// War Literature

For my research paper, I plan on exploring the literary and visual techniques used by Art Spiegelman in his graphic novel Maus: A Survivors Tale. Spiegelman uses the format of graphic narrative as well as fable imagery to provide a complex view of the Holocaust from the point of view of his father, a Holocaust survivor now living in Queens, New York. The ‘comic’ also uses the relationship between Spiegelman as framework for his father’s actual story, creating a personal context for the main tale. My paper will focus on how this graphic novel approaches the task of depicting a war experience accurately and retain the integrity of the subject matter. In addition, I will be commenting on the work of Joe Sacco in Palestine to expand on the usage of this medium and how it has progressed since Maus I was published in 1986.

Working Bibliography

My paper will be discussing the first genocide of the 20^th century. In 1915, at the outbreak of World War II, more than 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by Turks and many more chased away from what is today the modern Turkey. Novel named Forgotten Fire by Adam Bagdasarian will be at the base of the paper along several other sources. The novel is recounting tragic and often overlooked human catastrophe through the eyes of a young, twelve year-old, boy and is based on the experience of Adam Bagdasarian’s great uncle. While quite many countries in the world have recognized and acknowledged the Armenian Genocide, more than a century old battle to pressure Turks to accept this fact is still ongoing. While the paper will mostly focus on the text itself, it will also be stressing the importance of these events.

For my final paper I will be writing about courage and what literature says about courage. I will focus on the argument that courageous acts during war are motivated by fear. I will be analyzing various characters from movies and stories and describe their acts of courage and how fear played a part in motivating them to act in such a courageous way. I will be focusing on the Vietnam War because out of all the wars that we have read about, the Vietnam War is the one that interests me the most.

For my paper I will be focusing on a few sources. I will draw examples from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (“Speaking of Courage” and “On the Rainy River”). I will also analyze an interview of Tim O’Brien from a Journal called Contemporary Literature. I will most likely use two movies as a reference. One will be “Platoon” and the other will be “Full Metal Jacket.” Both are movies about the Vietnam War and deal with the issues of courage.

Working Bibliography:

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: a Work of Fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. Print.

Naparsteck, Martin. “An Interview with Tim O’Brien.” Contemporary Literature 32.1 (1991): 1-11. JSTOR. Web. 5 Dec. 2010.

Full Metal Jacket. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Prod. Stanley Kubrick. By Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford. Perf. Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Lee Ermey. Warner Bros., 1987. DVD.

Platoon. Dir. Oliver Stone. An Orion Pictures Release, 1986. DVD.

So I watched Syriana last night…hm. I will start off by saying that I went into it with a negative attitude since I had never wanted to see it and then on top of it netflix gave it a 2.8 for me. As of now I rated it a 2 because to be honest I did not really enjoy it. I was extremely bored until the 55th minute, then I just gave up and allowed myself to be pulled into the movie. There are certain things that left me a bit puzzled. For example, I don’t understand why towards the end George Clooney’s character ended up randomly going to car that blew up…how did he know they were there? If he knew they were going to blow up that car, why walk up to it?
Also what did Matt Domon’s character’s son’s death have to do with the story line? Is it because the men wanted to avoid a law-suit so they gave his company the connection instead of another company? Clearly even though I watched the movie I still ended up with a lot of questions which hopefully will be answered in a class discussion. I will add though, that it was interesting how they portrayed the United States as an enemy at the end, a bit of a ballsy move if you ask me. The movie left off as if American’s just care about the way they are perceived and keeping their names out of negative light…It also showed Americans as willing to aid someone who wants to hold his country back for his own advantage as long as this alliance leads to increased profits…well that’s what I got out of watching Syriana…what did you get?

After a lot of consideration, I’ve decided to use the research paper to explore the justification of President Truman’s use of the atomic bomb against Japan. Some argue that it was a violation of ethics and, to use the more modern term, humanitarian law; others argue that it was purely military strategy, a necessity to ensure the safety of the United States. My goal, aside from defending my own biased opinion, is to objectively consider the myriad factors that culminated in the historical decision whose monumental repercussions have essentially shaped the modern age, particularly in terms of military technology. As far as the use of works discussed in class goes, I think Clausewitz’s theories on war can be related to the military aspect of Truman’s decision and a book by Hannah Arendt that wasn’t used in class (though we did study something else of hers) can add to the discussion of military technology in general.
Bibliography thus far:

McCullough, David.  Truman.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Arendt, Hannah.  The Human Condition, 2nd edition.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Stimson, Henry L.  “The decision to use the atomic bomb.”  Harper’s Magazine.  Feb 1947.

Bernstein, Barton J.  “The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered.”  Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 1.  Jan-Feb 1995.

“War Department Thinking on the Atomic Bomb.”  Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol 2., Nos. 1 and 2.  July 1947.

Clausewitz, Carl.  “The Ends and Means in War.”  On War, Vol 1.  London: N. Trubner & Co., 1873).

Pynchon, Thomas.  Gravity’s Rainbow.  New York: Penguin, 1995.

What I would like to explore with my final paper is “war as a theater of experience.” From the material we have read in class, it is obvious that anyone who experiences war (whether they’re a soldier, a civilian, a victim, etc.) is changed. The period I want to focus on is during the Vietnam War and what I want to discover is how war transforms the identity of those who participate. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” presents to us a fascinating story about how a typical, ordinary American girl named Mary Anne becomes “one” with the Vietnamese “jungle”. She is a small town girl who travels to Vietnam at the request of her boyfriend. Her role was originally to comfort her boyfriend but her “narrow” way of thinking gradually expands as she absorbs knowledge of the Vietnamese culture, first by picking up some of the language to eventually learning how to use weapons. It is ironic that the more she learned about the environment and culture of Vietnam, the further she withdrew from civilization.

I know what Mary Anne eventually becomes but what is interesting to discuss is how does she transform? In the story, we never see the enemy. There are no tour guides. Most of Mary Anne’s exposure to the Vietnamese culture is through raw experience. It is not a rapid but gradual change, consisting of cultural, gender, and psychological transformations. My ideas are still not perfectly organized yet but I know I will probably spend a lot of my time speaking about identity, culture, and gender and the roles they play in the Vietnam War in my paper.

My working bibliography currently includes

Booth, Alan, and Cynthia Gimbel. “Who Fought in Vietnam?” Social Forces 74.4 (1966): 1137-157. JSTOR. Web. 1 Dec. 2010.

National Geographic: Inside the Green Berets. Dir. Steven Hoggard. Nat’l Geographic Vid, 2007. DVD.

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: a Work of Fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.

At first I paid this no mind, probably just an aesthetic Sacco chose to adopt while drawing his comics.  But the more I saw it in the panels, the more curious I became: Is Sacco putting a flavor of Jesus in his comic?  In early times, images of Jesus were always accompanied with a golden halo behind him, (evidence shows that this is actually a pagan representation, the Son of God is the Sun of “god”, but that’s another discussion), as seen here:

Anyways, in many of the panels, Sacco chooses to give a black background with a white “halo” around some of his characters, including himself.  Is he alluding that there is some sort of savior aspect to storytelling or to these people or himself? Or am I going out on a limb because one thing reminded me of another?

This is the geopolitical map that attempts to establish new patterns of conflict, in the vision of Samuel P. Huntington, the conservative American political scientist, author of the article (later expanded in a book) “The Clash of Civilizations?” (Foreign Affairs issue 1993). Numerous critiques of this project have been published since then. Please read Edward Said’s “We all swim together” (New Satesman, 15 Oct. 2001 – Proquest).

For this final paper, I kind of wanted to become more creative than others by not only writing a basic research paper but in addition to it writing a poem which is the basis of my paper. Before writing the paper, i will be writing the poem and once i have completed it I will analyze it through the paper. So for those who believe this is an easier task, they are very mistaken. Within this poem/paper, i will be focusing on the women of world war 1. Many individuals tend to overlook the women and focus on the pain and suffering the men of war go through but what they dont realize is that women go through the same, if not worse, pain and suffering as those men. In efforts to make this an effective paper, i will be reading various books on poetry of war, along with books on women of war.

1.Cardinal, Agnès, Dorothy Goldman, and Judith Hattaway. Women’s Writing on the First World War. Oxford [etc.: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.
2.Grayzel, Susan R. Women and the First World War. Harlow: Longman, 2002. Print.
3.”Poetry and War – World War One.” Web. 02 Dec. 2010.
4.Reilly, Catherine W. Scars upon My Heart: Women’s Poetry and Verse of the First World War. London: Virago, 2006. Print.
5.”Women and the Home Front During World War II : Library : MNHS.ORG.” Web. 02 Dec. 2010. .

When Dr. Sorin questioned the class whether or not, it made me quite uneasy.  No one ever thinks twice about going to the exquisite beaches of Mexico or the lavish resorts of Jamaica.  However, if you follow the news you would realize that Mexico has had a history of kidnappings as well as drug issues in certain parts of its country.  Likewise, in Jamaica, the level of poverty outside of these resorts is absurd.  I have always wanted to go to Israel to see the beautiful mountains of Mt. Sinai, the wild city life in Televiv, and the beautiful beaches all over. 

However, Dr. Sorin specified that we would have to stay a week in the Gaza Strip as an activist.  When I was watching the movie Generation Kill, a documentary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the Marine Corps, I could not believe the instability of the country.  There were numerous times innocent civilians are killed by the military.  When you compare this to the U.S., you realize that nothing like that would happen here.  The government protects us enough that every day I wake up, I do not have to worry about my apartment or even my life.  As an American living in the U.S., I feel completely safe walking through the streets of New York City.  However, I do not believe I would share this comforting feeling staying in the Gaza Strip, further demonstrated in the video about Rachel Corrie.  The activists are jeopardizing their lives to try to stabilize the lives of the Palestinian families.  There is no stability in the country and peace is no where in sight between the two opposition countries.  There is constant explosions and shooting going on.  I feel like I would be in constant fear of my life, which to be frankly honest I do not think I could put a price of my life.  I would rather choose the comfort and safety of my own home in the U.S..