The Human Experience
HUM/205
16March2011
Richard O. Kosuowei
The Human Experience 2
The Human Experience 3
The art work that stands out most to me is one that portrays a young boy as a soldier in the US Army. The human experience from this could be expressed as one of many, love, loss, pain, hope, despair, values, beliefs and as we hope not but even death. I think the artist had love, loss and pain in mind with the painting. This is meaningful to my life because I feel that this is a portrait of myself as a young boy. I joined the US Army at seventeen, finished my basic training, school house training and was shipped off to Iraq with my unit before I was even close to being eighteen. I believed in what I was doing, I lost a lot of family and some really great friends in that war. I too had a picture taken with my uniform and full battle rattle, as we called the bullet proof vest, on. In that picture I was all smiles but honestly I was extremely scared and felt almost alone. This picture shows a young man with the same uniform on smiling. It really takes me back in time and allows me to see what war did to the once innocent young smiling boy that I was. I still to this day believe in all I have done, know that somewhere in there I have done them for the right and values of America but still it bothers me now. It also makes me fear for the young boy in the picture, fear for the outcome that will happen. The social views are simple, we are sending out our sons and daughters to fight a war for a political reason. Is that right? Not for me to even talk about there. The cultural value is to me that history repeats itself. Every war in history The Human Experience 4 we sent our sons and now even our daughters to fight. The morals views to me in my opinion are messed up. It wasn’t right to do it to start with but now that we have it’s morally wrong not to do it for those who already have.
Citations: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2080703/Dramatic-artwork-US-soldiers-shows-century-war-eyes.html.