The purpose of this project was to examine the chain of events leading up to World War I and World War II, and develop a perspective about what the truth of war really is.
For my project, I wrote a historical fiction based on my great-uncle Howard Stensund, who served in the US Army during World War II. I then created a black and white painting depicting a soldier with a gas mask on as a representation of his attempts to filter out the evil and horrors of the war. There are multicolored triangles in his eyes as a way of illustrating the identification of prisoners in concentration camps during WWII. Below is a sample of my historical fiction.
"The raging storm in the distance smudges the dark clouds. The setting sun gives a deep red glow, as if a dying comrade has smeared his blood across the sky, begging the heavens for one last breath. The base is noisy, riddled with laughter and far-off dogfights, a cacophony of mixed up sounds. This is the sort of cosmic dissonance that has become my daily life.
“Gov?” I hear my name. It echoes through my head, snapping me out of my private thoughts and reluctantly returning me to gruesome reality. “You alright?” Leo stands to my right, obviously tipsy. I understand why he’s drinking. He’s trying to prepare, to numb himself, his soul. We’ve been stationed all over Europe for two years fighting the followers of Hitler and evacuating the countless victims of the tortures inflicted upon them in his name. Tomorrow, we go into the camps. ..." to read the rest of the story, click here. |
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