Truth Of War Final Art Piece
Fire In Their Eyes
Acrylic on canvas
In my art piece, I am expressing and the idea that we as a society have become content and used to the idea of war in our everyday lives. Shown as the main focal point of the painting is the eye, and in the eye is the explosion of a nuclear bomb. Something I realized before figuring out what I was going to paint was that war has clearly become something very relevant and regular in this day and age. We as people are very used to hearing about the topic of war, whether we read about it, hear it on the news, or in any other way, it is something that had become normal for us, I had choose to paint this picture to combat the idea.
Haley Benjamin
January 2016
Durango, Colorado
The Truth Of War
For our project, truth of war, we dissected what it meant to be in war, and other ideas and stories about what war was like, specifically the Vietnam War. To get a better understanding on the many meanings of this war, we read the book "The Things They carried" by Tim O'Brien. As well as, doing a timed write on what really happened in the Gulf Of Tonkin, by taking many primary sources and finding their deeper meaning.
Take-Aways From This Project
One of the biggest things that I took away from this was my better understanding of how to find the deeper meanings in all of my readings. Mostly based off of the book "The Things They Carried." This book taught me to be able to understand different points of views on things and be able to find the "truth" of what is in the reading. Another thing that this project taught me was how to find the truth of war. I learned how to do so almost entirely off of looking at both sides of the issue both in the book we read, as well as in the Gulf Of Tonkin timed write that was conducted; because when you look at both sides of an issue you can fully understand what needs to be done in order to solve the problem at hand. Overall, this project opened up my mind to what the truth of war is, and what it means to truly understand something.
Take-Aways From This Project
One of the biggest things that I took away from this was my better understanding of how to find the deeper meanings in all of my readings. Mostly based off of the book "The Things They Carried." This book taught me to be able to understand different points of views on things and be able to find the "truth" of what is in the reading. Another thing that this project taught me was how to find the truth of war. I learned how to do so almost entirely off of looking at both sides of the issue both in the book we read, as well as in the Gulf Of Tonkin timed write that was conducted; because when you look at both sides of an issue you can fully understand what needs to be done in order to solve the problem at hand. Overall, this project opened up my mind to what the truth of war is, and what it means to truly understand something.
Veteran Interview Below
Storycorps and Military Voices Initiative
My group partner, Logan Shackles, and I conducted an interview with our veteran named Don Jeter, at his place of work. During the interview we asked Don various questions about his time serving in the war and what he experienced and what he learned from the war overall. During the interview the most interesting part to me was Don Jeter’s opinions during the course of the questions being asked, he seemed to stand his ground and be a very firm believer on what he was telling us. One of the things that I found to be somewhat challenging during our interview was that Don seemed to be very vague on a few of the questions that I felt were very important to get as much detail out of them as possible; so in terms of this I definitely wished my partner and I would have asked better follow up questions to get more information out of Don. Last but not least, one thing that I learned from our interview was one thing that Don said that very well stuck out to me and he said “war makes you grow up.” After saying this he also talked about how the war forced young boys who were only 19 or 20 to grow up and mature and deal with life in a very serious way, and think differently about life. But overall I’d say the interview went well.
Socratic Seminar Reflection
For our first humanities seminar, we deeply discussed the many deeper meanings and ideas to the first half of our book we are currently reading called “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. Overall, from my point of view the seminar went very well, all of us carried out our ideas with every question very well, and to me did a very good job working off of each other's ideas to build further knowledge on the topic of the question. However, one thing I think we could improve on for next time, is including people who haven’t talked as much more; this is because during this seminar I noticed a few people who talked a lot less than the rest of us, so it would be nice to hear their opinions too. One of the most important things I learned from this book so far is the fact that war almost forces you to grow up instantly, and forces you to deal with real life serious matters in a mature way, and although the young men being forced into war are only 19 to 20, the war forces them to learn to cope with drastic things like men.
True History Of The Gulf Of Tonkin Incident
For our Gulf of Tonkin timed write out class had too look over multiple primary sources, annotate them, and dissect them to get as much insight as we could on what really happened during the Gulf of Tonkin incident on August 2, 1964. During the few days we read these many primary sources, us students had to create our own opinions as to what we personally think happened. With gathering as much information as we could, we then had to participate in a timed write sharing our ideas and carefully constructing evidence to back up our thoughts in writing. In my opinion, overall the best historical thinking skill I used best in my writing was my ability to deeper dissect the reading that we were given, to get a lot more deeper detail, and be able to infer what might have really been meant in what I was really reading, in order to better my writing. Lastly, one thing that I learned about the nature of truth in war from applying my historical thinking skills to the primary source documents was that sometimes you have to get the honest opinion of both sides in the conflict in order to get the answer to what might have actually happened in whatever incident you are dealing with. Thus, I think that our Gulf of Tonkin times write was a very good way to expand my historical thinking skills.
My group partner, Logan Shackles, and I conducted an interview with our veteran named Don Jeter, at his place of work. During the interview we asked Don various questions about his time serving in the war and what he experienced and what he learned from the war overall. During the interview the most interesting part to me was Don Jeter’s opinions during the course of the questions being asked, he seemed to stand his ground and be a very firm believer on what he was telling us. One of the things that I found to be somewhat challenging during our interview was that Don seemed to be very vague on a few of the questions that I felt were very important to get as much detail out of them as possible; so in terms of this I definitely wished my partner and I would have asked better follow up questions to get more information out of Don. Last but not least, one thing that I learned from our interview was one thing that Don said that very well stuck out to me and he said “war makes you grow up.” After saying this he also talked about how the war forced young boys who were only 19 or 20 to grow up and mature and deal with life in a very serious way, and think differently about life. But overall I’d say the interview went well.
Socratic Seminar Reflection
For our first humanities seminar, we deeply discussed the many deeper meanings and ideas to the first half of our book we are currently reading called “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. Overall, from my point of view the seminar went very well, all of us carried out our ideas with every question very well, and to me did a very good job working off of each other's ideas to build further knowledge on the topic of the question. However, one thing I think we could improve on for next time, is including people who haven’t talked as much more; this is because during this seminar I noticed a few people who talked a lot less than the rest of us, so it would be nice to hear their opinions too. One of the most important things I learned from this book so far is the fact that war almost forces you to grow up instantly, and forces you to deal with real life serious matters in a mature way, and although the young men being forced into war are only 19 to 20, the war forces them to learn to cope with drastic things like men.
True History Of The Gulf Of Tonkin Incident
For our Gulf of Tonkin timed write out class had too look over multiple primary sources, annotate them, and dissect them to get as much insight as we could on what really happened during the Gulf of Tonkin incident on August 2, 1964. During the few days we read these many primary sources, us students had to create our own opinions as to what we personally think happened. With gathering as much information as we could, we then had to participate in a timed write sharing our ideas and carefully constructing evidence to back up our thoughts in writing. In my opinion, overall the best historical thinking skill I used best in my writing was my ability to deeper dissect the reading that we were given, to get a lot more deeper detail, and be able to infer what might have really been meant in what I was really reading, in order to better my writing. Lastly, one thing that I learned about the nature of truth in war from applying my historical thinking skills to the primary source documents was that sometimes you have to get the honest opinion of both sides in the conflict in order to get the answer to what might have actually happened in whatever incident you are dealing with. Thus, I think that our Gulf of Tonkin times write was a very good way to expand my historical thinking skills.