GUIDELINES

1. This exam contains three passages, and five pictures. You must choose ONE passage to analyze and TWO pictures. Your passage analysis will be worth 10 points, each picture analysis will be worth five.

2. A title page is unnecessary.

3. There are no set length requirements. You should try your very best to be thorough.

4. Your response is due via email by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, May 3, or in class on Monday, May 4.

INSTRUCTIONS

As I said on the first day of class, a historian is a detective. The passages and pictures that you see here are the clues that we use to learn about the past. So your task is to tell me what you, as a detective, learn from these clues. In particular, you should do two things:

1. You should tell me what you learn about the specific era or time period from the passage. If it is a picture from World War II, for example, you should find several good observations to make about the World War II based on the picture. Please keep that last part in mind. If your entire discussion is simply a list of facts that you know about the Cold War, and has little or nothing to do with analyzing the specific content of the picture, you will not do well.

2. You should tell me how the picture or passage fits into the "big picture" of American history. That is to say, what larger themes/trends is the picture or passage a part of? Generally speaking, a picture or passage will fit into the "big picture" in one of two ways:

a. It will serve as an illustration of some larger theme or truth about American history, American culture, of the American people. So, for example, a picture of World War II might illustrate some larger truth about war in general, or about how Americans respond to war.

b. It will serve to illustrate some sort of "turning point" in American history. So, for example, a picture of Rosie the Riveter is part of a larger story of women's move from the home into the workplace.

Please note that a particular picture of passage could easily fit into both of these categories.

As you work to do both of these things for EACH picture and passage, I encourage you to pay attention to details. Sometimes small details are the most important ones. You should also make certain to be thoughtful and creative. There really isn't such a thing as a wrong answer. If the picture or passage puts an idea into your head, go with it. Just explain what it is about the picture/passage that gave you that idea.

PASSAGE OPTIONS (Select ONE)

Passage Option 1: The White Man's Burden

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

Passage Option 2: Over the Top

During the bombardment you could almost read a newspaper in our trench. Sometimes in the flare of a shell-burst a man's body would be silhouetted against the parados of the trench and it appeared like a huge monster. You could hardly hear yourself think. When an order was to be passed down the trench, you had to yell it, using your hands as a funnel into the ear of the man sitting next to you on the fire step. In about twenty minutes a generous rum issue was doled out. After drinking the rum, which tasted like varnish and sent a shudder through your frame, you wondered why they made you wait until the lifting of the barrage before going over. At ten minutes to four, word was passed down, "Ten minutes to go!" Ten minutes to live! We were shivering all over. My legs felt as if they were asleep. Then word was passed down: "First wave get on and near the scaling ladders."

These were small wooden ladders which we had placed against the parapet to enable us to go over the top on the lifting of the barrage. "Ladders of Death" we called them, and veritably they were.

Before a charge Tommy is the politest of men. There is never any pushing or crowding to be first up these ladders. We crouched around the base of the ladders waiting for the word to go over. I was sick and faint, and was puffing away at an unlighted fag. Then came the word, "Three minutes to go; upon the lifting of the barrage and on the blast of the whistles, ÔOver the Top with the Best o' Luck and Give them Hell.'" The famous phrase of the Western Front. The Jonah phrase of the Western Front. To Tommy it means if you are lucky enough to come back, you will be minus an arm or a leg. Tommy hates to be wished the best of luck; so, when peace is declared, if it ever is, and you meet a Tommy on the street, just wish him the best of luck and duck the brick that follows.

I glanced again at my wrist-watch. We all wore them and you could hardly call us "sissies" for doing so. It was a minute to four. I could see the hand move to the twelve, then a dead silence. It hurt. Everyone looked up to see what had happened, but not for long. Sharp whistle blasts rang out along the trench, and with a cheer the men scrambled up the ladders. The bullets were cracking overhead, and occasionally a machine gun would rip and tear the top of the sand bag parapet. How I got up that ladder I will never know. The first ten feet out in front was agony. Then we passed through the lanes in our barbed wire. I knew I was running, but could feel no motion below the waist. Patches on the ground seemed to float to the rear as if I were on a treadmill and scenery was rushing past me. The Germans had put a barrage of shrapnel across No Man's Land, and you could hear the pieces slap the ground about you.

After I had passed our barbed wire and gotten into No Man's Land, a Tommy about fifteen feet to my right front turned around and looking in my direction, put his hand to his mouth and yelled something which I could not make out on account of the noise from the bursting shells. Then he coughed, stumbled, pitched forward, and lay still. His body seemed to float to the rear of me. I could hear sharp cracks in the air about me. These were caused by passing rifle bullets. Frequently, to my right and left, little spurts of dirt would rise into the air, and a ricochet bullet would whine on its way. If a Tommy should see one of these little spurts in front of him, he would tell the nurse about it later. The crossing of No Man's Land remains a blank to me.

Men on my right and left would stumble and fall. Some would try to get up, while others remained huddled and motionless. Then smashed-up barbed wire came into view and seemed carried on a tide to the rear. Suddenly, in front of me loomed a bashed-in trench about four feet wide. Queer-looking forms like mud turtles were scrambling up its wall. One of these forms seemed to slip and then rolled to the bottom of the trench. I leaped across this intervening space. The man to my left seemed to pause in mid-air, then pitched head down into the German trench. I laughed out loud in my delirium. Upon alighting on the other side of the trench I came to with a sudden jolt. Right in front of me loomed a giant form with a rifle which looked about ten feet long, on the end of which seemed seven bayonets. These flashed in the air in front of me. Then through my mind flashed the admonition of our bayonet instructor back in Blighty. He had said, "whenever you get in a charge and run your bayonet up to the hilt into a German, the Fritz will fall. Perhaps your rifle will be wrenched from your grasp. Do not waste time, if the bayonet is fouled in his equipment, by putting your foot on his stomach and tugging at the rifle to extricate the bayonet. Simply press the trigger and the bullet will free it." In my present situation this was fine logic, but for the life of me I could not remember how he had told me to get my bayonet into the German. To me, this was the paramount issue. I closed my eyes, and lunged forward. My rifle was torn from my hands. I must have gotten the German because he had disappeared. About twenty feet to my left front was a huge Prussian nearly six feet four inches in height, a fine specimen of physical manhood. The bayonet from his rifle was missing, but he clutched the barrel in both hands and was swinging the butt around his head. I could almost hear the swish of the butt passing through the air. Three little Tommies were engaged with him. They looked like pigmies alongside of the Prussian. The Tommy on the left was gradually circling to the rear of his opponent. It was a funny sight to see them duck the swinging butt and try to jab him at the same time. The Tommy nearest me received the butt of the German's rifle in a smashing blow below the right temple. It smashed his head like an eggshell. He pitched forward on his side and a convulsive shudder ran through his body. Meanwhile, the other Tommy had gained the rear of the Prussian. Suddenly about four inches of bayonet protruded from the throat of the Prussian soldier, who staggered forward and fell. I will never forget the look of blank astonishment that came over his face.

Passage Option 3: Farewell to Manzanar

Papa would argue with Woody. Or rather, Woody would listen to Papa lecture him on true loyalty, pacing from bunk to bunk, waving his cane.

"Listen to me, Woodrow. When a soldier goes into war, he must go believing he is never coming back. That is why the Japanese are such courageous warriors. They are prepared to die. They expect nothing else. But to do that, you must believe in what you are fighting for. If you do not believe, you will not be willing to die. If you are not willing to die, you will not fight well. And if you donŐt fight well, you will probably be killed stupidly, for the wrong reason, and unheroically. So tell me, how can you think of going off to fight?"

Woody always answered softly, respectfully, with a boyish and submissive smile. "I will fight well, Papa."

"In this war? How is it possible?"

"I am an American citizen. America is at war."

"But look where they have put us!"

"The more of us who go into the army, the sooner the war will be over, and the sooner you and Mama will be out of here."

"Do you think I would risk losing a son for that?"

PICTURE OPTIONS (Pick TWO)

Picture Option 1: This is a Republican poster from when William McKinley was running for reelection in 1900 with Theodore Roosevelt as his vice-president. Click here to view the picture.

Picture Option 2: This shows a women's suffrage march in front of the White House in the year 1917. The sashes they wear all list the names of the universities each marcher attended. Click here to view the picture.

Picture Option 3: This is a poster advertising the first march of the Bonus Expeditionary Army, in 1932. As you know, it did not go well, and President Hoover eventually used the army to disperse them. Click here to view the picture.

Picture Option 4: This is the famous picture of the marines conquering Iwo Jima. It is one of the most iconic images we have of World War II. This successful assault was the last step before attacking Japan itself. Click here to view the picture.

Picture Option 5: This is a movie poster from 1949. Click here to view the picture.