IHSS The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Solider

 Jayla Balderas 

Mr. Roddy 

IHSS 

October 27, 2021

                                               The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier 

1. How would you describe Jacob Walter's style of writing?  Remember that this is a diary.  Is this the sort of way you would write a diary?

The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier isn’t written how the traditional Dairy would be. Usually it's a scribble down of thoughts and feelings that arise due to certain events, but Jacob Walters Style is written out in a more of an autobiography way. It's just a telling of the day's events with the setting descriptions telling the reader how morbid the atmosphere is, but with the lack of emotions that often come with a Dairy. It's very much told in a way that was not intended to be a space of privacy but for a large audience to understand the place he had in an immense historical event. 

2.  What is a worry that Jacob shares?  What about his setting (physical, temporal, historical) makes this worry unique?  Can you see/feel the human-ness in this worry?

One worry that Jacob has is just the simple struggle of day to day survival and disposable he was in the grand scheme of things. Especially when Jacob is constantly describing how people are dying left and right, here would be an example of one of them, “Again, and Again people died, and sometimes froze to death, they died away from the fire, and very often they even converted into a cushion in order that the living would have to sit in the snow.” (Pg. 72) It's also described before that Jacob did sleep on top of a dead person he believed was cushion. This just shows the limits people are willing to go and have to go stay alive.  

3.  What is a hardship that Jacob endures?  Provide a quote (first three words, last word, page number).  What stood out to you as interesting or difficult concerning this hardship?  Could you imagine yourself responding in the same way or differently?

One hardship was one of the times he had his horse Taken. It says in the narrative that it often happened if you weren’t careful and didn’t have the horse tied to your arm. “His strap tied to a soldier who was sleeping inside. Very softly now I in my turn cut the strap and rode towards my fire.” (Pg. 75) I thought it was interesting because he just had his own horse stolen and the solution that Jacobs had in that environment was to steal a horse from someone else and pass on the issue to another man and that Jacobs probably had his horse stolen by someone that had the same problem and it just being a chain reaction. 

4.  What does Jacob reveal about the human need of camaraderie?  How does the violence and constant movement of the war influence what camaraderie looks like here?

Jacob states here, “Offices were beaten away from the fires just as privates were whenever they tried to press forward without merited claim. Only mutual support still procured true friendship.” (Pg. 75) From this quote we can see how's It's not really about selection here you don’t get to choose who you want to spend your time with. The reality is they were forced with other people and placed into these violent and inhuman situations witnessing and experiencing them together and from this friendship or camaraderie will blossom. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cultural Anthropology blog

   Nate Savarese Mr. Roddy IHSS 31 August 2021 Cultural Anthropology Blog      I read cultural anthropology blog Vol. 36 No. 2 (2021). T his blog covers many different topics. One of these topics is about things such as rural places in the world that use the labor of inmates to produce value in their economy. An example of this is rural places in new jersey where the inequalities of the inmates challenge the work that they must do to make a living. This article also has an example of when people studied ethnography in Japan. In Japan there are Buddhists that sell pet robots such as robot dogs, to people to re-define the boundaries between  life, death, amusement, and play. I have been wondering if society would accept robot dogs or cats as replacements for real ones. I think that this would offer the trade between personality and functionality. In Bolivia Juliane muller offers the thought of large corporate companies attempting to bestow a ne...
Read more

What Did Medieval Peasants Know?

  Jayla Balderas  Mr. Roddy  IHSS  16 May 2022                                                   What Did Medieval Peasants Know? A comment often thrown around is how much easier life was in medieval times. What sparked this specific article was a tweet made by a woman named Azie Dungey she said, “We give a lot more labor to increase someone else’s wealth than in times past. We generally work much longer hours. We have far fewer holidays and times of community festivity,” (Dungey).  This sparked a controversy, and brought up the question, what were things really like during the medieval times? It was stated everyone has a different variety of what they believed this era looked like in their head because it's ...
Read more

John D Rockefeller - Eli

John Davison Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York. And In 1864, Rockefeller married Laura Celestia. Laura Celestia was an Ohio native and had a very successful father. Her father was active in helping the underground railroad and was an abolitionist. together Rockefeller and Celestia went on to have five children, 4 of them girls and one boy. however one of the girls, Alice Rockefeller died when she was only 13 months old. Later, In 1865 Rockefeller took out a loan to buy out his partner's oil refineries. He quickly formed more partners and expanded his oil business. he soon made the standard oil company of Ohio along with his younger brother and other young men. John Rockefeller became the president and biggest shareholder of the company. He began to make a monopoly in the Oil industry by buying out his competitors. he started selling his oil globally and eventually made up 90 percent of the nation's oil.  the gilded age is an era where we see a gr...
Read more