The And Collective Memory Of The First World War - 1561 Words

Contemporary Canadian reimagining of the First World war is from the book Catching the torch by a Brock University teacher Neta Gordon. She wrote this book in 2014. She tries to explain to the reader the conflict between history and collective memory of the First World War. With many other essays, she focuses on the role of the Canadian army in the First World war. As we know, the Canadian army entered the war in early 1915 to offer help to the Britain soldiers fighting against the Germans. The Canadian army was basically forced to join because they were a member of the British Empire. On the one hand, Gordon quotes from Jonathan Vance’s Death So Noble: Memory, meaning and the First world war: â€Å"the dominant or collective memory of a†¦show more content†¦Most of the work that Gordon studied and with the publication date from this book, we can also say that collective memory is not a whole. Most of the soldiers are dead at this time and she had to rely on works that were published years later after the First War. Gordon quoted Winter in the first few chapters of her book, he stated: â€Å"This sense of the socially constructed nature of â€Å"collective memory† is vital to historical study, since it precludes talking about memory as if it exists independently of the people who share it† (2). From what I understand from the few pages that we had to read and with my research done with the whole book, the collective memory is based on the present memory, but since the soldiers they rely on are no longer in a group or in the same place , it is mostly a memory from one person. Another thing she said that made me realize how true her statement was with the novel that we studied during this term. She stated that: many of the narratives this volume examines rehabilitate the figure of the father and/or conception of productive masculinity; many follow in the tradition of early-twentieth-century home front novels by women to consider the value of female work, in wartime and beyond [†¦] and most conclude with a look to the future (which is now the present) and a sense of promise that is decidedly free from irony. (21-22) In Sunrise for peter, we have an example of the father figure where Peter takes care of Telfer becauseShow MoreRelatedThe Movie The Hawk Of The Shidenkai 1335 Words   |  6 PagesWar world two would lead to the defeat of the Japanese army, and ever since the Japanese have challenged this notice of defeat through popular films and manga. 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