most of the people just seemed to be impressed with my work. They seemed to have similar opinions to what I had, and some thought the idea was really cool. I don’t remember anyone being angered by what I had on display, so I would say the public was quite positive in terms of the way my project was laid out.
My grates asset to contribute to the class is my willingness to be helpful. I always at least try to help those nearby with whatever they are doing if they really need help on something that they are struggling with. Obviously, I am not always of much help, but it’s the thought that counts I would say. I have benefitted from the class so far. The CoW project helped me dust off my writing and art skills and get me ready for the rest of the year. I can now kind of get a feel for what humanities will be like and I should be able to manage myself much better this year because of it. I think the thing that is going well so far is that I am able to get things done. A lot of the time I will get distracted because I get interested in the subject that s group is talking about, and end up getting off topic, but when I get down to work, I really can get things done. The thing I would like to see change about our class is the times when it feels like homework is overbearing. Sometimes I will have tons of other homework, and then humanities stacked on top of it all can be really stressful. Otherwise, I enjoy the class quite greatly. I personal like writing assignments when it comes to big projects, but I know that not a lot of people are into just sitting down and writing pages and pages on a certain subject, so I feel as if writing is not the first choice one might have for a larger-scale project. I am not sure exactly how to make a project fit so that some may learn through writing and others learn a different way, but I am just stating writing is my most comfortable area when it comes to larger projects. Overall, I am quite happy with the outcome of this project and can’t wait to move ahead into another!