Brief Overview of the Civil War

In this blog I wanted to explore the possibilities of how being involved in the war.  War in general is known for being a traumatizing experience, often times affecting the way people go through life. I don't think James Henry Bread was an exception.  I couldn't find much on Bread's life during the war so I decided to focus on discussing Civil War in general.

The actual causes of the Civil War are widely debated, however it can be summarized into three causes.  State Rights, Slavery, and Political/Economic considerations, though slavery has an effect on the other two.

The Civil War had the most lost of American lives out of any war in history.  Life on an American solider during the civil war was a hard one, like the life of any solider in any war.  It required them to be away from their love ones for intensive training just to get into the battle-field.  They often had to deal with inadequate food or shelter, deal through disease, and traverse through various degrees of weather while traveling with their heavy bags simply so their lives could be some-what bearable.

This is not including the stress they went through in the battlefield.  Times in the Civil War went between long periods of time with nothing to sheer terror from the battlefield and occasionally from a surprise attack.  Going between these extremes must of had terrible amounts of stress to the soldiers.  Surely, never knowing when they could be attacked next must only added on to this stress.

The Civil War was a long prolonged out War.  Both sides expected it to end swiftly but both sides were fairly equal in strength and ability which only dragged out the battle further.  The Civil War took place in a time when more modern tactics of battle were being adopted.  Efficiency played more of a role in this war than in wars of the past due to advancing technology and as a result, more chivalrous and honorable methods of the past were abandoned.

The information I used to wright this were all found on this site, it contains more detail information and of individual battles but I didn't have the time to explore it to deeply to see if there was information in here that would provide useful to us:
http://www.civilwar.com/

This link will take you directly to the Battle section of the site, in case anyone is interested in looking more into the battles of the civil war themselves.
http://www.civilwar.com/battles/battle-summaries.html

Fun Theory

So in relation to our project, I think we could make going to the museum more fun if we integrated a QR scanning system into it.  We could create a program where people could have avatars that directly interacted with the different portraits on display in a digital sense.  As a potential example, QR codes could be set-up next to each of the paintings within the museum.  As users explored the museum they could scan the various QR codes to get them to appear on your device then they could explore the painting with their avatar and it could interact with portions of the painting.  For example, with the war painting we had to work with, the avatar could freak out when it approached the skeleton, or give a blanket to the people lying down.  In the window view painting it could look at the photographs, perhaps as a receptionist at the desk who the people in the photos were.

The avatars could be customizable too and you could earn points to buy accessories for them by scanning the QR codes of various displays at the museum.  Within each of the paintings there could be a trivia section were you could answer questions for the chance to earn more points or exclusive accessory prizes.  Maybe they could even mix and match content from various paintings they explore to make their own custom art display to share with their friends.   They could even get their friends together and explore paintings with their avatars together.  They could interact with each other while inside a painting as well as the environment they were in.

Madness of Roland

Looking through the Madness of Roland.  It was interesting to see the story told from a variety of perspective.  Each one of them were incredibly different in both what was told and how the content was portrayed despite all the sides being about the same story.  It was interesting to hear the story told from both sides of the battle as well as a couple from neither side. 

For me, one of the old man was a bit more entertaining to me just from how less serious the tone was compared to the others with all the sidetracking into their youth and misunderstanding some of the basic facts.  There was another that seemed told from the side of the sword.  This was an interesting perspective to see and I know I did not see it coming until I started playing it.  Even though this story was told by the view point of a metallic object it surprisingly had one of the darkest tones out of all the different versions of this story.  It was interesting to hear that the sword claim to gave the solider the evil to fight and the craving for blood.

Understanding Metaphors

In our last class we have discussed metaphors.  Thinking about metaphors outside of class, an example I can think of would include how emotions can be expressed as landscapes.  A common example of this would be the phrase, "cry me a river".  Technically, one can not cry out a river, it would be impossible to cry enough water to even fill a creek.  Even if you could literally "cry a river", rivers are naturally formed so it's impossible to make a river.  However, this doesn't stop us from making this analogy.  The fact that a river flows with a lot of water and that tears are also water is enough of a correlation between the two for the saying to make sense to the people around us.

Beyond actual sayings, you can "erupt" from anger or with rage, or your emotions can "explode".  In a literal sense this impossible because people are not an actual volcano.  When we "explode" our bodies don't burn nor do we break into pieces literally in the process.  However, it still makes sense in our society to use these phrases.  In fact, even if you were to say that you burned up or are broken into pieces, people would still understand what you were talking about even if it did not literally happen.  In fact, it not only makes sense to use these phrases, sometimes we use them without even thinking about it.  There is that much of a correlation to us between a literal and an emotional explosion that it gets used like it is an accepted alteration of the standard definition.

Framing in Story-Telling

In the story of the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I think the central frame would be the corruption of money.  Though the way the story was framed it focused on the misfortunes of Gatsby through the money he had and despite it all, he still couldn't achieve the dream he wished to achieve.  The story was framed in a way that actually made me as a reader feel bad for Gatsby, despite how I would normally not take pity on the rich.

If the story's framing focused more on the wrongs that he did to gain his money instead of on the misinformation and problems he faced, I would probably have the exact opposite point of view towards Gatsby.  He has done shady business to gain the money he has, yet I think more of how unfortunate he is rather than how bad of a person he is, due to the way the story is framed. The story could easily make someone like Gatsby be a character no one would show remorse and sorrow for if there was no framing on the problems he went through and instead the framing was all focused on his flaws and his wrong-doings with no justification towards what he has done.

A Hero Myth disscussion

While the hero's myth is claimed to be a commonly used archetype in in story-telling.  I feel that is slightly exaggerated.  I am not really a huge fan of movies, from what I can remember of the ones I watched growing up, it does not seem like that commonly used of an archetype.

The hero's myth is something I often seen done in the Role Playing games(RPG) genre.  Many times the protagonist begins the story as an ordinary villager.  A series of events forces a hero to take on a journey, even if they aren't prepared for it or don't want to be involved in it.  The stories of these games often end with the protagonist defeating a great source of evil and being honored as a hero because of that victory.

An example I can think of includes a game known as Golden Sun.  In it, the protagonist Isaac and his friend Garret being the game living a normal life, at least in sense to the rest of the village where elemental powers are normal to them.  Early on in the game they are tasked to retrieve valuable stones stolen from deep within the sacrum hidden in the village, since in the wrong hands the power from these stones could destroy the world.  Garret has so much hesitation about the role is given that he leaves it to Issac whether to accept or decline the task.  This all reminds me greatly of departure in a hero's myth as we discussed in class.