The end point for our study of dear america is that you are going to end up writing an essay for this text. Your text response essay will need to discuss: how the text constructs meaning how a text conveys ideas and values how a text is open to a range of interpretations of course, to be able to discuss one's ideas and points of view in an essay one needs to have strategies and skills for approaching essay writing. This blogspace will discuss what an essay is, ways one can approach writing an essay and the little tips and tricks that one can use to help prepare for writing essays under sac and exam conditions. You have had an exciting year so far which has been jampacked full of all types of learning.

Your year in english is going to continue with the study of dear america. 'one thing worries me. Richard strandberg this blogspace has been set up to enhance your study of the text and develop your language and writing skills. Perhaps most importantly, this allows you to conference and comment on each others' writing to improve your prowess as we get closer and closer to exam time. You can access your vce english study design at the vcaa website for detailed assessment and exam information. On the soundtrack, we hear the voices of these soldiers, in the words they wrote home.

In their letters there is a sense of wonder at this new world they have found, a world so different from the american cities and towns they left behind. It has no plot except that thousands of young men went to a faraway country and had unspeakable experiences there, and many of them died or were wounded for life in body or soul. The words are the words of the soldiers themselves, and the images are taken from their own home movies and from tv news footage of the war. There are moments here that cannot be forgotten, and most of them are due to the hard work of the filmmaker, director bill couturie. Who has not taken just any words and any old footage, but precisely the right words to go with the images. Then he screened the entire archive of tv news footage shot by nbc tv from 1967 to 1969 2 million feet of film totaling 926 hours.

He also gained access to footage from the defense department, including previously classified film of action under fire. Much of the footage in this film has never been seen publicly before, and watching it, you know why. In many cases, they have matched up individual soldiers with their letters we see them as we hear their words, and then we discover their fates. I tell you truthfully i doubt if i'll come out of this alive, a private named raymond griffiths writes home to his girlfriend. There are amateur 8mm home movies here, of gis clowning in front of the camera, and cracking beers, and cleaning their weapons. There are frightening fire fights and unflinching shots of men in the process of dying. William westmoreland greets the survivors from a bloodbath and his words are the words of an automaton, with utterly no emotion in his voice as he chats with his troops.

If this footage had been shown on tv at the time, he might have been forced to resign. The movie follows a chronology that roughly corresponds to a soldier's year in vietnam. From the first days of swimming in the surf to the last exhausted days of fear and despair, it never looks away. One soldier writes of the bravery of men who rescued their comrades under enemy fire.

Another writes of a momentary hush in a tank battle on christmas eve, and of hearing someone begin to sing silent night and others joining in. The words in the letters are read by some 40 different actors and actresses, whose voices you can sometimes identify, until you stop thinking in those terms. The music on the soundtrack is all from the period, and then, at the end of the movie, there is a heartbreaking flash forward to the vietnam war memorial in washington, d.c. 15 years later, and we hear bruce springsteen's born in the usa as ellen burstyn reads from a letter that the mother of a dead veteran left at the foot of the wall of names: today is feb. Stocks, and as i do i wonder if anyone ever stops to realize that next to your name, on this black wall, is your mother's heart. They tell me the letters i write to you and leave here at this memorial are waking others up to the fact that there is still much pain left, after all these years, from the vietnam war. I would rather have had you for 21 years, and all the pain that goes with losing you, than never to have had you at all.

Choose any film as the best movie ever made about vietnam, and this is the other half of the same double feature. Francois truffaut once wrote that it was impossible to make an anti war film, because any war film, no matter what its message, was sure to be exhilarating. In the text dear america – letters home from vietnam, edited by bernard edelman. Dear america letters home from vietnam 1988 directed by bill couturie produced by the couturie co screenplay by richard. Dear america letters home from vietnam a documentary direct by bill couturie dear america letters home from vietnam dear america letters home from vietnam is a. The letters in dear america letters home from vietnam recount the personal experiences of their writers, they also challenge the assumptions of mainstream america.

Dissertation Topics Public Health

Title hold? what do you expect to find in the letters that will follow? the purpose of the. In 1981, six years after the official end of the vietnam war, mayor edward koch of new york city appointed a task force of twenty seven leading citizens of the city to develop a framework for a fitting memorial to vietnam war veterans. The memorial was to be a glass block structure etched with excerpts of letters sent to and from servicemen during the vietnam war. Due to the overwhelming response to the commission's request for letters, dear america: letters home from vietnam came to be. Consisting of 208 letters, poems, and journal entries written by 125 people, this book is a heart wrenching, first hand account of the personal experiences of soldiers both on and behind the front lines in vietnam, and of loved ones waiting in anguish for their return back to the united states.

Dissertation Topics Drama

End of the vietnam war, mayor edward koch of new york city appointed a task force of twenty seven leading citizens of the city to develop a framework for a fitting memorial to vietnam war veterans. The memorial was to be a glass block structure etched with excerpts of letters sent to and from servicemen. Title hold? what do you expect to find in the letters that will follow? the purpose of the title is to give the audience the impression that the following stories are not only the first impressions of the soldiers but the expectations they hold of the vietnam war and the new experiences they are enduring. This essay will consider black involvement in the civil war, world war i, world war. Includes background notes, characterisation, essay topics, questions, themes and.

Literature Search In Nursing Research

A few short essays by marguerite giroux who was a nurse with the third surgical hospital, bien. Buy dear america letters home from vietnam by bernard edelman isbn 9780393323047 from amazon's book store. Review best documentary i have ever seen i saw this movie during my english class about a week ago and i can say that it was the best documentary movie. Bernard edelman, ed., dear america: letters home from vietnam, simon amp schuster inc. I can 146 t tell them to my parents or darlene because they worry too much, but i tell you truthfully i doubt if i 146 ll come out of this alive. It seems every day another young guy 18 or 19 years old like myself is killed in action. I 146 m going on an operation next month where there is nothing but vc and vc sympathizers.