World History of 1890-1990 in Artifacts Term Paper

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Over time, there have been several publications that have contributed literature to one of the most fragile areas of the evolution of man: Man in his environment. Over time, man has evolved exponentially and while doing so, has come to terms with not only his environment but also his presence in the same. Throughout history, different civilizations have chosen to adopt varying approaches to the environment. This paper shall shed light upon a few of the most significant records of man’s evolution in his environment. This paper refers specifically to the twentieth-century man and makes use of the books Something New Under the Sun by J.K Mc Neill, We Wish to Inform You That We Will Be Killed Tomorrow With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch, White Teeth by Zadie Smith and the movie, The Battle of Algiers Directed by Pontecorvo. The following paragraphs will shed light on each of these elements and will attempt to find the central meaning that these elements seek to elaborate upon.

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In Something New Under the Sun, J. R. McNeill argues that there is a significant degree of danger that looms in the shadows of the rapid development of social infrastructure and that even though the twentieth-century man has plotted out a vast expanse of programs and prospects for the coming future, there remains the fact that for every plan made for an exponential increase in maturity for any region of infrastructural development also brings with it an equivalent number of side-effects that do not decrease in any manner upon being ignored1. However, the author does not seem to be discouraging the aspect of continuous and aggressive growth but appears to believe that the plans for development and continuous growth are completely rational in light of the same.

The author argues that the twentieth-century man has made an almost complete transformation in which he no longer relies on an economic functioning infrastructure that is based on coal and wood but has come to a point where the human race is almost completely reliant upon nothing other than fuel. The author presents quite a history of the implications that have been reflected upon man’s environment as man has chosen to adapt to rising changes with time. In the author’s eyes, every addition that man makes to the regulation of his environment to harness better productivity out of the environment brings certain implications with it that cannot be ignored and these implications are of a nature that may become apparent only in the long run but do take effect in the bigger picture.

There are a very few incidents that have taken place in history that are of nature similar to the Holocaust2, and one of them is the slaughtering of over eight hundred thousand Tutsis in the recent late part of the twentieth century. In We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, author Philip Gourevitch sheds light on this holocaust-natured incident and raises questions regarding the reasons because of which the Hutus hacked up hundreds of thousands of innocent people3. Philip Gourevitch questions the occurrence of such an incident in a world that regards itself as one that is sophisticated and refined in every way. Philip Gourevitch takes a look at the fact that the international community could do absolutely nothing to prevent an incident of such disastrous volumes. Not even the United Nations could decelerate the killing spree that exploded across the Rwandan region and filled the rivers that flowed across Rwanda and Tanzania with hundreds and thousands of corpses of innocent families that had been hacked to their deaths by their very own neighbors.

The author Philip Gourevitch does not merely raise the question upon the decimation of innocent civilians but seems to be absolutely captivated by the mystery that looms in the form of the countless unanswered questions that pertain to this act of mass murder. Philip Gourevitch presents a number of interviews and highlights the extreme degree of disaster and devastation that the massacre brought by providing a photographic recollection of the incident as well. The author starts out with this graphical account of the incident and moves on to provide an even more shocking picture of the massacre through the statistical and factual presentation of the extreme degree of death and destruction that the massacre caused. The author highlights the role of political leaders around the world as the citizens of the world watched in horror at the unattended killings.

Moving on to the next element under attention, White Teeth by Zadie Smith is a highly unique novel that focuses on the lives of first-generation immigrants and second-generation immigrants4. Zadie Smith sheds light on the complex routes that lives take when one chooses to take a path other than the one that fate appears to have in mind at times. Zadie Smith presents the reader with the lives of three families whose lives are not only highly complex in their own right but also highly disturbed in certain areas of their family interactions. Zadie Smith paints a picture in which every generation seems to have a right to the decisions that it has to make and the life that it has to make for itself.

In the scenario that Zadie Smith presents, the reader can see that once a person has chosen to adopt a way of life, a point comes where it is almost impossible to change paths or the way of life. As the three families upon which Zadie Smith sheds light continue to evolve, one sees that there is hardly any degree of control that a person has on their life after a certain point. In this regard, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is nothing less than a work of art.

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Another work of art that also shed light upon a bone-chilling event in the history of the twentieth-century man is the 1966 movie The Battle of Algiers, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo5. The movie presents a graphical representation of the events that took place in the period of November 1954 to December 1960 in the then-French Algeria and elaborates upon the blood that was spilled on the streets during the Algerian War of Independence. Although the movie initiates in a manner that makes it appear as if it holds a biased stance, yet as it goes on, it is apparent that the makers of the movie have chosen to present a highly deep insight into the movie.

By making excellent use of what appears to be a limited number of lead characters, the movie brings to light the fact that wars are far more devastating and their effects are far more long-lasting than they are given credit for.

Upon going through the discussion on each of the elements mentioned above, it is not too difficult to find the central theme that underlies almost all of the works under discussion. Once see that almost all of the discussed works have chosen to portray the fact that one cannot expect to hold onto the environment in every way possible and has to accept the fact that beyond a certain point, it becomes impossible to control the causes and actions of the environment.

We can surmise from the discussions presented above that when one takes a decision or designs a plan, knowingly or unknowingly, one also gives way to a number of side effects and reactions that may not be as apparent as the actual series of events that have been planned. Also, this denial of the underlying reality does not change the fact that the consequences that remain underlying in the form of the side effects not only exist but also take effect in the longer run.

The works under discussion shed light on the numerous implications of man’s contributions to the regulation of his environment. In broad terms, the works under discussion cover three areas of man and his environment. They tend to elaborate upon the fact that man’s contributions to his environment have led to implications upon not only social dimensions of man’s life but also on material dimensions.

References

McNeill, John Robert, and Paul Kennedy. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. W.W. Norton & Co., 2001.

Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: a history of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War. H. Holt, 1987.

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Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. Picador, 1999.

Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. Random House, 2000.

The Battle of Algiers. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. Performed by Brahim Hagiag, Jean Martin and Saadi Yacef. 1966.

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IvyPanda. (2021) 'World History of 1890-1990 in Artifacts'. 14 December.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "World History of 1890-1990 in Artifacts." December 14, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/world-history-of-1890-1990-in-artifacts/.

1. IvyPanda. "World History of 1890-1990 in Artifacts." December 14, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/world-history-of-1890-1990-in-artifacts/.


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