Truth of War
Essay
How Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Can Affect a Soldiers Perspective
You may look at war as something that has a lot of glory in it, something that is justified and should be used whenever we need to, but that just isn’t the truth. War is violent and it requires much more than most can usually take. It’s a violent and horrific act that most people won’t understand, it requires a soldier to be there first hand and have the experiences that a soldier has to completely understand what happens and what is wrong with war. In order to completely understand what is about to be said, it will be helpful to have read the books All Quiet on the Western Front and Slaughterhouse Five. The movie “Enemy at the Gates” is based on a true story about a sniper name Vasily Zaytsev and will also be helpful along with basic knowledge of World War I and World War II. All of these are important because they help you understand the experiences that soldiers go through and that the experiences can change their outlook on life and war, whether it is good or bad. War can affect a soldier in many different ways, be it physically or psychologically, but soldiers are most affected psychologically due to the extreme stress that they endure in their time in the war.
Before a soldier goes into war they have an image in their head of honor and glory, but once they see the fighting first hand their mind may very quickly change. In the book Slaughterhouse Five there is a soldier names Weary. Weary is a soldier who is unpleasant towards most people including Billy. He is an eighteen year old bully, whose father just so happens to collect torture instruments. He talks about these constantly, which gets repetitive to everyone around him, which makes him become an annoyance to most people in his squad, which included Billy, Weary, and two other scouts. Weary has this vision of his squad; it is what he has always wanted. In Slaughterhouse Five it says, “Weary’s version of the true war story went like this: There was a big German attack and Weary and his antitank buddies fought like hell until everybody was killed but Weary. So it goes. And then Weary tied in with two scouts, and they became close friends immediately, and they decided to fight their way back to their own lines. They were going to travel fast. They were damned if they’d surrender. They shook hands all around. They called themselves ‘The Three Muskateers’.” This section on page 42 shows that he had a perfect vision of what he wanted, but the other two scouts had no idea he even had this thought. He made up an entire story surrounding “The Three Muskateers” because he wanted it so bad. As I said the scouts didn’t even have any clue about this whole concept of a group of good friends brought together by this strong, life changing story. He had by some miracle lived through a tank attack, unlike everyone else in his squad, and he found two scouts. The scouts and Weary fought side by side through many battles and lived to tell the tale. They all mattered to each other, everyone cared for each other, but in reality they didn’t. Weary had become an annoyance to his squad and, the scouts particularly, didn’t want to be with him anymore. Soldiers typically hear heroic stories such as these before they enter the war, but after fighting for a while they realize that what they hear isn’t completely true. The stories for the most part are made up, such as Weary’s story, but the few that are true are a very rare case. The stories that soldiers hear before they enter a war is typically nothing like how war actually is. As war progresses it changes how a soldier looks at it and feels towards it, but it mainly affects how they look at it mentally.
After a soldier has been fighting in a war and has seen the front lines, they are typically affected mentally and they act differently when they return. In the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Erich says “At the sound of the first droning of shells we rush back, in one part of our being, a thousand years. By the animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected.” Later on it says, “One cannot explain it. A man is walking along without thought or heed; - suddenly he throws himself down on the ground and a storm of fragments flies harmlessly over him; - yet he cannot remember either to have heard the shell coming or to have thought of flinging himself down. But had he not abandoned himself to the impulse he would now be a heap of mangled flesh. It is this other, this second sight in us, that has thrown us to the ground and not saved us, without our knowing how.” This is on page 56 and he is trying to say that the soldiers are driven back to basic instinct just to stay alive, and when this happens it makes them wonder what is happening to them. When you are stripped from your current humanity and go back a few thousand years to when you did things because you were supposed to, not because you wanted to, makes you worry about what is happening to you. Doing things involuntarily makes people wonder if they are going crazy because that just isn’t something that we do anymore. When this happened to the soldier he had no recollection of what had happened and he wondered what happened. Situations like this really occur and because of this soldiers begin to worry and wonder about what is happening. They see themselves as something that they once weren’t and they want to go back to what they were. The psychology of war only caused accidentally, but it can also be used as a weapon against soldiers.
Although psychology is something that is caused as an effect of an experience, it can also be used as a tool to manipulate people and make people afraid. In the movie “Enemy at the Gates,” which is based on a true story, Vasily Zaytsev is used as a tool against the German military. He had an estimated 400 kills between October 1942 and January 1943. With all of these kills he was used as a mental weapon with the Germans, they would fear that he was going to come and kill them, making them always worry and never be as alert. Typically in a movie there is a soldier who is better than everyone else, but this is rarely the case. Movies are typically exaggerated in every aspect with war, but the movie “Enemy at the Gates” isn’t too much because it is based on a true story and there are facts to back up the statistics. In a war a single soldier with experience and training better than others can make hundreds afraid; Vasily Zaytsev made hundreds afraid at the same time that he killed hundreds in order to help his country. If a soldier is afraid they most likely won’t be as alert as he would if he weren’t afraid. Psychologically being damaged isn’t only a side effect; it is also a technique used by militaries to strike fear into their enemies. When a soldier goes through a traumatic experience, such as seeing someone that he knows get killed or having an explosion go off right next to him, the way that he looks out changes. When a sniper, such as Vasily, kills someone next to him, not only is he worried that it could happen to him, but he is traumatized by the experience, which means that he isn’t the same soldier or person that he used to be. He is someone that has changed so if he does make it through the war he won’t be the same person that he was when he entered the war to people around him. This problem affects more than just the soldier, but it affects everyone that he is around. It affects everyone around him because of how he acts and how he thinks of things and talks to people. Psychology along with many other factors can make a soldier afraid, which can change their outlook on war.
Soldiers are affected in other ways than just psychologically, they are also affected physically. Physical injuries typically don’t have as much of an impact on people because you tend to recover from an injury, even if it takes a long time. For example there is a US Marine named Nicholas Kimmel. He is a triple amputee from his time in a war, and he was still able to throw the first pitch in the second game of the World Series. He is missing both of his legs and an arm, but he has prosthetics for them. He is now able to walk with a cane; he healed from his injuries that he had. Granted, he will never walk the same way that he used to be able to, but he is still able to walk and he was able to recover from his injury. A physical injury is a much different than a psychological injury, it will most likely heal. If it doesn’t heal than you will most likely die or have difficulties with everyday life, which isn’t wanted by anyone, but it is still better than being afraid of every sound that you hear for the rest of your life. For instance, in All Quiet on the Western Front on page 71 it says, “Someone lies in front of us. We stop; Kropp goes on alone with the wounded man. The man on the ground is a recruit, his hip is covered with blood,” and a few lines later it says, “We lay the hip bare. It is one mass of mince-meat and bone splinters. The joint has been hit. This lad won’t walk anymore.” He won’t be able to walk again, this is a fact, but his mind is still in the same place. He won’t be back in the war, and I’m sure his perspective has changed from having his hip blown out, I’m sure he thinks something like that war is brutal and shouldn’t happen, but he is alive and he will live through his full life with a healthy mind. He’ll still be the same person to his family that he always was, he’ll still be able to talk and have conversations and not be afraid every moment of every day like someone with PTSD. Physical injuries are traumatic, but most likely not to the extent that staying in war for large amounts of time will. Physical injuries are bad, and they to contribute to a soldier’s perspective on war, but I think that the mental aspect of war affects soldiers the most between the two.
All of the experiences that a soldier goes through shape the way that they see war, the world, and how they see everything after the war. The truth of war isn’t a generic feeling felt by every solder, it is something that develops from the experiences that each individual soldier goes through. In the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque he says “I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me.” Paul says this on page 295 and he is talking about how the war affected him. It made him not care about anything; he didn’t think anything was important anymore. He is saying “they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more.” This means that everything that he once cared for was taken from him and without anybody or anything to care about what was the point of caring at all. Similar to this is the bookSlaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. In this book the main character, Billy Pilgrim, is most likely suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. There is a lot of evidence that he is suffering, such as on page 57 at the bottom of the page he hears a siren go off, it says, “A siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting World War Three at any time. The siren was simply announcing high noon.” One of the most prominent symptoms of PTSD is reliving past memories or experiences that are horrific (Yehuda). Billy relives many memories throughout the book, such as being in the firebombing of Dresden and the plane crash that he was in, which his wife died on the way to the hospital to see him. PTSD can be caused by many things, such as war and plane crashes. It seemed like he didn’t travel through time until later in his life, so the plane crashed could have even made him have the PTSD. For Billy the truth of war was much different than it was for Paul. They both see war as something that is bad, but they still have different specific perspectives. Paul and Billy also had much different experiences in the war, so that also makes their perspectives different. Billy was in Dresden during the firebombing in WWII, while Paul’s tour was mainly centered on the western front during WWI. The tactics in these two wars were much different, Paul was in fields while, for the most part, Billy was in towns and urban areas. The wars differed in so many ways that they are almost incomparable. Even just the change in area can drastically affect someone’s perspective on how war is, because in urban areas there are more civilians and casualties because of the close quarters, while if the fighting is in a field there are almost no civilians and much fewer deaths because of the distance and area that you have to fight. The experiences that a soldier goes through and sees most likely change them from the person that they once were. Rarely does a soldier go into a war and come out with the same thought process. The experiences that a soldier goes through can change their outlook on war in general, but this isn’t the case with every soldier. Not every soldier sees the horrific things that others do, making their view on war differ greatly from a soldier’s view that has seen the horrors.
There are still many soldiers affected by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and there isn’t a solution for it. As long as war persists there will still be soldiers getting affected dramatically for the rest of their lives. In 2005 the average suicide rate per 100,000 males was around 23 people. War veterans suffering from PTSD on average had a suicide rate of about 37 people per 100,000 males (The Relationship Between PTSD and Suicide). When the suicide rate nearly doubles in males, something isn’t right. In females the numbers are even worse, out of 100,000 females, about 6 commit suicide per year without PTSD. With PTSD this number is over two times the amount at 14 (The Relationship Between PTSD and Suicide). The suicide rate is doubled, and yet there is no change with how we view war. This isn’t the glory of war that most people think about, the death isn’t something that is mentioned in the propaganda and advertisements that are shown to you to make you want to join and support your country. Sure, it is good to support your country, but to die for your country shouldn’t be something that happens. The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder says “Of combat trauma survivors, those who were wounded more than once or put in the hospital for a wound have the highest suicide risk. This suggests suicide risk in Veterans may be affected by how intense and how often the combat trauma was,” (Suicide and PTSD). By this they are saying that the experiences that each individual soldier goes through shape the soldier into who they are when they return. As a civilian person you most likely think that suicide is a long term solution for a short term problem, but to someone with something like PTSD, they realize it isn’t a short term problem and they realize it will persist for the rest of their life. Another important thing that The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder said is, “Some studies link suicide risk in those with PTSD to distressing trauma memories, anger, and poor control of impulses,” (Suicide and PTSD). A common symptom of PTSD is anger from the trauma, as The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder says, “Anger is often a large part of a survivor's response to trauma. It is a core piece of the survival response in human beings,” (Anger and Trauma). They see no way to escape the horrors that they keep seeing because of their experience, so they end up committing suicide. People suffering from things such as PTSD are affected in more ways than we can imagine, and it will persist as long as war is happening. War isn’t the only cause for PTSD, but it is one of the most common. There are many people who have been to war and have come back with some sort of PTSD. A majority of soldiers don’t come back with these issues, but people still do, which isn’t something that someone should have to deal with. The soldier can always be taken away from the war, but his experiences and memories will last a lifetime.
You may look at war as something that has a lot of glory in it, something that is justified and should be used whenever we need to, but that just isn’t the truth. War is violent and it requires much more than most can usually take. It’s a violent and horrific act that most people won’t understand, it requires a soldier to be there first hand and have the experiences that a soldier has to completely understand what happens and what is wrong with war. In order to completely understand what is about to be said, it will be helpful to have read the books All Quiet on the Western Front and Slaughterhouse Five. The movie “Enemy at the Gates” is based on a true story about a sniper name Vasily Zaytsev and will also be helpful along with basic knowledge of World War I and World War II. All of these are important because they help you understand the experiences that soldiers go through and that the experiences can change their outlook on life and war, whether it is good or bad. War can affect a soldier in many different ways, be it physically or psychologically, but soldiers are most affected psychologically due to the extreme stress that they endure in their time in the war.
Before a soldier goes into war they have an image in their head of honor and glory, but once they see the fighting first hand their mind may very quickly change. In the book Slaughterhouse Five there is a soldier names Weary. Weary is a soldier who is unpleasant towards most people including Billy. He is an eighteen year old bully, whose father just so happens to collect torture instruments. He talks about these constantly, which gets repetitive to everyone around him, which makes him become an annoyance to most people in his squad, which included Billy, Weary, and two other scouts. Weary has this vision of his squad; it is what he has always wanted. In Slaughterhouse Five it says, “Weary’s version of the true war story went like this: There was a big German attack and Weary and his antitank buddies fought like hell until everybody was killed but Weary. So it goes. And then Weary tied in with two scouts, and they became close friends immediately, and they decided to fight their way back to their own lines. They were going to travel fast. They were damned if they’d surrender. They shook hands all around. They called themselves ‘The Three Muskateers’.” This section on page 42 shows that he had a perfect vision of what he wanted, but the other two scouts had no idea he even had this thought. He made up an entire story surrounding “The Three Muskateers” because he wanted it so bad. As I said the scouts didn’t even have any clue about this whole concept of a group of good friends brought together by this strong, life changing story. He had by some miracle lived through a tank attack, unlike everyone else in his squad, and he found two scouts. The scouts and Weary fought side by side through many battles and lived to tell the tale. They all mattered to each other, everyone cared for each other, but in reality they didn’t. Weary had become an annoyance to his squad and, the scouts particularly, didn’t want to be with him anymore. Soldiers typically hear heroic stories such as these before they enter the war, but after fighting for a while they realize that what they hear isn’t completely true. The stories for the most part are made up, such as Weary’s story, but the few that are true are a very rare case. The stories that soldiers hear before they enter a war is typically nothing like how war actually is. As war progresses it changes how a soldier looks at it and feels towards it, but it mainly affects how they look at it mentally.
After a soldier has been fighting in a war and has seen the front lines, they are typically affected mentally and they act differently when they return. In the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Erich says “At the sound of the first droning of shells we rush back, in one part of our being, a thousand years. By the animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected.” Later on it says, “One cannot explain it. A man is walking along without thought or heed; - suddenly he throws himself down on the ground and a storm of fragments flies harmlessly over him; - yet he cannot remember either to have heard the shell coming or to have thought of flinging himself down. But had he not abandoned himself to the impulse he would now be a heap of mangled flesh. It is this other, this second sight in us, that has thrown us to the ground and not saved us, without our knowing how.” This is on page 56 and he is trying to say that the soldiers are driven back to basic instinct just to stay alive, and when this happens it makes them wonder what is happening to them. When you are stripped from your current humanity and go back a few thousand years to when you did things because you were supposed to, not because you wanted to, makes you worry about what is happening to you. Doing things involuntarily makes people wonder if they are going crazy because that just isn’t something that we do anymore. When this happened to the soldier he had no recollection of what had happened and he wondered what happened. Situations like this really occur and because of this soldiers begin to worry and wonder about what is happening. They see themselves as something that they once weren’t and they want to go back to what they were. The psychology of war only caused accidentally, but it can also be used as a weapon against soldiers.
Although psychology is something that is caused as an effect of an experience, it can also be used as a tool to manipulate people and make people afraid. In the movie “Enemy at the Gates,” which is based on a true story, Vasily Zaytsev is used as a tool against the German military. He had an estimated 400 kills between October 1942 and January 1943. With all of these kills he was used as a mental weapon with the Germans, they would fear that he was going to come and kill them, making them always worry and never be as alert. Typically in a movie there is a soldier who is better than everyone else, but this is rarely the case. Movies are typically exaggerated in every aspect with war, but the movie “Enemy at the Gates” isn’t too much because it is based on a true story and there are facts to back up the statistics. In a war a single soldier with experience and training better than others can make hundreds afraid; Vasily Zaytsev made hundreds afraid at the same time that he killed hundreds in order to help his country. If a soldier is afraid they most likely won’t be as alert as he would if he weren’t afraid. Psychologically being damaged isn’t only a side effect; it is also a technique used by militaries to strike fear into their enemies. When a soldier goes through a traumatic experience, such as seeing someone that he knows get killed or having an explosion go off right next to him, the way that he looks out changes. When a sniper, such as Vasily, kills someone next to him, not only is he worried that it could happen to him, but he is traumatized by the experience, which means that he isn’t the same soldier or person that he used to be. He is someone that has changed so if he does make it through the war he won’t be the same person that he was when he entered the war to people around him. This problem affects more than just the soldier, but it affects everyone that he is around. It affects everyone around him because of how he acts and how he thinks of things and talks to people. Psychology along with many other factors can make a soldier afraid, which can change their outlook on war.
Soldiers are affected in other ways than just psychologically, they are also affected physically. Physical injuries typically don’t have as much of an impact on people because you tend to recover from an injury, even if it takes a long time. For example there is a US Marine named Nicholas Kimmel. He is a triple amputee from his time in a war, and he was still able to throw the first pitch in the second game of the World Series. He is missing both of his legs and an arm, but he has prosthetics for them. He is now able to walk with a cane; he healed from his injuries that he had. Granted, he will never walk the same way that he used to be able to, but he is still able to walk and he was able to recover from his injury. A physical injury is a much different than a psychological injury, it will most likely heal. If it doesn’t heal than you will most likely die or have difficulties with everyday life, which isn’t wanted by anyone, but it is still better than being afraid of every sound that you hear for the rest of your life. For instance, in All Quiet on the Western Front on page 71 it says, “Someone lies in front of us. We stop; Kropp goes on alone with the wounded man. The man on the ground is a recruit, his hip is covered with blood,” and a few lines later it says, “We lay the hip bare. It is one mass of mince-meat and bone splinters. The joint has been hit. This lad won’t walk anymore.” He won’t be able to walk again, this is a fact, but his mind is still in the same place. He won’t be back in the war, and I’m sure his perspective has changed from having his hip blown out, I’m sure he thinks something like that war is brutal and shouldn’t happen, but he is alive and he will live through his full life with a healthy mind. He’ll still be the same person to his family that he always was, he’ll still be able to talk and have conversations and not be afraid every moment of every day like someone with PTSD. Physical injuries are traumatic, but most likely not to the extent that staying in war for large amounts of time will. Physical injuries are bad, and they to contribute to a soldier’s perspective on war, but I think that the mental aspect of war affects soldiers the most between the two.
All of the experiences that a soldier goes through shape the way that they see war, the world, and how they see everything after the war. The truth of war isn’t a generic feeling felt by every solder, it is something that develops from the experiences that each individual soldier goes through. In the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque he says “I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me.” Paul says this on page 295 and he is talking about how the war affected him. It made him not care about anything; he didn’t think anything was important anymore. He is saying “they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more.” This means that everything that he once cared for was taken from him and without anybody or anything to care about what was the point of caring at all. Similar to this is the bookSlaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. In this book the main character, Billy Pilgrim, is most likely suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. There is a lot of evidence that he is suffering, such as on page 57 at the bottom of the page he hears a siren go off, it says, “A siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting World War Three at any time. The siren was simply announcing high noon.” One of the most prominent symptoms of PTSD is reliving past memories or experiences that are horrific (Yehuda). Billy relives many memories throughout the book, such as being in the firebombing of Dresden and the plane crash that he was in, which his wife died on the way to the hospital to see him. PTSD can be caused by many things, such as war and plane crashes. It seemed like he didn’t travel through time until later in his life, so the plane crashed could have even made him have the PTSD. For Billy the truth of war was much different than it was for Paul. They both see war as something that is bad, but they still have different specific perspectives. Paul and Billy also had much different experiences in the war, so that also makes their perspectives different. Billy was in Dresden during the firebombing in WWII, while Paul’s tour was mainly centered on the western front during WWI. The tactics in these two wars were much different, Paul was in fields while, for the most part, Billy was in towns and urban areas. The wars differed in so many ways that they are almost incomparable. Even just the change in area can drastically affect someone’s perspective on how war is, because in urban areas there are more civilians and casualties because of the close quarters, while if the fighting is in a field there are almost no civilians and much fewer deaths because of the distance and area that you have to fight. The experiences that a soldier goes through and sees most likely change them from the person that they once were. Rarely does a soldier go into a war and come out with the same thought process. The experiences that a soldier goes through can change their outlook on war in general, but this isn’t the case with every soldier. Not every soldier sees the horrific things that others do, making their view on war differ greatly from a soldier’s view that has seen the horrors.
There are still many soldiers affected by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and there isn’t a solution for it. As long as war persists there will still be soldiers getting affected dramatically for the rest of their lives. In 2005 the average suicide rate per 100,000 males was around 23 people. War veterans suffering from PTSD on average had a suicide rate of about 37 people per 100,000 males (The Relationship Between PTSD and Suicide). When the suicide rate nearly doubles in males, something isn’t right. In females the numbers are even worse, out of 100,000 females, about 6 commit suicide per year without PTSD. With PTSD this number is over two times the amount at 14 (The Relationship Between PTSD and Suicide). The suicide rate is doubled, and yet there is no change with how we view war. This isn’t the glory of war that most people think about, the death isn’t something that is mentioned in the propaganda and advertisements that are shown to you to make you want to join and support your country. Sure, it is good to support your country, but to die for your country shouldn’t be something that happens. The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder says “Of combat trauma survivors, those who were wounded more than once or put in the hospital for a wound have the highest suicide risk. This suggests suicide risk in Veterans may be affected by how intense and how often the combat trauma was,” (Suicide and PTSD). By this they are saying that the experiences that each individual soldier goes through shape the soldier into who they are when they return. As a civilian person you most likely think that suicide is a long term solution for a short term problem, but to someone with something like PTSD, they realize it isn’t a short term problem and they realize it will persist for the rest of their life. Another important thing that The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder said is, “Some studies link suicide risk in those with PTSD to distressing trauma memories, anger, and poor control of impulses,” (Suicide and PTSD). A common symptom of PTSD is anger from the trauma, as The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder says, “Anger is often a large part of a survivor's response to trauma. It is a core piece of the survival response in human beings,” (Anger and Trauma). They see no way to escape the horrors that they keep seeing because of their experience, so they end up committing suicide. People suffering from things such as PTSD are affected in more ways than we can imagine, and it will persist as long as war is happening. War isn’t the only cause for PTSD, but it is one of the most common. There are many people who have been to war and have come back with some sort of PTSD. A majority of soldiers don’t come back with these issues, but people still do, which isn’t something that someone should have to deal with. The soldier can always be taken away from the war, but his experiences and memories will last a lifetime.
Project Description
In this project we studied both World War I and World War II. We studied many specific instances within both World War I and World War II, one of the most interesting topics was the Firebombing of Dresden. We used different ways of learning to engage with the topic, another one was to read books. These books were "All Quiet on the Western Front," and "Slaughterhouse Five." Both of these books go into both the physical and mental aspect to war, which is what my essay was centered around. The first book, "All Quiet on the Western Front," is about a German soldier named Paul Baumer during World War I. It goes through his experiences as a soldier and the horrors that he sees. In the other book, "Slaughterhouse Five," the main character is Billy Pilgrim. He has odd adventures, but it is also very obvious that he is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. He supposedly travels back in time, but one of the most common issues with PTSD is remembering the most traumatic experiences that he had gone through. With this project we learned about many aspects of war, aside from just the glory. We started with learning about how the governments glorify war and make people want to join, specifically we learned about the tactics that they use. After that we moved onto how wars can start and how there can be warnings that aren't taken seriously, such as in the case with Franz Ferdinand. He was assassinated before WWI, which was a major cause for the start of the war. There was also an in class essay on the firebombing of Dresden in Germany. We then moved onto the wars themselves and learned about the major events that happened in each. All of this lead up to the final project; the essay and the poster.
Project
Although throughout this project I used all of the habits of heart and mind, which are perspective, advocacy, perseverance evidence, refinement. I think the one that I used the most was refinement because throughout this project I kept looking over my work and making sure it was exactly how I wanted it to turn out. I think that the project is the best that it could be for the time limit that I had. While I was writing my essay I kept reading over my work and making sure it all went together well and without any problems. That essay is the piece of work that I am most proud of this year because I worked extremely hard on it and I think that I did well overall on it. There are multiple instances in which I changed things dramatically, such as I had the word "they" in it a lot, instead of using descriptive language and describing exactly who I was talking about. I changed every one to be more specific, which I think made the essay better overall.
Essay
Although I made many revisions between my first draft and my final essay I think that two of the largest changes were made in the beginning and I added another paragraph to contrast the point that I was making. In the first paragraph there was a clear lack of focus and sentence structure at first. After getting my feedback from Lori I saw the places that needed to be refined and I fixed them quickly. There wasn't much focus, it said "You may look at war as something that isn't too horrific , but once you are
there first hand and have the experiences that the soldiers have, you will see it in a
completely different way." I think this sentence lacks focus and clarity to the point so I changed it to, "You may look at war as something that has a lot
of glory in it, something that is justified and should be used whenever we need
to, but that just isn't the truth. War
is violent and it requires much more than most can usually take. It’s a violent and horrific act that most
people won’t understand, it requires a soldier to be there first hand and have
the experiences that a soldier has to completely understand what happens and
what is wrong with war." I expanded on the points that needed to be explained more. At first I had no explanation for my point, I just said it and moved on to the next point. Another significant change to my essay was adding a new paragraph to talk about how there is more to war than just the psychological affects, there is also the physical effects that are more well known. Without it the essay seemed like it was lacking contrasting points and it was just a one sided argument made by a single person.
Extension
I'm sure that many people would say that they would work on their visual piece for the project if they had another week, but I have always enjoyed writing more than actually creating something. I think that I could have added more to make a stronger point towards my overall point. I could have done more external research and I could have even questioned some war veterans about their experiences. I think that improving my writing would be a better use of my time because I feel that my writing is always superior to my creative talent because I'm not very artistic so creating posters and other pieces of work is difficult to get something that I like. Typically when I start an art project I don't know what I want to do, but I typically figure it out as I go. This is why it takes me a while to create an artistic project, while with writing I feel like I can just write freely and write what I want, but know that it could just be erased if it's not good. I think that writing a better essay is the key to a good project because that is the thing that typically requires more work. That is why I would want to work on my essay more if I had more time.