Responce Phase

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Response Phase

We began our workshop by talking and discussing in our groups the explorative strategies to enhance our understanding in our drama piece. We started off by looking at the Recruitment posters from WW1. Song: “I’ll make a man out of you” “ Oh what a lovely War”. From this discussion we learnt about the factors of war. For me going to war is about pride and love of your country. This song is relating to the thought that war will make you very popular and get the attention of lots of ladies. The song is trying to persuade young men to go out and fight for their country in the war. The methods used to recruit the soldiers are mainly seductive and sly because the woman performing this song is making herself look as though any army man can have her, and that women only fall for the so called brave army man. These methods would attract and entice the attention of a young man. It would mostly work on younger men because a young man would not have had as much encounters with a woman as an older man and younger men at this time were much more gullible. An older man would see right through the corny/fake attempt of this song and wouldn’t fall for the seductiveness of the woman.

Therefore it became much more visible and clear to me that younger men were more or less brain washed into thinking that joining the army will give power and fame. If a younger man was being told that women would fall in love with an army man, It would make him want to join the army so this method of persuasion makes young men want more than they can handle. Even if an older more experienced army man tried to show good influence and talk the younger man out of the thought of war, a young man can find it extremely hard to resist the temptation of a woman.

We progressed on and started looking at Role Plays. We did a role-play on “former soldier and new recruit”. Throughout this Role Play I learnt a lot about the effects of war. In this task we had act out a young man getting ready for war and how excited the man would be. Then there was an experienced man that had already been to war and the older man had to try and talk the younger man out of the thought of going to war. This piece made me realise that war is not all exciting, as it’s meant to be.   It made me realise that war can actually be dangerous and you can become maimed or even killed for you country, which is not what I expected from my present knowledge on war.  The attraction to war is advertised but the down side of being killed is not mentioned.  War is real and unattractive and many a boy going off to war, come back a changed person.  It can make you or break you, turn you into a nervous wreck or a man.  Nobody knows starting out what is ahead of you and fear can sometimes have an adverse effect on your mind.

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Many a young man went to war looking for adventure and hoping to become a hero, however this false hope is not a reality for all.  They encounter a rude awakening when they are faced with the fact that they have to kill another human being and this can have a great impact on their mental attitude when they return to their homeland.  The young soldier’s attitude varies between anxious and brave as he tries to impress his family and friends.  Going to war was a big influence to many young men.  This influence made him more determined because ...

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