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A War Through Time Semester Project

My project focuses around the concept of war. The main character is a knight from a war taking place before the Hundred Years War. During the story, he comes to experience wars involving Britain and France on French land throughout the centuries. He sees that while the time and equipment changes, the battleground does not, and brings to light different views of looking at history. Link:  link The boat docked at harbor in Rions, England. Formerly a French garrison, stolen from the English upon the king’s failure to meet the French king and pay homage to him, now successfully reclaimed by the English navy. Harth stepped off, along with his fellow knights, ready to ride off to claim another town from under France’s rule. He was in the area of Gascony, in the year 1294 AD, and after four cold months traversing the water from England to the southern tip of France, Harth was finally able to get off of the boat and begin the march from Rions to Bayonne, to continue the expedition....
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So it's Gone

          After finishing Kindred,  one of the things I wanted to comment on is the changing of opinions of the situation over the course of the story. In the beginning, Dana mentions that she doesn't consider the situation to be favorable in any way, despite Kevin's claims that where they are is better than others, because there are fewer of the tropes associated with slavery present in the area. He seems to believe that the place they are in is not as bad as it seems looking back. However, as the book progresses, this opinion seems to change, for not only Kevin, but also for Dana.           Kevin's opinion in the beginning of the book reflects that of Billy in Slaughterhouse Five, where everything has happened, and cannot be changed. No matter what he sees occur, it has already happened and can't be hanged. It's less "so it goes," but more "so it's gone." Because of this, he wants to explore the West, see the different places i...
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So it Goes

          I am going to take a different stand from other points of argument. Instead of looking at the land of Tralfamadore as a truthful place within the plane of  Slaughterhouse Five , I am going to look at it as if it  isn't  real, and instead Billy is traumatized by his experiences in the war. There are many examples that show this to potentially be the case within the book, from when and where he travels in time, to what he says.           One of the first parallels between Billy's time travel and PTSD or something similar (I'm not going to try to diagnose him, I know far too little about psychology or anything like that to even make a laughable guess) is the first couple of times we see Billy time travel. From Vonnegut's telling of the story, we hear that billy first time traveled while in enemy territory with the two scouts and Roland Weary. In this event, Billy jumps several places, but some of the earliest are ...
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Texting and Jes Grewing

          One of the last things that we hear from Mumbo Jumbo from Papa LaBos is that the later culture will develop their own Texts for Jes Grew to follow in its relentless pursuit of all things dancing. So the question becomes, has the new Text of Jes Grew been created? And if so, what is it?           One contender that I think for the Text in today's world is social media. Social Media has a way of moving around ideas at an alarmingly fast rate. Sure, this was done through television and other parts of the Internet in the past, but social media does this in such a better way than any of those. One reason for this is that the language of social media is largely based in culture rather than politics. The greatest changes affected by social media were ones which shaped the way people acted, spoke, dressed, etc. Careers were started using social media, and groups of people are looking to monetize off of the culture spawned through us...
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Strangeness

          One question that may be bugging the minds of people reading  Mumbo Jumbo  is just how strange the book is set up. Unlike traditional books, this book starts before the publication pages, and has many different dialectical differences. Also, its numbers are always displayed as the numeral rather than the word.           One reason that I have found that explains this book's reason behind designing itself in this way is, of course, the time period in which it is being written. Not the 1920's, that is the year the story takes place, but rather the 1970's at the same time as Ragtime  was being written and produced. This is right when Postmodernism is rising, which is the focus of the class. Manipulating the layout of the book is one easy way to cast a critical eye on traditional books and the meta-narrative involving the layout of books. It also pulls us out of reading the book, forcing us to disassociate ourselve...
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He's a 19th Century Man, but He Doesn't Want to Die One

          Ragtime consists of many different times in history. We see Father, an explorer who has traveled the world, only to find he doesn't belong, Coalhouse Walker, who represents the changing themes in music, as well as the racial tensions that will escalate years down the line. On top of all of this is the cynical narrator, viewing everything from a view on high, only letting those who represent later ideas speak their own voice. Three completely different themes merge into one book. In this book, Doctorow tries to explore the effects of newer and older sets of ideals being thrust together in one area.           The main theme that the book portrays is early 20th-century Modernism. The book is set in an era where ragtime music is first being developed, the most famous composer of these still being alive while the story takes place. This means that the world is on the crux of a social transformation, which unfortunately comes prim...
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