Our Inevitability

Grade 8 tackle the meaning of life...and death

Showing amazing sensitivity and maturity, Grade 8 have investigated the Art genre Vanitas- still-life artworks in which symbolic objects encourage the viewer to consider their own mortality. As they tackled the provocative and emotive theme of our inevitability, they made insightful links to their studies in English and History. Recognising the similarities between Vanitas, War Poetry and Propaganda, the students made connections using symbolism through imagery and the actual media and techniques used... 

​Vanitas and War poetry both revolve around the concepts of mortality and the inevitability of death. In addition to this, Vanitas uses symbolism to represent concepts and ideas that would normally be much more difficult to show. War poetry uses symbolism as a way of dehumanising the soldiers, and creating the illusion that they are objects, that of which can be broken.
The obvious answer (to the question of differences) is that one of them, Vanitas, is an illustration, which is interpreted via sight, and you formulate ideas off the basis of a picture, whereas war poetry is a written piece of work, where ideas are formed off the back of words. Not only this, but Vanitas also focuses only on symbolism, and more specifically, death; meanwhile, War poetry is all about war, where death is merely a subtopic under this vast heading.
(The link between the poem, Manhunt and the imagery of the ribcage used...) The poem Manhunt is about the hide and seek-like game two men play in war, with the punishment for being found being death. The poem describes how the bullet penetrates the man's chest, and talks about how it destroys his body from the inside. 
Propaganda in the First world war was based heavily on truth, or lack thereof. Governments would alter documents, and give the public essentially, what they wanted to hear. This meant that they were only interested in what the public received. The cutting of paper to exclude parts of the poem is a visual metaphor of the government's actions, representing the exclusion of truth.
Ruben 
Paper-cutting is when you make patterns in paper by cutting parts of it out. This is similar to propaganda as in propaganda you are lying to the people and hiding the truth. By paper-cutting you are cutting out parts of the poem and the reader can only see some parts of it. The partial truth, just like propaganda.
Rohan 
The general criticism and condescending tone of the poem, blaming women almost completely for soldiers suffering, the writer, Siegfried Sassoon‘s brain must be dead set on his idea and opinion, his brain thinks differently and blames different things that are now, in this day and age, morally wrong, another example of the evolution of morals and how our brains are wired to think.
(How propaganda influenced the media and technique used...) The holes in their “truths” aka the blatant lies and stuff they ignore to fit the shape of what their story should look like. Cutting holes represents the holes and gaps in their ways of thinking and the imperfections of what they’re saying.
Milly