Araaa Aquarian
Humanities
Lori Fisher
Thursday, November 6, 12
Project Reflection
Project Description:
This semester, we learned about WWI and WWII. We read the novels “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque and “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. After finishing these novels, we were faced with the question: What is the truth of war for a soldier? We wrote essays answering this question and we also worked on a project answering this question. Some people used Photoshop for their projects, some used music, some used poems and others used paintings or drawings. Leading up to this assignment, I researched some things such as the after affects of war on a soldier and I also researched PTSD to get a better inside look on what goes on for soldiers after the war. Researching these things also gave me an idea of what to do for my project. After I researched, I came up with a plan for my project. My project was going to be a painting of a soldier with a misty space in his head showing a flashback of the war. There was also barbed wire wrapped around the soldier’s heart showing my perspective that war will never truly leave a soldier.
Project:
The minute I knew the question, which we would be based around for this project, I had the general idea of what I was going to do for this project. I knew right away what I wanted it to look like and the message I wanted it to send and along the road I just added more detail to my original plan for the project. The finished piece was the same that I had imagined in the beginning with just more detail and symbols added. One symbol I added to my main idea was the barbed wire wrapped around the soldier’s heart. This was meant to represent that the war will always be wrapped around his heart and no matter how hard he tries, he will not fully be able to escape the memories of war. The barbed wire contains the memories and keeps them wrapped around his heart with an iron grip.
Essay:
I have a bad habit of repeating myself in my essays and I also get so much ideas swirling around in my head that sometimes my sentences are to dry and don’t have much color in them. Those were my two main revisions that I made in my essay. For revising my problem of repeating myself, I looked up different words in the thesaurus so that my sentences had similar meaning but it wasn’t saying the exact same thing. For revising my habit of having plain sentences, I looked at it with more of a poetic view. That helped me change my plain sentences into colorful and emotional sentences. For example, here is a revised sentence in my essay: “In the beginning of their war experience, the recruits will be terrified but in time, the war will turn them into animals that fight and stones who can't feel.”
Extension:
If I had another week to work on this project, for my essay I would still continue to work on not repeating myself and making even more colorful sentences. For my project, I would probably add another painting. This painting would have another soldier but this soldier would have one of his hands reaching out to the audience and he would be holding a handful of dog tags. This would represent the horrors that soldiers go through while they are in the war. It would show the fear that they have to face. It would show the fear of surviving and the fear of having to kill another human being in order to save yourself.
Humanities
Lori Fisher
Thursday, November 6, 12
Project Reflection
Project Description:
This semester, we learned about WWI and WWII. We read the novels “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque and “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. After finishing these novels, we were faced with the question: What is the truth of war for a soldier? We wrote essays answering this question and we also worked on a project answering this question. Some people used Photoshop for their projects, some used music, some used poems and others used paintings or drawings. Leading up to this assignment, I researched some things such as the after affects of war on a soldier and I also researched PTSD to get a better inside look on what goes on for soldiers after the war. Researching these things also gave me an idea of what to do for my project. After I researched, I came up with a plan for my project. My project was going to be a painting of a soldier with a misty space in his head showing a flashback of the war. There was also barbed wire wrapped around the soldier’s heart showing my perspective that war will never truly leave a soldier.
Project:
The minute I knew the question, which we would be based around for this project, I had the general idea of what I was going to do for this project. I knew right away what I wanted it to look like and the message I wanted it to send and along the road I just added more detail to my original plan for the project. The finished piece was the same that I had imagined in the beginning with just more detail and symbols added. One symbol I added to my main idea was the barbed wire wrapped around the soldier’s heart. This was meant to represent that the war will always be wrapped around his heart and no matter how hard he tries, he will not fully be able to escape the memories of war. The barbed wire contains the memories and keeps them wrapped around his heart with an iron grip.
Essay:
I have a bad habit of repeating myself in my essays and I also get so much ideas swirling around in my head that sometimes my sentences are to dry and don’t have much color in them. Those were my two main revisions that I made in my essay. For revising my problem of repeating myself, I looked up different words in the thesaurus so that my sentences had similar meaning but it wasn’t saying the exact same thing. For revising my habit of having plain sentences, I looked at it with more of a poetic view. That helped me change my plain sentences into colorful and emotional sentences. For example, here is a revised sentence in my essay: “In the beginning of their war experience, the recruits will be terrified but in time, the war will turn them into animals that fight and stones who can't feel.”
Extension:
If I had another week to work on this project, for my essay I would still continue to work on not repeating myself and making even more colorful sentences. For my project, I would probably add another painting. This painting would have another soldier but this soldier would have one of his hands reaching out to the audience and he would be holding a handful of dog tags. This would represent the horrors that soldiers go through while they are in the war. It would show the fear that they have to face. It would show the fear of surviving and the fear of having to kill another human being in order to save yourself.