Poetry Project
Final PoemThe breeze of the hellish wind on your lips,
tasting like the gasoline leaking from an old truck. You are falling in to the abyss of violence, falling, falling, falling. Only light can save you from the darkness. You are the never ending darkness. No one can dig you out of this,you are your only savior. Pulling you in like a black hole’s gravity, you are falling in to the abyss of violence, falling, falling, falling. What will you do when you hit the bottom? You are not alone, there are others like you. You are your only protection from yourself. When you hit the bottom of this pit there is no return. When you hit the bottom of this pit all you can do is scream. When you hit the bottom the blanket of darkness envelops you. Growth as a Poet Reflection |
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Perspective is the most important piece of a poem and in my case it is also what changed the most throughout the poem writing process. My perspective has changed immensely while writing my poem. It has grown in sophistication, meaning, and length. While writing my first draft all I had as a perspective was “violence is bad” this is called a “Duh” perspective because of its simplicity. This shows in a quote from my first draft “The only bad in you is violence.” As you can see this sentence clearly states a duh perspective. This perspective continued to grow between my first and final draft. My final perspective was “violence pulls you in to a never ending pit of darkness” as you can see in this line from my final draft, “You are falling in to the abyss of violence,” this shows my more complex perspective. This made my poem more enjoyable to read and made its impact deeper. This process made me grow as a poet and a person.
One of the most important changes that my poem went through was the elaboration at the end. While the on my first draft my poem ended quite abruptly with “You are your only protection from yourself.” My final Draft then finished with three elaborative lines to the end, them being “When you hit the bottom of this pit there is no return. / When you hit the bottom of this pit all you can do is scream. / When you hit the bottom the blanket of darkness envelops you.” This added to the complexity of my poem therefore making my perspective more clear and giving my poem a more powerful ending. The emotions flow deeper and the reader is left with a meaningful message. The added repetition also made it more poetic and nicer to read. This improved most aspects of my poetry.
Refining work has always been difficult for me because I just want to get it over with. This project forced me to do heavy refinement and one of my biggest changes was taking my poem from cliché to the most creative, and original poem I could. One of the most cliché sentences in my first draft was “Pulling you in like a lion dragging it’s pray,” This took away from my poem meaning and made it dull and uninteresting. My revised sentence was “Pulling you in like a black hole’s gravity,” as you can see this is a much more creative metaphor and gives the poem more intensity. This gave more emotion and imagery to my poem.
The final refinement I made to my poem was changing the title. The title is your first impression of the poem so it has to reflect your poem perfectly. I started writing my poem with the title as “Violence Poem” and that isn’t a very engaging or reflective title. I figured since my poem has this repetition of “falling” I could use just one simple word to describe my whole poem. So my final draft was titled “Falling” this right away set the emotional tone as well as making my poem look more professional. This was the metaphorical icing on the cake.
One of the most important changes that my poem went through was the elaboration at the end. While the on my first draft my poem ended quite abruptly with “You are your only protection from yourself.” My final Draft then finished with three elaborative lines to the end, them being “When you hit the bottom of this pit there is no return. / When you hit the bottom of this pit all you can do is scream. / When you hit the bottom the blanket of darkness envelops you.” This added to the complexity of my poem therefore making my perspective more clear and giving my poem a more powerful ending. The emotions flow deeper and the reader is left with a meaningful message. The added repetition also made it more poetic and nicer to read. This improved most aspects of my poetry.
Refining work has always been difficult for me because I just want to get it over with. This project forced me to do heavy refinement and one of my biggest changes was taking my poem from cliché to the most creative, and original poem I could. One of the most cliché sentences in my first draft was “Pulling you in like a lion dragging it’s pray,” This took away from my poem meaning and made it dull and uninteresting. My revised sentence was “Pulling you in like a black hole’s gravity,” as you can see this is a much more creative metaphor and gives the poem more intensity. This gave more emotion and imagery to my poem.
The final refinement I made to my poem was changing the title. The title is your first impression of the poem so it has to reflect your poem perfectly. I started writing my poem with the title as “Violence Poem” and that isn’t a very engaging or reflective title. I figured since my poem has this repetition of “falling” I could use just one simple word to describe my whole poem. So my final draft was titled “Falling” this right away set the emotional tone as well as making my poem look more professional. This was the metaphorical icing on the cake.
Globalization Project
Project Reflection:
1. Project Description: What did you do for this project? Describe it so that people who don’t know about this project will understand it. In this project we were required to write a 750 to 1000 word Op Ed and draw a political cartoon on the same topic of the Op Ed. The main topic of this project was globalization. We chose a subject that tied in to globalization and wrote the Op Ed and drew the cartoon on it. 2. Learning Reflection: What new understanding do you have about globalization after completing this project? What are your big takeaways? After completing this project I came out understanding the basics and some more complex parts of globalization. Globalization is such a complex subject that six weeks of research barely scratched the surface even though I may think I know a lot about it. My main takeaways from this project are the writing skills and new knowledge. 3. Cartoon Reflection: Look back at your first draft of your cartoon. How have you grown as a cartoonist? Be specific, and address some specific techniques you learned or changes you made between drafts. I have grown immensely as a cartoonist, developing my style, techniques, and being able to show my point of view. Some of the techniques I used were exaggeration and symbolism. I used these to make my point clear and to deepen my viewers understanding. These helped more and more between drafts. 4. Op-Ed Reflection: How was the writing you did for this assignment different from writing you’ve done in the past? What did you learn from doing this type of writing that you could apply to future writing assignments? This writing was different than most other writing assignments because we had to write in the style of an Op Ed and we had a required amount of words. I learned that when you can only write a certain amount you'd better make those the best words you can. writing you’ve done in the past? What did you learn from doing this type of writing that you could apply to future writing assignments? |
Op Ed:Globalization’s Correlation to Global Economic Inequality
Financial crisis and political instability, these are two terms that you have probably been hearing in the news a lot but how are they caused? Some say that these are linked to the growing global economic inequality, but what is this inequality? Is it really bad? What effect does it have on us? First of all, what is globalization? Globalization is growth to a global or worldwide scale; it is essentially the process of creating goods and distributing them as quickly and as efficiently as possible. One could say that globalization connects people and creates jobs, but those jobs consist of sweatshops, involve child labor, and most are in foreign countries. It disconnects people and connects computers. Global economic inequality is on the rise due to globalization, but should not be stopped. When this statement is posed we must ask ourselves how it affects us and the people around us. Really, the global economic inequality has very little effect on individuals other than government officials. Inter-country economic inequality does. Inter-country economic inequality is the gap between high paying jobs and low paying jobs. How this affects individuals is it means that you are being paid less for the more and harder work you do whereas higher paid individuals are working less and not as hard. Seems unfair right? Well yes in every way you look at it is unfair and should be changed but that is just inter-country, not on the global scale. What does this “global” inequality do to our world? Global economic inequality is the gap between the wealthy countries and to poor countries. This means that wealthy countries are getting wealthier and poor countries are becoming poorer. There are many causes for this. One of these causes is outsourcing and sweatshops. Although These may help individual poverty they don’t help the economy of the country because barely any of the profit stays in the country. When a company started in a wealthy country moves their factories and jobs to a poorer country so they can produce the goods for less the profit all still goes to the wealthy country and there is even more profit which boosts the economy. This also makes products made in this way cheaper to buy which also improves the wealthier countries’ economy. Living in one of these wealthy countries this benefits you in multiple ways, products are cheaper to buy, products are more accessible, and you can buy pretty much anything you could want. Even though there are those conveniences, it has its consequences. Jobs being sent to other countries are jobs moving out of other countries. 19.5 million jobs in the USA turned in to only 8 million thirty years later. Jobs are lost and unemployment skyrockets. This hurts the economy but not enough to stop its growth. Just as a lizard grows back its tail, wealthy economies like the USA just regenerate the loss. Are there solutions to this inequality? Well of course like all problems there must be a solution it just has to be found. There have been many attempts to solve this problem but as you can see none helped and the growing force of globalization is countering any attempts to hold this inequality at bay. One example of these failed solutions is the tax and benefits system. This system was designed to decrease poverty and inequality between the rich and poor. It consisted of cash benefits for the poor and special taxing for each economic group. This failed in an inter-country scale in the UK which shows that even the most complex policies would not work on the global scale or a smaller scale. Inequality is here to stay until we find the right way to push it out. Another method that was used to try to decrease this inequality was increasing minimum wages. This was meant to work by eliminating poverty there by decreasing the economic inequality. Of course this has helped bring some out of poverty but is unattractive to people wanting to build jobs there. Why does this issue have so few working solutions? This issue is possibly one of the hardest issues to analyze and predict how it will change even in the next year. This makes it incredibly hard to come up with a plan that can morph with the global economic inequality. The plan that is needed must fluctuate with every market change in every country in the world. As you can guess this is a very difficult plan to develop and to keep in place. It requires constant cooperation and constant streaming data from each country. This nearly impossible task could be done but one error could destroy it and it would be right back where we started. Do we need to equalize? Does this global economic inequality need to be stopped? We really need to think about why it needs to stop. Is it the cheap goods why we want to stop it? Is it the sweatshops? Is it the job loss? The answer to all of these questions is no. These are the reasons why it has become unequal but these are also the reasons why our country is thriving. It makes products cheaper and creates other higher paying jobs. Do we care that a small African country has a GDP nearly 10 times less than the US? Quite frankly no, we don’t. Why should they be equal when one country is a powerhouse for consumerism and the other is where we put our factories? As stated by senior economist Ajit K. Ghose in his thesis on global inequality “there is no reason to suppose that all nations must emerge as successful trading nations when world trade expands.” (Ghose). It seems cruel to say but because of this inequality we live the lives we have today. Would you give that up? Works Cited Ghose, Ajit K. Global Economic Inequality and International Trade. Thesis. 2001. Geneva: International Labour Office, 2001. Print "Policies to Reduce Inequality and Poverty." Economics Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2014. "Social and Welfare Issues - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development."Social and Welfare Issues - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. |
Vietnam Project
Project Reflection
For this project we were required to write an essay on the Gulf of Tonkin incident and produce a thirty minute interview of a Vietnam veteran. We began this project by taking a fieldtrip to the Southern Ute Museum to speak to Rod Grove who is a Vietnam Veteran. He spoke to us about his time in the war and what coming home was like. He was very honest with us about his service. We had a brief Q and A session after his presentation. We also visited the war memorial that he helped build. This trip was very helpful in kick starting our project. We were then required to read and annotate a packet of documents about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. There was a packet that helped us use historical thinking skills to analyze the documents. The historical thinking skills are close reading, sourcing, contextualization, and reading the silences. After filling out this packet we began to write our essay rough draft. Then after revising our paper multiple times we came to our final draft. During all of this we were writing questions for our interviews and then recording our interviews. Doing all of these things brought us to our final product of each project.
My role in the veteran interview project was tech. This meant that I was responsible for all technology related aspects of the project. This included having my camera ready, making sure it worked, filming the interview, and burning the copies of it on to DVDs. I succeeded in this role because I have been using the technology that was needed for this project for the majority of my life. I have been using cameras since I could hold them so this project role was the best choice for me. What I could have done better to perfect my work in this role would be to have a better microphone for the interview. I was using an on-camera mic so the sound quality could have been much better. If I were to re choose my role in this project I would still choose tech, the role fit me perfectly. Something that stuck with me after this project was how uncomfortable the veterans are talking about their experiences of the war. This showed me that war changes people forever and really doesn’t let you live the life you left when you went to war. Using historical thinking skills was one main component of researching the events and writing our paper. The historical thinking skills are sourcing, close reading, contextualizing, and reading the silences. The skill that I struggled with the most was sourcing. This is because I could not put a grasp on where some documents came from which shifted my thoughts on their reliability. This hurt my grade on the historical thinking skills packet because I could not master the art of sourcing. I tried to find my own way to get the same information that sourcing gets you but it was not successful on many of the documents that I researched. The easiest historical thinking skill for me was reading the silences. This is because I am very good at seeing the details in documents. I could point out what the author left out and I exposed the bias of the document. To improve this skill I used it to find biases of the documents and find who might have written them because of their bias. Historical thinking skills were very useful in research and writing. Critique was a very large part of the creation of our papers. We spent days peer critiquing each other’s essays. This made them the best they could be. These critiques brought our papers from rough drafts to beautiful pieces of work. One critique that I made was to my conclusion was making it flow more. The initial section read “Although this document is created by, and therefore in favor of the Vietnamese, it reveals the extent of the United States’ provocation of the Vietnamese. They exclude what else the Vietnamese had been doing to plan this attack. The attack was clearly the United States’ fault, therefore it was justifiable.” The final draft read “Although this document is created by, and therefore in favor of the Vietnamese, it reveals the extent of the United States’ provocation of the Vietnamese. They exclude what else the Vietnamese had been doing to plan this attack. The attack was clearly the United States’ fault; therefore the Vietnamese were justified in their attack.” The small edit at the end changed the entire flow of the paragraph. Another critique was my thesis; it went from “Although the Vietnamese attacked the U.S.S. Maddox, they were justified” to “Despite the accusations that North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the U.S.S. Maddox were executing an unprovoked act of war, the United States was active in covert operations, and was using these actions to taunt them to throw the theoretical “first punch”.” This change made my paper more focused and specific. Both of these revisions affect the reader’s ability to make sense of my paper. I chose to do the challenge extension of this project because I thought it would make my paper a more beautiful piece of work. The challenge extension was to include two historical thinking skills instead of one in each analysis. An example of this is “By Analyzing this document deeply one could see that the U.S. had provoked the attack and then hit back with ten times the force. It also provides evidence that the U.S. was more than happy to fight back, which could later lead to war. By contextualizing this source one would learn that it was the day after the event, so it was very fresh and new information. The date of this explains that it was probably the first time that this information had been revealed. The attack on the U.S.S. Maddox was provoked by the United States and the president at the time admitted it.” Doing this gave me a deeper understanding of my essay. I could have used more background knowledge as well as this challenge extension to make my essay as good as it could get. |
Essay
Despite the accusations that North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the U.S.S. Maddox were executing an unprovoked act of war, the United States was active in covert operations, and was using these actions to taunt them to throw the theoretical “first punch”.
The U.S.S. Maddox when stationed in North Vietnamese waters in the Gulf of Tonkin was alerted by a loud sound; the men on the Maddox assumed that they were under attack by the Vietnamese torpedo boats. They believed that the attack was unprovoked and an act of aggression from the North Vietnamese. The U.S. did not understand the Vietnamese reasoning for this. As stated by the Secretary of State of the time, Dean Rusk explained “There is a great gulf of understanding that world and our world, ideological in character. They see what we think of as the real world in wholly different terms. Their very processes of logic are different.”(Document 2). What this shows is that the U.S. had no understanding of why the North Vietnamese had attacked them. Both sides had their reasons for provoking or attacking. For the U.S. it was to stop communism from starting a “domino” effect of it spreading to nearby countries. For the North Vietnamese it was to protect their land and beliefs. By reading this document closely, it shows that nobody had enough information on the subject to understand this. By looking for bias and what is left out in this document it was figured that Rusk was trying to cover up the truths that he knew would make the government look bad during re-elections and with the reputation of the government as it was at that time. On August 2nd of 1964 the United States warship the U.S.S. Maddox was attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam. The ship was attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Some individuals such as United States have called the attack “unprovoked” but this is not the case. The U.S. had been active in North Vietnam long been actively attacking the Vietnamese and destroying their resources and means of transportation such as roads and bridges. As stated by Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th U.S. president, “There have been some covert operations in that area that we have been carrying on, blowing up some bridges and things of that kind, roads and so forth. One would imagine they wanted to put a stop to it. So they fired and we responded immediately with five inch artillery shells from the destroyer and with planes overhead. And we… knocked one of ‘em out and cripple the other two.”(Document 3). By analyzing this document deeply one could see that the U.S. had provoked the attack and then hit back with ten times the force. It also provides evidence that the U.S. was more than happy to fight back, which could later lead to war. By contextualizing this source one would learn that it was the day after the event, so it was very fresh and new information. The date of this explains that it was probably the first time that this information had been revealed. The attack on the U.S.S. Maddox was provoked by the United States and the president at the time admitted it. The aggression of the U.S. caused the North Vietnamese to attack a United States destroyer named the U.S.S. Maddox. The Maddox then responded with all of their might. As the spokesman of the Vietnam People’s Army stated “The U.S. imperialists are raising a hue and cry about what they call “an unprovoked attack by three torpedo boats of North Viet Nam. They have made such clamors to cover their own acts of provocation and sabotage, their violation of the territorial waters and airspace and their encroachment of the sovereignty and territory of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam.”(Document 9). By analyzing the time period that this was written, one can infer that this document was in direct response to the U.S. news accusations of the Vietnamese attack and it was direct response to the attack. The United States was trying to make the Vietnamese sound bad before the Vietnamese could do the same to the U.S. Although this document is created by and therefore in favor of the Vietnamese, it reveals the extent of the United States’ provocation of the Vietnamese. They exclude what else the Vietnamese had been doing to plan this attack. The attack was clearly the United States’ fault; therefore the Vietnamese were justified in their attack. |
WWI Creative Historians
Historical Fiction
The rain drips from my pen on to my notebook; I am quick to wipe it. It spreads and I know that it won’t dry for the next week. It is always raining here the mud is now up to the middle of my calf in some places. I hear the yelling of the card game down the trench. They play for what seems like days, shouting and arguing. They are just educated enough to know the numbers on the cards. Such imbeciles did not finish the third grade. All of them went and got their hands dirty on their farms and didn’t bother to act like civilized people. I hear the most feebleminded of them all squeal, I continue scratching in my notebook under the dim light of the moon lit clouds. The next morning I wake to the beating eyes of Gustaf, the only other educated man in my squad. “What evoked Walther’s savage scream last night?” He asked. “You think I pay attention to them?” I reply. He stumbles off in a rage of frustration. He has such a gait that you can hear the clacking of his heels from the French trenches. His foot slaps the ground in a way that I have never been able to replicate. I clutch my pen and notebook and walk off to the mess hall. I sit at my table, just the way I like it nobody with me. I hear the men from the card game last night talking, “Did you see him scream?” “He must have had to change his pants after that.” “But did you see the size of that rat?” They continue with their talk. I sit with my pen in my hand waiting for the cook to finish. “More stale biscuits?” a man said to the cook. “That is all we have, the supplies have been held for some reason.” responded the cook. I leave knowing that all we will eat for the following weeks are stale biscuits and maybe some canned meat. I walk a fair distance from the rest of them, this part is deserted because it was shelled last week and four men died. I come here because it is like no other part of the trenches; it is quiet and not suffering. I begin to write in my notebook. I scribble the day away, it is seven o clock and we were told there would be an ambush tonight; I jog back to my gun and helmet. I begin back to my usual spot during battles and suddenly a ringing in my ears. A shell hit not twenty feet away from me; I fell to the ground, grasping my head. I try and stand with the pain of needles poking in to my brain, continuing into the darkness, I brush myself off. I get back to the section of the trench I was at for most of the day; I sit in the dirt waiting. I hear the whistles of shells and the screeches of men. I am used to it, it is all I hear. It is implanted in my mind and will never come out. I see no excitement this night except for the faces of the men that were shelled frozen in my brain lit with the shell blast that has ended them. I lie there through the night twitching whenever another shell hits, coughing from the wind-blown gas. I drift off to the lullabies of screaming men, horses, shells exploding, and guns firing. I wake that morning later than ever, I rise up and immediately start running as hard as I could back to my squad. I hear my name called for roll call right as I near. “Lutz Wolff?” the officer says. “Present!” I scream at the top of my lungs. I make it just in time. I hear the faint whispers of others murmuring about me. “Where was he?” “He must be a spy.” I slip back in to the depths of the trenches for the day. I wander the death traps for the rest of the day, only a few shells are hitting today. Most of the action happens at night. I rarely visit the main trenches during the day for I like to be without those idiots. I return right before dusk, just in time to grab my things, this time I take my gas mask because last night was so unpleasant without it. I overhear the date from Polanski, “It’s December 21, getting close to Christmas.” I completely disregarded the holidays; nothing has come of them on the front. I go to my post and wait through the night waiting for the whistle to come from above me. I continue with the same daily routine until Christmas day. I open my eyes gradually and wipe them. I hear chatter coming from my left, I peek over the trench. The heads of the French are all I see, quick I grab my rifle and start aiming. Walther and his followers are climbing over the trench and walking towards the enemy, I scream at them “Stop you idiots! They are the enemy!” Walther responds “You should know you little spy.” Now taking a closer look I see that it is not only French and British but also German soldiers. The chance of me going up there does not cross my mind, I hold steady with my rifle pointed at the head of a French officer. They will be slaughtered when they reach them, why would they go out there. I see Walther exchanging something with a French man through my sights. Many of these small white sticks are being handed around the groups in no-man’s land. Cigarettes! It hits me, the most desired part of war. The sound of Christmas carols starts to collect in the air over the front. A place of battle and death is becoming a place of celebration and song. More and more sizes and shapes are being exchanged over the battlefield. I am standing knee deep in this trench sludge, I can’t stand it for any longer. Pulling at roots and dirt, I climb up the side of the trench. It has been a very long time since I have been up top. My head going in circles, I see things that I have not witnessed since the beginning of the war, Smiles. On all of the faces of the men that I saw trying to kill each other just the night before, there are smiles. I drop to my knees, run the soil through my fingers, it is so unfamiliar. I drop to where my face is inches away from the dirt and I can almost taste it. I rest in the moist soil and doze off in the mid-morning sun. I wake, fully rested for the first time since I joined the army. I lie there with no sound of shells but the sound of music and conversation. Two men speaking, one French one German; it is as if the war is done. I stay where I am and take out my notebook and pen, scribble for a while and get up. I begin towards them when I hear my name called “Lutz, I need you to stay here. Guard the supplies. I slip back in to reality, see the potential of French coming in to our trenches and ambushing us. “Yes Sir” I reply. The splash of the slime in the bottom of the trench reminds me of why I am here. I watch the festivities commence as I stand against the walls of the trench. I write. I cannot concentrate over the childish laughter in the air. Slowly I draw from my first cigarette of the day. I watch the imbeciles of my squad converse and exchange gifts with the devil. I watch them gaze at me and begin laughing and mocking me. I turn away; I do not need them for anything. The carols and conversation continue, louder than before. The groups have grown; it is like each side has their whole army out in no-man’s land. The food from breakfast was left out; the rats are starting to gather. I sit, waiting for a group of them to come for the food so I can fight them off. I entertain myself like this for hours. Eventually some men return around lunch time. They ask me what’s for lunch. I say “rat.” They leave in smirks and murmurs. The rats don’t bother me anymore; they know they won’t get any food. Eventually I draw my notebook, and begin writing. My mother gave me this notebook before I left; I have always had a notebook with me for most of my life. The day goes on and the singing never lets up. Suddenly, the laughter and singing turns into cheering and trash talk. Is there a fight? What has started? I climb the ladder to just peek over the top of the trench. They are playing football. A massive match of football has started Germans on one side and the French and British on the other. They are playing like children. My eyes are glued to the ball; the game is more exciting than the war. I forget about the war, the rats, the men that I have seen die and I watch. I have not seen the game played since before the war. It strikes a tear, remembrance of childhood. Before all of this war nonsense, we played. An hour or so into the game the ball is launched by a French officer in to my trench. He yells toward me. I don’t know what he is saying, I do not speak French. A drop from the ladder and retrieve the ball and bring it back to the top. I stand with the ball at my feet, debating if I should kick it or just run it over to the game. I draw my foot behind me and give the mightiest kick that I can, I strike the ball by the top of it. It rolls a measly ten feet or so. I hear the laughter of the ball game players. I walk back up to the ball and pick it up out of the mud. I run towards the French officer that had kicked it to me and drop it to the ground. Walking back to my post I hear one of the German men say “well aren’t you going to play?” Promptly I hear Walther rebuttal “he doesn’t play sports, he is one of those book worm types.” My head turns and I respond “I’ll give it a try.” I say this just to counter Walther. I haven’t played for a very long time. Walther chuckles, “You better keep up.” I run towards the ball, steal it from the French man that I had given it to earlier. I take it about thirty feet from the makeshift wooden goal. I am trapped between two French defenders. I see Walther in my peripheral vision and punt the ball in his direction. He has to do some running but he gets the ball and scored a goal. A roar of cheers in German arises. Walther says “lucky pass” and runs back to our side for high fives and hugs. When the praise is over the ball is in French possession, a few of them come hurdling towards me and Walther. Immediately he runs at them and tries to steal the ball, misses and slides on to his back. The French laugh. I wait until the man with the ball is within ten feet of me, I make a pass at the ball, and he dodges. He it in front of me so I run as hard as I can, I tap the ball out of his reach and a German soldier kicks it to the men in front of us. They take it all the way to the goal but the goalie catches the shot. So close, almost another goal for Germany. I ask a man what the score is. “Null French and now one German.” He says in excitement. The game continues with this score for the next thirty minutes, French try to score and they are blocked, Germans try and we are blocked as well. The French officer that I stole the ball from is now on his way to the goal, he scores and it is like all of France is cheering. You can feel the sadness and anger of the Germans. Even I get emotional. The score is one to one, we must score it is getting dark. Walther has the ball and is running to the other side. I am running on the other side, waving my arms and yelling. He continues running towards the goal like a freight train. He is stopped by the French officer; he has no options but to pass. The ball flies through the air towards my head; I brace for the impact and aim towards the goal. It hits and scores. The German team screams in celebration and begins to sing our anthem. The French all pout and drop their heads down. We have won it, two to one. Night drapes over the front. I start back off to my post that I left three hours ago. My officer is there waiting for me. I stand in front of him wondering what will happen. He walks away, saying nothing. I drop back in to the trench sludge. My legs almost buckle when I hit bottom. I sit at my table, writing. The other starts to sit down at different tables. Their conversations drone on in the background while I gnaw at my stale biscuit and scratch in my notebook. We all go to sleep at about the same time, dreaming about food and women. The next day is uneventful; everyone is too hung over to fight so I rest the day away. I stay near the other men today; I laugh at their hangovers and write. Night falls and I doze back to sleep. I am awoken by a shell explosion, a quick reminder that the war has not ended. It wakes the other men as well. They come rushing through the trenches to see if there was any damage. I don’t bother. I get dressed and look above the trench and see the same wooden goals we used yesterday as friends but today will be used as protection from flying bullets. I begin take my things to the spot that I usually spend the day, the others follow me, we talk all about yesterday. This is the first time I have ever brought others here. They are shelling during the day more than usual. I look to the French side; nothing catches my attention so I continue socializing. We don’t go to lunch today; I know it will be minimal. I hear a commotion coming from no-man’s land. I turn quickly to see an army of French and British men coming towards the trench. I warn the others. We try to hide so they don’t come my way. The majority of the men go towards our spot in the trench. They near us and we begin to fire our rifles. A few drop but not enough to make a difference; they jump in to our trench. We are all too close to shoot. The reflections of our knives in the mid-day sun are almost blinding. A storm of silver and red fills the trench. The screams are piercing; I can do nothing but fight for our lives. I brought these people here and they will not die today. Walther is taller than all of the French men. Men are surrounding him, making his victory impossible alone; I dodge several bayonets and knives on my way to his rescue. He is down to the last two men around him. He lets out a war cry and takes the life of the last Frenchmen around him; I am almost sliced open while I listen to him. I turn and jab my knife in to a man’s rib cage, I know it is a clean blow because I did not hear the friction of bone on my knife. I lift my head to see the face of the soldier I had just stabbed, I see the dirty, hairy face of the French officer that I had been friends with the day before, he falls slipping from the blade of my knife. A splash in the sludge from his body falling slows the fighting, I can see who we are fighting, and I can see what is happening. Many of the men were in the football game. We are killing ourselves, I am killing my friends. I feel a sharp, tensing pain. The sound of a single gunshot echoes in the trench, the world stops. I drop to my knees, waist deep in the muck I turn my head and see the French officer, smoke trailing from his pistol. I bring my head back to my comrades, in slow motion I see all of them fighting for their lives. I see my blood surround me. Dripping down my sleeves, it spills on to my notebook. I am quick to wipe it. Suddenly it slips out of my hand and sinks in to the slime, disappearing in to the muck of war. |
Project Reflection
The Historical Fiction project was one of the most challenging and entertaining humanities project that I have come across yet. In this project we learned about WWI then, we read the book All Quiet on the Western Front. All Quiet on the Western Front is a historical fiction novel about a German soldier in WWI. After reading and annotating the book we began to draft our stories. These stories were required to be five to ten pages long and be about WWI in one way or another. When our first drafts were due we then revised them multiple times until we had decided that they were finished. We revised them through peer critiques and teacher critiques. When our stories were all finished we had an exhibition. In our exhibition we were required to read about a three minute excerpt from our story to the community. Literary devices were a very large part of our story writing. Some Literary devices are plot, round characters, historical integration, show don’t tell. The literary device that I think my story uses the best is historical integration. I believe that this is the best literary device used in my story because I based my story on real historical events and used them to deepen the reader’s knowledge. The place in my story that I used this the most effectively is during the soccer game in no-man’s land. This is because I researched the game and used the real statistics from it in my story. “The German team screams in celebration and begins to sing our anthem. The French all pout and drop their heads down. We have won it, two to one.” The score of the game was actually two to one. The Literary device that I think is worst portrayed in my story is round characters. Although this is a very large part of my story I didn’t use it as much as I would have liked to. Round characters are characters in a story that have a strong desire but then another conflicting desire. My character had that conflicting desire come in to play very abruptly, I wish I would have drawn it out more to make it seem more realistic. It was hard for me to do this because I had only about half a day In the story that he could change and it should maybe take more than that. Although I was happy with my first draft, I still revised it to make it the best story that I could. The revision process was hard for me because I usually do not take critique well but this time we were critiqued in such a way that it was not harsh but it was constructive. One major revision that I made was that I rewrote the last half of my story. I did this because it was the weakest part of my story. I think it was the weakest because I wrote it at home with a major concussion. This revision benefits the reader because it gives them a better insight on how the character was affected by the events of the story. Another revision was my last sentence. I spent a week trying to wright the perfect knockout line for my story, this line was supposed to leave the reader wanting more. I think after all of that hard work it finally all came togeather with that last sentence. |