For Thursday’s class, we’ll be entering the twentieth century, beginning with the poetry of World War I. First, watch this short video to refresh your memory about the war. Even if you’re familiar, watch for the argument made here about WWI, literature, and disillusionment.
Be sure to read the poems listed on the syllabus for Thursday (both the ones in our course pack and those I handed out on Tuesday—that handout is posted on this blog, as well, if you’ve misplaced yours).
Finally, please bring to class the short midterm check-in sheet from the back of your exam. The democracy lab assignment IS NOT due on Thursday, but I’ll fill you in about that (including the new due date) in class.
1 comments
Hi Professor,
I should post something given I had watched almost every WWII documentaries and emotional movies relating to the war. World War II history is one of passions to study. I had also studied WWI, and I guess I had a second-hand experience of both the emotional side, where a mass genocide of a particular group of people could occur, and the heroic side, where men stared straight into the face of death and performed extraordinary acts that the nation forever honored through distinguished medals.
Now, I won’t speak about the human toll of these two wars because we should already know that countless number of men were slaughtered before they ever saw their thirtieth birthday. Machine guns mowed down these men, poisonous gas suffocated their lungs, bayonets pierced their fleshs. The image is horrifying; the sound just as nauseating. However, image and words alone did no good in persuading leaders that war is destructive, war is evil, war is not the solution but a way to take away other men’s lives.
Take note of what I said last: “take away other men’s lives.” I have to argue that my position is quite strong on this stance. Most leaders who had inherited their powers from ancestral figures are, in my opinion, corrupt and ill-compassion when it comes to the idea that all men should be treated with the same level of respect – and their lives should be valued more than the leader’s desire to make his political point. I question the sanity of how one man’s death, archduke franz ferdinand’s death, could cause a chain reaction that wipes out millions of people. Was this sane or was it one leader after another deciding that men’s lives are worth nothing more than the leader’s shame of accepting defeat? Of course, neighbor nor his immediate family member would ever be sent to die in a far land, never be hunkered down in a bunker waiting for the whistle to blow before he gets mowed down “like cattles” as the video pointed out.
I guess I’m just very sick of societies where monarchy and authoritarian rulers, king, queen, nobility are allowed to exist. These highly exalted individuals would never know what Charles Dickens portrays as realism; neither they nor their sons would ever be required to run to the opposite end of the machine gun, nor lay lifeless in the middle of no man’s land, nor honored with a plot of land at a place like Arlington National Cemetery for those who would never come home. These leaders, even politicians, wouldn’t consider the consequence of their decisions when they send young men to their deaths. World War I then II then countless more after. If politicians, if leaders were to live in the shoes of ordinary men, if they were given the same ticket to fight a war they gladly favor others to fight, then let them join the fight and rally their men. I would bet not many of them, nor their sons, would accept that challenge – and so other young men are to take their place.