World War 2 Creative Historians
During this project, we were to communicate a truth of war through a fictional short story. Leading up to the writing part of the project, we read All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. While reading these books based off of World War 1 and World War 2, we developed an understanding of what the truth of war and the effects of war is to certain people. We had a seminar for each book and then moved on to analyzing short stories to start brewing ideas for the short story we would write. My story is called Bonne Chance mon Ami which means "Good luck my friend" in French. I focused on the role women played during World War 2 and the acts of resistance they carried out in France. During World War 2, France was a pre-dominatly female country because most of the men were off serving in the war. That being said, it was the females, children, and elderly that had to suffer through the day-to-day struggles of the German invasion of France. Women used their low visibility in society to their advantage by carrying illegal documents and secret messages without being the least bit noticed by the Gestapo. In my story the main character, Claudette, tells us about her journey of delivering ration cards and forged Identification Cards for the Jewish refugees, and how she used her negative set back of being a women to her advantage and saved her life. By playing the part of "a simple maid who didn't have the slightest idea of how she had illegal documents in her possession." By doing this, she saved her life.
I think my strongest literary element in my story is the historical integration. My story does a good job in implementing historical facts into it, but at the same time, keeps it interesting and relevant to the story. This is just one example of the many times I integrated historical facts into my story:
"Paulina and Berta made their way across the lawn to the barn door. They had traveled over four hundred miles from Compiegne, fleeing from the German invasion as an effort to save their lives. Along the way, they lost their family who were shipped off to Auschwitz or killed right before their eyes. All they could do was run. Eventually they arrived in the arms of safety of our tall mountains and small town." This element is important for the reader because it helps them understand the story was taking place during the German invasion, shows a specific story of some of the many Jews who took refuge in the town, and talks about the horrors Jewish people had to endure.
Of all the literary elements in our story, my weakest one was round characters. I struggled with creating Claudette as a round character. It was a challenge for me to create her character, personality, and her desires. After creating many drafts of the story, I eventually gave the reader a better understanding of Claudette'e background, personality, and desires by adding more detail and emotion to the story.
One substantial revision I made was developing my character. Before my revisions, my character didn't have any personality or show much emotion. I added background on her family in the first few paragraphs of the story, included her reaction to things, and described her appearance a little more than I had done before. Although I think the detail about my character is still weak, it has defiantly improved after revising and adding more to my story. A second substantial revision I made was historical integration. Before I revised my story, it was confusing when the story took place, the gender roles of women at the time, and what the issues were that citizens were facing. After my revisions, historical integration became my strongest literary element by describing in detail the affects of the German invasion on the people.
The challenge extension option I took this project was annotating two themes in each of the books we read. I chose this challenge because I am a strong reader so I wanted to push myself to dive deeper into the book. I put a lot of effort in to my extension annotations and I think that by taking the extension, I enjoyed and appreciated the books more than I would have if I didn't take the challenge extension. I also wrote an extra paragraph in the seminar reflections. In our research notes, I used 7 primary sources, and added an extra choice element. In my story, I didn't use a single adverb, and based my story off a primary source. The primary source I used was The Things We Couldn't Say by Diet Eman. I chose this options to make my story richer in historical content and to push myself.
"'Well I certainly don’t recall ever seeing them or putting them in my bag. I have no idea how they got there!” I lied...“You have never seen these documents before?” he wondered.
“No.”
“And you have no idea how they got into your bag?”
“Not at all. I have no idea who put them in there! I do not know how they ended up in my bag.” I whined.
The judge and the men laughed.
“Its so unfortunate that women are so clueless. What a hard way to live life.” Hans laughed. "
The Things We Couldn't Say is a memoir by Diet Eman. Diet was a girl who found herself becoming a part of an christian underground resistance movement in Holland shortly after Hitler invaded Holland. She carried out acts of resistance like carrying secret messages and forged IDs without being the least bit suspected by anyone, especially the Gestapo. As a rule, the Gestapo wouldn't stop and search women because they didn't believe women were capable of carrying out such difficult and dangerous tasks. I used this element in my story by showing how Claudette was carrying out the same task as her neighbor, Adrian, but he was killed while she got away with it. In The Things We Couldn't Say, Diet worked within gender expectations by portraying herself as lees intelligent than she really was. When she was arrested by the Gestapo for having fake identification, she decided to portray the role of being an unintelligent maid who didn't have the slightest idea how she could possibly be carrying the fake identification. By playing the part of "a dumb maid", she saved her life. I imitated this element of her memoir in my story. Claudette is caught and arrested by the Gestapo. At her hearing, she played the same role of being a dumb maid, and this saved her life. I think using a primary source made my story stronger by adding true, reliable, authentic facts. I think if I hadn't used this source, my story would have been very different and really boring. Overall, I am really happy that I made the decision to do the challenge extension.
I think my strongest literary element in my story is the historical integration. My story does a good job in implementing historical facts into it, but at the same time, keeps it interesting and relevant to the story. This is just one example of the many times I integrated historical facts into my story:
"Paulina and Berta made their way across the lawn to the barn door. They had traveled over four hundred miles from Compiegne, fleeing from the German invasion as an effort to save their lives. Along the way, they lost their family who were shipped off to Auschwitz or killed right before their eyes. All they could do was run. Eventually they arrived in the arms of safety of our tall mountains and small town." This element is important for the reader because it helps them understand the story was taking place during the German invasion, shows a specific story of some of the many Jews who took refuge in the town, and talks about the horrors Jewish people had to endure.
Of all the literary elements in our story, my weakest one was round characters. I struggled with creating Claudette as a round character. It was a challenge for me to create her character, personality, and her desires. After creating many drafts of the story, I eventually gave the reader a better understanding of Claudette'e background, personality, and desires by adding more detail and emotion to the story.
One substantial revision I made was developing my character. Before my revisions, my character didn't have any personality or show much emotion. I added background on her family in the first few paragraphs of the story, included her reaction to things, and described her appearance a little more than I had done before. Although I think the detail about my character is still weak, it has defiantly improved after revising and adding more to my story. A second substantial revision I made was historical integration. Before I revised my story, it was confusing when the story took place, the gender roles of women at the time, and what the issues were that citizens were facing. After my revisions, historical integration became my strongest literary element by describing in detail the affects of the German invasion on the people.
The challenge extension option I took this project was annotating two themes in each of the books we read. I chose this challenge because I am a strong reader so I wanted to push myself to dive deeper into the book. I put a lot of effort in to my extension annotations and I think that by taking the extension, I enjoyed and appreciated the books more than I would have if I didn't take the challenge extension. I also wrote an extra paragraph in the seminar reflections. In our research notes, I used 7 primary sources, and added an extra choice element. In my story, I didn't use a single adverb, and based my story off a primary source. The primary source I used was The Things We Couldn't Say by Diet Eman. I chose this options to make my story richer in historical content and to push myself.
"'Well I certainly don’t recall ever seeing them or putting them in my bag. I have no idea how they got there!” I lied...“You have never seen these documents before?” he wondered.
“No.”
“And you have no idea how they got into your bag?”
“Not at all. I have no idea who put them in there! I do not know how they ended up in my bag.” I whined.
The judge and the men laughed.
“Its so unfortunate that women are so clueless. What a hard way to live life.” Hans laughed. "
The Things We Couldn't Say is a memoir by Diet Eman. Diet was a girl who found herself becoming a part of an christian underground resistance movement in Holland shortly after Hitler invaded Holland. She carried out acts of resistance like carrying secret messages and forged IDs without being the least bit suspected by anyone, especially the Gestapo. As a rule, the Gestapo wouldn't stop and search women because they didn't believe women were capable of carrying out such difficult and dangerous tasks. I used this element in my story by showing how Claudette was carrying out the same task as her neighbor, Adrian, but he was killed while she got away with it. In The Things We Couldn't Say, Diet worked within gender expectations by portraying herself as lees intelligent than she really was. When she was arrested by the Gestapo for having fake identification, she decided to portray the role of being an unintelligent maid who didn't have the slightest idea how she could possibly be carrying the fake identification. By playing the part of "a dumb maid", she saved her life. I imitated this element of her memoir in my story. Claudette is caught and arrested by the Gestapo. At her hearing, she played the same role of being a dumb maid, and this saved her life. I think using a primary source made my story stronger by adding true, reliable, authentic facts. I think if I hadn't used this source, my story would have been very different and really boring. Overall, I am really happy that I made the decision to do the challenge extension.