History as Fiction Sarah

            Close your eyes and imagine an alternative world where we learn history though novels like Slaughterhouse-Five written from the perspective of people who experienced the events instead of our traditional textbooks. Imagine a world that doesn’t consider a 5 on AP World History to be mastery of history, because it really isn’t, it’s just endless memorization of facts and events. Imagine learning about not only each country’s rhetoric during war, but also the life lasting effects of war on the civilians and soldiers whose worldviews are never the same again. If we learned history though its aftereffects, I believe we would learn so much more and our world could be a different place. There is something just so raw, unfiltered, and moving about people talking about their experiences. I’ve never been moved to tears reading the statistics about migrant camps but listening to just one of their stories had a profound impa...

            During this whole epic journey of searching for the Text I never once guessed that in the end Jes Grew would be able to continue after the book had been destroyed. Looking back the whole idea of finding this definitive Text, is an extremely Atonist idea. Atonist religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam revolve around holy texts and Islam prides itself on never changing the holy text over thousands of years. It would be completely against the spirit of Jes Grew for it to stand motionless for millennia. The ending of this novel is a reminder that while there are certain constants perceived by the Atonists in this world, a movement never dies it just evolves. Over the past six decades the Civil Rights movement evolved into the Black Power and Black Lives Matter movements. Evolution of a movement is evidence how culture changes and how a movement adapts and continues in different societies. Today, racial in...

“That’s it?!” I remarked to my dad as we walked around the Lebanese National Museum. After our road trips to the various ruins such as the Temple of Bacchus in Baalbek, I expected a behemoth of a museum storing various Anatolian and Phoenician artifacts, but was instead faced with a space a quarter of the size of the Art Institute in Chicago. I walked out sorely disappointed while my father told me about the destruction and looting the museum suffered during the Civil War (1975-1990) in addition to Lebanon’s history as a French colony. Later that year my elementary school class took a trip up to the Oriental Institute of UChicago and to my disbelief I encountered a couple of collections that rivaled that of the Lebanese National Museum. These memories have lain dormant in the back of my mind until we read Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo in class this year. In Mumbo Jumbo, America is described as “Europe’s last hope, the protector of the archives of mankind’s achievements.” In addition w...