5. 2. What things are the “Indians” holding or carrying? List as many as you can.
6. 3. Given those items you just listed, what conclusions can you draw about the nature of the “Indians” as the artist is portraying them?
7. 4. See the guy to the left of Christopher Columbus? What is he wearing? Look closely!
8. 5. Given those details, what conclusions can you draw about who this man is? (his societal position)
9. 6. Where are the flag and cross positioned in the painting? Describe their placement.
10. 7. What does the placement of the flag and cross suggest about Christopher Columbus and his mission?
11. 8. How scary do the “Indians” look? Support your answer with 3 specific details from the painting.
12. 9. As portrayed in the painting, how do the Indians feel about Christopher Columbus? Support your answer with 3 specific details from the painting.
13. 10. So, overall, what is this artist saying about Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America through his painting?
14. 11. Compare and contrast this painting’s depiction of the “Indians” with what Columbus wrote in his Journal.
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19. What would Howard Zinn say we should do when we look at paintings like this?
20. What would Howard Zinn say we should do when we look at paintings like this? What role can paintings like these play in the formation of our ideologies?
78. When Tim O’Brien gets his draft notice in “On the Rainy River,” he implicitly contrasts WWII with The Vietnam War. Unlike WWII, in Vietnam . . . “ Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty: Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation or simple aggression? . . . . Was Ho Chi Minh a Communist stooge, or a nationalist savior, or both, or neither?” He then goes on to say, “ There were occasions, I believed, when a nation was justified in using military force to achieve its ends, to stop a Hitler or some comparable evil, and I told myself that in such circumstances I would’ve willingly marched off to the battle.” Apply O’Brien’s statements above to the images from WWII we just examined.
79. Let’s further examine what made The Vietnam War different from all previous wars . . .
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85. How does the nature of the Vietnam War change conventional notions of Courage? Find quotes in “On the Rainy River” that show O’Brien’s definition of courage.
86. When he thinks about the American people, including his town & family, O’Brien writes, “ They didn’t know history. They didn’t know the first thing about Diem’s tyranny, or the nature of Vietnamese nationalism, or the long colonialism of the French—this was all too damn complicated, it required some reading—but no matter, it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, which was how they liked things, and you were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons.” Identify O’Brien’s tone here.
87. Fiction as Truth “ Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
106. “ In a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe ‘Oh.’” -Tim O’Brien
107. And now that we have finished the novel, let’s look at how painters tell a similar story as Tim O’Brien.
108. Discuss the placement of the American soldiers in the painting. What does this drawing say about America? About patriotism?
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110. What connections to The Things They Carried can you see in this photo? Address color, body language, and physical placement of the soldiers.
111. And of Vietnam today? Let’s examine the National Memorial in Washington, D.C. But first, remember the WWII Memorial? What did we say about its color? Light? Shape?
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113. From TIME, Nov. 9, 1981 An eloquently simple design for Washington's Mall draws fire. Though Viet Nam veterans never got big parades, by next year they should at least be able to dedicate a memorial to their fallen comrades. But as with so much else touched by that tragic war, the memorial's eloquently understated design is stirring controversy. Designated for a site on two acres of gently rolling park land on Washington's Mall, the monument will consist of two black granite walls that meet in a V and recede into the ground. One critic, Viet Nam Veteran Tom Carhart, calls it "a black gash of shame." The National Review labels it "Orwellian glop.” The winning design, picked from among 1,421 entries last May in a national competition, was submitted by a Chinese American, Maya Ying Lin, 22. "I've studied funerary architecture, the relation of architecture to death," says Lin. She has pointed the 200-ft.-long walls of her memorial west to the Lincoln Memorial and east to the Washington Monument. On those walls will be listed the names of the 57,709 Americans who died or were declared missing in Viet Nam. The names will appear in chronological, not alphabetical, order (another source of criticism). The roll begins on the right wall, with the name of the first American killed in Viet Nam, in 1961. It continues on the left and ends with the year 1975. Thus the first and last to die meet in the center and, as Lin puts it, "the war is 'complete,' coming full circle."
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120. What does this painting suggest about the purpose of the Memorial?
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122. . . . . That simplicity disturbs those who want a more assertive memorial. The National Review, calling for a sculpture, sees the black granite, sunken walls and unalphabetical roster as a conspiracy to dishonor the dead. Carhart, a Purple Heart winner who lost out in the design competition (he proposed a statue of an officer ' offering a dead soldier heavenward) says the jury should have consisted of war veterans, as if a beauty contest should be judged only by beauties. However heated the criticism has been of the Viet Nam veterans' dark chevron, it has been tepid compared with the storms that have raged over other public monuments . . . . Those bothered by abstract design might consider that grand obelisk, the Washington Monument. We have come to love it. Some day the Viet Nam memorial, too, may win the hearts and minds of the American people.
123. Today, the Vietnam War Memorial is the most visited memorial in our nation’s capital. Why, do you think? Consider both the artistic components of the memorial and what you learned about the war through The Things They Carried . Why do you think people underestimated the future popularity of this memorial? Answer these questions in a 1-paragraph response.
124. The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars The Things Our Soldiers Are Now Carrying
125. After finishing Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried , what do you now see in these images from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that you might not have seen before? What is the story truth you see in these images?
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139. After finishing Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried , what do you now see in these images from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that you might not have seen before? What is the story truth you see in these images?
Notas do Editor
Christopher Columbus arriving in America
Learning Target: Students will be able to identify, explain, and answer questions asking them about basic stated information in a “text.” This is the first step in the hierarchy of reading skills. Let’s start them off easy! I then follow up by asking them how they know the guy with the hat is CC. Students support their answer with specific details from the painting.
Learning Target: Students will be able to identify, explain and answer questions asking about key stated details in a text. Step 2 in reading hierarchy.
Learning Target: Students will be able to draw SIMPLE INFERENCES about ideas not directly in the text. Next step in the reading hierarchy.
Learning Targets: Students will be able to identify, explain, and answer questions about BASIC STATED INFORMATION in a text
Learning Targets: Students will be able to identify, explain, and answer questions about KEY STATED DETAILS in a text.
Learning Target: Students will be able to identify, explain and answer questions about BASIC STATED INFORMATION in a text.
Learning Target: Students will be able to draw SIMPLE INFERENCES about ideas not stated directly in the text.
Learning Targets: Students will be able to draw conclusions about RELATIONSHIPS STATED DIRECTLY in the text and use evidence to explain how they arrived at those conclusions. Students will be able to draw SIMPLE INFERENCES about ideas not stated directly in the text and use evidence to explain their conclusions.
Learning Target: Students will be able to draw COMPLEX INFERENCES by connecting multiple ideas not stated directly in the text and use evidence to explain their conclusions.
Learning Target: Students will be able to draw conclusions about THE ARTIST’S GENERALIZATIONS (THEMES/THESIS) in a text and use evidence to explain their conclusions.
Learning Target: Students will be able to explore and evaluate the various ways that multiple texts construct and explore the same arguments or themes. NOTE: At the beginning of this unit on Discovery Voices in America, students read excerpts from Christopher Columbus’s Journal, a primary source.
Using the kinds of questions and skills we just practiced with the previous picture, we now as a class engage in general discussion of this and the following pictures. I see this as application of those skills.
This is a fun one to CONTRAST the first picture.
Columbus returning with “Indians” to show off to Queen Isabelle and King Ferdinand of Spain. I want students to see consistency between this picture and CC’s journal—and be able to be skeptical of this depiction of the natives, using Howard Zinn’s telling of CC’s arrival as a foundation for their skepticism.
NOTE: Students have read Chapter 1 of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States , in which Zinn tells of CC’s arrival from the viewpoint of the Arawak Indians. They have also read the introduction of Zinn’s book Declarations of Independence entitled “Introduction: American Ideology.”
Learning Target: Students will be able to explore and evaluate the various ways that multiple texts construct and explore the same arguments or themes.
Lincoln was 55 when the photo was taken. It was not the last photo taken of Lincoln
Creates a kind of halo around Washington Straight lines of oars echo that of flag & draw our eyes to that flag Lines also form a kind of frame around Washington?
Choice of medium=bronze=all are one color, all united
Difference in hand, facial expression, can’t wear his hat b/c of wounds, unbuttoned, hand not on hip in authority but weakly holding his hat