The document discusses several American artworks from the 19th and 20th centuries, including landscape paintings by Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt depicting the American wilderness, as well as genre paintings by George Caleb Bingham depicting American life and politics. It also discusses photographs of Abraham Lincoln and industrial photographs and paintings by Charles Sheeler capturing the modern American landscape. Discussion questions are provided for each artwork.

1. Presented by Elizabeth Maxwell-Carlson, Jacquie Cullen and Robert Ward

51. A Visual Journey

59. When Tim O’Brien gets his draft notice in “On the Rainy River,” he implicitly contrasts WWII with The Vietnam War. Unlike WWII, in Vietnam . . . “ Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty: Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation or simple aggression? . . . . Was Ho Chi Minh a Communist stooge, or a nationalist savior, or both, or neither?” He then goes on to say, “ There were occasions, I believed, when a nation was justified in using military force to achieve its ends, to stop a Hitler or some comparable evil, and I told myself that in such circumstances I would’ve willingly marched off to the battle.” Apply O’Brien’s statements above to the images from WWII we just examined.

60. Let’s further examine what made The Vietnam War different from all previous wars . . .

66. How does the nature of the Vietnam War change conventional notions of Courage? Find quotes in “On the Rainy River” that show O’Brien’s definition of courage.

67. When he thinks about the American people, including his town & family, O’Brien writes, “ They didn’t know history. They didn’t know the first thing about Diem’s tyranny, or the nature of Vietnamese nationalism, or the long colonialism of the French—this was all too damn complicated, it required some reading—but no matter, it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, which was how they liked things, and you were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons.”  Identify O’Brien’s tone here.

68. Fiction as Truth “ Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

69. American Gothic Grant Wood, 1930 What “truth” may be told by this painting?

70. The Problem We All Live With Norman Rockwell 1963 Is this painting fiction or truth?

71. Truth or Fiction? V-J Day in Times Square 1945

72. Are there elements of fiction in this photograph? “ Migrant Mother” Dorthea Lange (1936)

73. What “truth” does this print tell us about Marilyn Monroe? Marilyn Monroe pop art Andy Warhol (1967)

74. What story do the following covers from LIFE magazine tell?

75. LIFE, 1944

76. Aaron Bohrod, War Artist April 30, 1945

77. General Patton Jan. 1945

81. The Story of the Vietnam War as told through the covers of LIFE Magazine

84. Kent State

87. “ In a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe ‘Oh.’” -Tim O’Brien

88. And now that we have finished the novel, let’s look at how painters tell a similar story as Tim O’Brien.

89. Discuss the placement of the American soldiers in the painting. What does this drawing say about America? About patriotism?

91. What connections to The Things They Carried can you see in this photo? Address color, body language, and physical placement of the soldiers.

92. And of Vietnam today? Let’s examine the National Memorial in Washington, D.C. But first, remember the WWII Memorial? What did we say about its color? Light? Shape?

94. From TIME, Nov. 9, 1981 An eloquently simple design for Washington's Mall draws fire. Though Viet Nam veterans never got big parades, by next year they should at least be able to dedicate a memorial to their fallen comrades. But as with so much else touched by that tragic war, the memorial's eloquently understated design is stirring controversy. Designated for a site on two acres of gently rolling park land on Washington's Mall, the monument will consist of two black granite walls that meet in a V and recede into the ground. One critic, Viet Nam Veteran Tom Carhart, calls it "a black gash of shame." The National Review labels it "Orwellian glop.” The winning design, picked from among 1,421 entries last May in a national competition, was submitted by a Chinese American, Maya Ying Lin, 22. "I've studied funerary architecture, the relation of architecture to death," says Lin. She has pointed the 200-ft.-long walls of her memorial west to the Lincoln Memorial and east to the Washington Monument. On those walls will be listed the names of the 57,709 Americans who died or were declared missing in Viet Nam. The names will appear in chronological, not alphabetical, order (another source of criticism). The roll begins on the right wall, with the name of the first American killed in Viet Nam, in 1961. It continues on the left and ends with the year 1975. Thus the first and last to die meet in the center and, as Lin puts it, "the war is 'complete,' coming full circle."

101. What does this painting suggest about the purpose of the Memorial?

103. . . . . That simplicity disturbs those who want a more assertive memorial. The National Review, calling for a sculpture, sees the black granite, sunken walls and unalphabetical roster as a conspiracy to dishonor the dead. Carhart, a Purple Heart winner who lost out in the design competition (he proposed a statue of an officer ' offering a dead soldier heavenward) says the jury should have consisted of war veterans, as if a beauty contest should be judged only by beauties. However heated the criticism has been of the Viet Nam veterans' dark chevron, it has been tepid compared with the storms that have raged over other public monuments . . . . Those bothered by abstract design might consider that grand obelisk, the Washington Monument. We have come to love it. Some day the Viet Nam memorial, too, may win the hearts and minds of the American people.

104. Today, the Vietnam War Memorial is the most visited memorial in our nation’s capital. Why, do you think? Consider both the artistic components of the memorial and what you learned about the war through The Things They Carried . Why do you think people underestimated the future popularity of this memorial? Answer these questions in a 1-paragraph response.

105. The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars The Things Our Soldiers Are Now Carrying

106. After finishing Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried , what do you now see in these images from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that you might not have seen before? What is the story truth you see in these images?

120. After finishing Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried , what do you now see in these images from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that you might not have seen before? What is the story truth you see in these images?

121. And after the war. . .

122. The artist for the drawings that follow is Michael Fay, a veteran of the Iraq & Afghanistan Wars. What do you think he is trying to convey about the soldiers of these wars through his drawings?

127. What do you think Michael Fay is trying to convey about the soldiers of these wars through his drawings? How is the impact of drawings different than the impact of photographs?