WW1 Creative historians
All Quiet on the Western Front
Reflection
Gabe Garcia
9/11/14
Seminar Reflection:AQotWF
Paragraph #2
Does the truth of war change over the course of this novel? Over the course of this novel the truth of war starts out at a point of discomfort and psychological questioning towards oneself. The soldiers dont know the extent of what blood shed, sadness, and misfortune is to come to them. The beginning of their story is each of the men are challenged to become comfortable and enter a state of brotherhood with the rest of the group. As the book goes on the friends start to enter a more intimate relationship and care for one another like family. Although they watch at one after the other, they picked off, they still have a lack of relationship to where they can go on and still be strong enough for the next battle. The transparency of each man is that he might seem harder, war ridden, and angry, but he is weaker than when he first entered the war. On pg. 58 it says “The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas people who were better off were beside themselves with joy, though they should have been much better able to judge what the consequences would be.” This means that people wouldnt of joined the war if they knew the misfortunes and sadness is would cause. The sight of death and loss puts each man at a disadvantage for their lives outside of war. By halfway through the novel, the men are taken by grief but acting with fake determination and strength. They eat with their surviving friends and sleep with the rest of the men in the bunks but the dirt and filth of fear covers them and no matter how hard they try, it doesn't wash off. By the end of the book most of them have died and the survivors aren't survivors anymore. They are more dead inside than a healthy corpse.
Paragraph #4
On 9/10/14 I made a painting of Satan putting his fear and evil into a young women. It shows how the just can drink evil like water as easily as drinking water. Although i'm not per say religious I thought this piece represented a scene of All quiet on the western front novel made by Erich Maria Remarque. The scene was of Paul stabbing a man in his abdomen and then realizing he is just a man like him and that he drank the evil of war and ended up doing something he regretted. Chapter nine says, “This is the first time I have killed with my hands, whom I can see close at hand, whose death is my doing. Kat and Kropp and Müller have experienced it already, when they have hit someone; it happens to many, in hand-to-hand fighting especially, But every gasp lays my heart bare. This dying man has time with him, he has an invisible dagger with which he stabs me: Time and my thoughts. This shows his regret and again regretting drinking the evil of war.
Paragraph #5
“As I jump into the pit with a spinless weasle trying to gain intel I feel a sharp pain in my chest”. My knees feel weak, I can feel them buckle down under my torso and fall on my back with a “Thud”. I lay in agony, the warm internal nectar I crave to survive pouring out of my body as a steady stream damping my clothes and dying my hands. Out of pain I let out a muffled gasp and I see the mans eyes dart to my position. The softness and fright in his eyes puts me at ease. He wraps my chest with clothe and lets out quiet whimpers of remorse as like a dog filled with guilt. Hours pass of him checking on me and checking to make sure i'm breathing. Consciousness is becoming less and less reachable. I feel a warm sensation coming from my stomach and I stand up. But its not me, I can see myself lying on the ground in the dark battle ridden arena. The man sitting next to me crying is becoming worried, I feel as if I could grab him and make him pay for what he did but instead I lay a hand on him and forgive him. I am taken away with a gust of warm soft wind pulling me up into the sky. The stars look different from up here and before I can reach a conclusion to what happened to me I am sucked into a new body. I am in the hospital as a newborn and as I get older i’m taught of the war in 1917, the year is 2014 and I am 16 years of age. Living my life out as an average colorado bound teenage boy. My name is Gabe Garcia now.
9/11/14
Seminar Reflection:AQotWF
Paragraph #2
Does the truth of war change over the course of this novel? Over the course of this novel the truth of war starts out at a point of discomfort and psychological questioning towards oneself. The soldiers dont know the extent of what blood shed, sadness, and misfortune is to come to them. The beginning of their story is each of the men are challenged to become comfortable and enter a state of brotherhood with the rest of the group. As the book goes on the friends start to enter a more intimate relationship and care for one another like family. Although they watch at one after the other, they picked off, they still have a lack of relationship to where they can go on and still be strong enough for the next battle. The transparency of each man is that he might seem harder, war ridden, and angry, but he is weaker than when he first entered the war. On pg. 58 it says “The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas people who were better off were beside themselves with joy, though they should have been much better able to judge what the consequences would be.” This means that people wouldnt of joined the war if they knew the misfortunes and sadness is would cause. The sight of death and loss puts each man at a disadvantage for their lives outside of war. By halfway through the novel, the men are taken by grief but acting with fake determination and strength. They eat with their surviving friends and sleep with the rest of the men in the bunks but the dirt and filth of fear covers them and no matter how hard they try, it doesn't wash off. By the end of the book most of them have died and the survivors aren't survivors anymore. They are more dead inside than a healthy corpse.
Paragraph #4
On 9/10/14 I made a painting of Satan putting his fear and evil into a young women. It shows how the just can drink evil like water as easily as drinking water. Although i'm not per say religious I thought this piece represented a scene of All quiet on the western front novel made by Erich Maria Remarque. The scene was of Paul stabbing a man in his abdomen and then realizing he is just a man like him and that he drank the evil of war and ended up doing something he regretted. Chapter nine says, “This is the first time I have killed with my hands, whom I can see close at hand, whose death is my doing. Kat and Kropp and Müller have experienced it already, when they have hit someone; it happens to many, in hand-to-hand fighting especially, But every gasp lays my heart bare. This dying man has time with him, he has an invisible dagger with which he stabs me: Time and my thoughts. This shows his regret and again regretting drinking the evil of war.
Paragraph #5
“As I jump into the pit with a spinless weasle trying to gain intel I feel a sharp pain in my chest”. My knees feel weak, I can feel them buckle down under my torso and fall on my back with a “Thud”. I lay in agony, the warm internal nectar I crave to survive pouring out of my body as a steady stream damping my clothes and dying my hands. Out of pain I let out a muffled gasp and I see the mans eyes dart to my position. The softness and fright in his eyes puts me at ease. He wraps my chest with clothe and lets out quiet whimpers of remorse as like a dog filled with guilt. Hours pass of him checking on me and checking to make sure i'm breathing. Consciousness is becoming less and less reachable. I feel a warm sensation coming from my stomach and I stand up. But its not me, I can see myself lying on the ground in the dark battle ridden arena. The man sitting next to me crying is becoming worried, I feel as if I could grab him and make him pay for what he did but instead I lay a hand on him and forgive him. I am taken away with a gust of warm soft wind pulling me up into the sky. The stars look different from up here and before I can reach a conclusion to what happened to me I am sucked into a new body. I am in the hospital as a newborn and as I get older i’m taught of the war in 1917, the year is 2014 and I am 16 years of age. Living my life out as an average colorado bound teenage boy. My name is Gabe Garcia now.
Slaughterhouse five seminar reflection
Gabe Garcia
10/7/14
Seminar Reflection: Slaughterhouse 5
One question mentioned in the seminar I found interesting was close to the last question and it was, “ Are you Billy Pilgrim?” This question although broad and somewhat misleading, we decided meant, “ Is there an aspect of Billy Pilgrim you can connect to yourself?” My reaction to this comment at first was “ Why is this relevant to anything in humanities?” after overthinking this question with my group we came to a conclusion of not so much “are you Billy Pilgrim in your opinion?”, which wouldn't make sense, but “does any of one or several actions pertain to your everyday life?” This deepened my perspective to my own life by creating kind of an alternative personality with myself. Not in a crazy way but in an aware way, such as when I play sports like ultimate frisbee and run to my limits and take a break, I start to think , “would Billy Pilgrim stop running if it meant his team losing?” “Hell no!” So I get back in the game.
One of the questions during the seminar was, “ Is this book an anti-war book?”
From what i've gathered from Slaughterhouse five is that Kurt Vonnegut (author) goes into a lot of detail about the war and how horrible it is. He also goes into the things he's seen and how he has PTSD but he never says anything against war. His book shows more of creative side to his opinion of war will happen and he makes this creative by making a character named Billy Pilgrim that makes a life line off of Kurt Vonnegut's life. In chapter 1 page 1 it says, “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his.” This quote shows that during the war things happen and people are killed but no where in this book does it deny or agree with war should or shouldn't happen.
In the seminar a theme was questioning the books meaning especially on the, “Are you Billy Pilgrim?” question. I connected this to when Billy Pilgrim is thrown into the pool by his father. This is an experiment to see if Billy will sink or swim. When I was first learning how to swim my dad brought me to the pool and I was so excited that I jumped out of his arms and fell in the pool and my floaties fell off. Long story short I learned how to swim after I had sunk to the bottom and almost drowned.
The connections I made to All quiet on the western front and Slaughterhouse five was simply the amount of change you see in one or more characters throughout the war.
When Billy was a young man he was happy and lively going to parties and then the war hit and his spirit diminished. This also happened with one of the characters in AQotWF named Paul. He was still afraid and weak in his life previous to the war but that fear grew throughout his war. Both of these characters suffered and changed their personalities to be able to cope.
Over the course of both time periods both men seemed to become more discouraged with the idea of having a regular life after being through lifeless wars.
Short Story Project.
By: Gabe Garcia 10/22/14
After Slaughter house 5
By: Kurt Vonnegut
The First Time Traveler
A bright light shines through a circular hole and something has got my arm. Slimy and stretched around a hard surface. I'm pulled through and I can't see, the light is blinding me and something is in my throat, it feels like a finger but its much too big. A new air is coming into my newly made lungs. My hands are shaking and I am crying but I am not sad. The woman holding me, her smile stretches from ear to ear and my belly is warmed. My nerves calm and my head stops hurting but with a splitting of my body and bright light I hear my mother scream. “What's happening!?” The new mothers scream pierces her newly born babies ears as its body is torn to a insect hair size and leaves only marks of blood on her white hospital gown.
Floating in this stream of memories and futures is to me as heroin is to a duly lit soul. It is like it was in the womb, my body coming together again at a more rapid rate than before. I'm putty in my moulder's hands he stretches and pulls my flesh and shapes it to my light that fluctuates as if its trying to get away from my muscles and organs. I can't move to the defeating realization that I have no structure. A round gravity ball pulling human building blocks around myself. The grip of the power tightens and bones are stuffed into my flesh in no particular order. Red mush and white sharp edges poking out slowly staining red. I feel small tinkering sharp angles in my stomach and I stand. My jaw pops and finally is in place and I creak like a tin man without oil.
My brain begins to connect and the electrical current passes through my head like I have been struck by lightening. I retain my name is Frederick and then I fall out of my state of heavenly grace.
Boom!!!!! My body is intact from what felt like a big drop. I look up and realize the city around me is in ruins and I am in a crater. A sign next to me almost completely melted to the pavement and it reads Hiroshima city limits. The last thing I remember was breaking out of the prison I was in inside of a ball being circled by atom looking balls. Another boom but microscopic and I am inside of it. “Was I the cause of that explosion?” Frederick thinks in the back of his mind. I am moulded again and the process starts over again I am nothing made into a red ball of flesh eventually formed to a person.
The way my body is drifting along a stream of warm water filled with time is bliss. My hairs stand up on my neck and I sink down to another time.
I am back in my mothers arms. Her sweat is glimmering like the drops outside of a cup of cold water. The panic in her eyes is off putting and ugly but she is quickly calmed when she looks at me with her brown lush eyes. “Must of been some weird hallucination” she says with a shortage of breath and demands to know what drug she was given for childbirth.
Driving home she seems worried. “I wish I knew what she was thinking.” With the clunk of a car door she takes me inside of a small trailer and sets me on the first step of the hard wood porch covered in splinters and broken nails that I do not dare attempt to climb on. My hands are not working but if they were I would cover my over-sensitive ears when the screen door opens. I can hear her and her husband talking and a large foot steps next to my basket while my back is turned. His large hairy hands with veins the size of my arm pick me out of my basket and anger fills his eyes. A fire filled drop of tear leaves his eye and he whimpers like a wounded animal. His teeth grind as if ready to bite me like freshly cooked steak. I'm dropped back in my crib and second later I hear a gunshot that rings my ears and my first instinct is to cry. My tears roll of my round cheeks but with the swiftness of anger the man comes out and dries my tears with his passing breeze. He can’t hide his face in tears and his white tank top stained with blood contrasting off of his dark skin.
Vroom! as the engine roars to life and smoke is thrown into the forgiving summer air. He is gone. With a sucking sound like someone sucking on a lollipop I am thrown into a deep black hole as the one before was only this time the journey to where I am going is a longer distance.
I can feel the scales of something bigger than myself pressing my feet and rubbing my clothes, soaked. My surroundings are making my head hurt. Creatures fly that I have never seen before. The water is filled with serrated toothed beasts. “Help!” I shout. Washed on dark sand that stains my white clothes like oil. Lightning and dark energy fills the air and sky. “This isnt my universe anymore” I think as a theory. I'm gripped tightly from behind, my rib cage is smashed within my attackers paw looking hand. My limbs stretched and popped out of their sockets. As the light starts to fade from my eyes I see my attacker with matted hair and drool covered lips. Its eyes black with a speck of yellow that seems to go for miles back in its head. Its mouth opens and a foul stench of fish and rotting fruits pours out in a waterfall of mist over my head and sticks to the inside wall of my nostril. His crooked blunt yellowed teeth position over my neck and it bites down. Its teeth click together and its disappointment is seen in its expression. I've disappeared to my universe before his blood lust is fulfilled.
The air smells of spring and rain. I wake up on a street with my friends asking if I am “Ok” I stand up and shake off a thin layer of dust, “What happened?” I ask the boy who feels the most concerned. “You were ran over!” He screams eager as if to impress me with his knowledge. A lack of interest and my emotions drastically change. “I'm ok” I say with a toothed grin and walk to my school. Inside the school I am almost sick from the smell of body odor and sexual frustration. My locker presents itself to my surprise. The window above is only shining on my locker and its lockless. As I pop the latch and cringe at the sound of metal on metal scratching. Empty, my locker is empty and it leaves a presence of deja vu in my head. Before I can shut the door I am sucked into the metal case and thrown back into a hole brighter than the last. I feel my body, this time I am not being torn and recreated and I am fully conscious. I'm shown images of my life up to this point. Frederick Smith, Born 1962, 7 pounds even but that information fades from my subconsciousness. Images flash at my confused brain as if to wake it up. I recognize my life from age -9 months to 16 years old. In a long flash of images, sounds, smells and feelings my eyes close from the irritation of the strobe light of events.
New York 1961 at a Christmas party I am dumbfounded by the architecture of the house. A door to a room is most appealing. The handle is stiff and locked but I walk in without a key as if the door wasn't fully shut. Blankets move that remind me a puppet being thrown by an amateaur puppeteer, moments go by and to my embarrassment, hands on the headboard fiercely grip at the hard wood. I pick up the pants of the man I assume is under the comforter and read his identity. Billy Pilgrim, “I had heard that name once before” I whisper so I dont disturb the bunnies in front of me.
Growing atmosphere of uncomfortability settles over the room and I walk out with the door open. Swiftly I look over my shoulder for there was no click of the handle shutting. The door is shut and I pay little attention. The party is huge with large christmas trees all around in a concert hall. A light jazz band plays and the people hold each other close. I can feel the pitter patter of dancing feet like a small earthquake that brings my spirit up. A guest list shows hundreds of guests on the year of 1961. “That impossible” I say in denial. Shock hits and my legs go weak. The impact is so strong I have lost my voice, all I can think about is how I had sweared it was 1962 on my birth information. I am at age 16 now but I have no idea how I know that, I have no recollection of birthdays or gifts or cake. “OOOH cake” I think to the beat of my rumbling stomach and I forget my problem. After a visit to the buffet I walk into a room without realizing I was in this room with the two energetic souls earlier but now almost fully clothed they sigh together in mutual satisfaction and I see something I had never of dreamed of seeing. My mother with another man, than the one who murdered her for her bearing of a child with another man. Shes in a daze with her red lipstick smeared from ear to ear but her lips are bare and chapped. She's grinning while Billy Pilgrim is rushing out of the door. As the door shuts with a click feelings of guilt and confusion pour over me and my surroundings turn black.
The walls around me are rumbling and shaking back and forth. I'm moving intensely fast flying through slimy liquid. Bam! The wall of a pink ball is no match for my speed and I fly into its thin skin where I sit and wait for something to happen. My tail disappears and I start to grow bigger and for a second time I see a blinding light and big plastic hands reaching for me inside my warm cave. The light is like a doorway with flesh carvings and hinges and as I pass through it im back at the party on the other side of the wall of the room I was previously in. Billy Pilgrim pushes me out of the way and walks out of the party mumbling “Im sorry Valencia”.
I'm six years old and can't process fully what my adoptive mom is telling me. My real mother was murdered by her boyfriend and my real father is still yet to be found. After our talk I am feeling sick but my body is working like it has no problem with the news. I invite my friend Thomas to my house. After 20 minutes of waiting Thomas and his alcoholic mother arrive. In the den we play with my wooden train set I got for christmas but I dont want to play trains. I have no control over my body right now. We continue playing with my train set and Thomas sucks on the caboose I think nothing of it but my body moves swiftly and strikes him over the head with a remote to our box television set. To another six year old this was a crippling blow. When Thomas and his squealing pig of a mother finally diparts I have time to figure out what's going on. I try to move my arm but it does what it wants and plays with trains. I can not calm down, my body is like a person sitting on a basket with me inside unable to move or breath. “Let me out” I furiously shout at myself but nothing happens. I can feel myself stand and walk to the kitchen. I open the fridge and brisk breeze like a wave washes over me but my body seems to be fine with the cold. “Let me out” I shout again angrier and with more power in my vocal cords and to my surprise my bodies finger bends and my vision is blurred and I lose consciousness.
Cold water splashes on my face and laughing fills my disoriented ears. My mother is standing over me looking older than before, “Get ready for school you're late”. I sit up on my silk sheets and yawn almost ripping the sides of my mouth apart. After wiping the sleep out of my eyes I descend down stairs. My mom made me oatmeal and I am not excited but I eat it to make her morning more pleasant. She asks me how I slept but I can't focus on her at the moment, my eyes focus on the autumn leaves falling off the tree outside. The sunshine bounces off the walls around me and makes the whole house bright and colorful due to the stainless glass chandelier. Although the scene is beautiful my mind runs to tangents and I can't stop thinking of Billy Pilgrim, he has something about him I am drawn to.
Boom! Boom! Boom! I can hear the explosions boom above me. Im in a room with Billy Pilgrim and two other soldiers wearing the same outfit he is. The two others I notice after are wearing Nazi German uniform and carrying large machine guns. I stay in the shadow of the corner of the wall in the cold meat room. I smell frozen meat and sweat falling from Billy and his comrades chins. The tag on the meat next to me says “Am besten durch Januar 1945” (Best by January 1945). “ This must be really old meat” I think to myself. I look around at the soldiers again and suddenly I realize its 1945 and that isn't old meat. I start to hyperventilate but quietly so no one can hear me. The booming stops from above us after several hours of heaving cold breath through my tired lungs and I start to calm but the soldiers become squirly and start to become curious. The soldier on the left goes to the door leading to stairs but as his hand grips the shiny silver handle his skin is instantly seared and burnt. He lets out a gasp then a pause and then a loud scream followed by profanity. He puts his hand to a frozen cow and his skin starts to fall off of his hand until its bright pink and raw. The second soldier puts his coat over his hand and lift up on the handle to the outside. When everyone is out of the meat locker its hard to breath. Fire and smoke is all over the area and people are as doomed as the corpses melted to the pavement. British planes fly over my head leading towards another weapons factory with the intent of destruction. The soldier with the raw hand falls to his knees and cries for the city and the people trapped inside but his pants quickly develop holes and his flesh is burnt until he is forced to his thick boots. He screams German and I recognize the word “Dresden” and without giving it a second thought I am in my desk in New York at an unfortunate waste of time called my high school.
My teacher is asking me a question about Germany but I don't know the answer. He says the Dresden bombing of 1945 crippled the Nazi army by taking away the factories manufacturing glass and metal for assault rifles and bombs. My confusion turns to headache. The calendar on the wall says October 7th 1978. “This means i'm 16” I say loud enough for heads to turn. My eyes catch those of a girl with a large chest and eye lashes that stretch for miles. Feelings of love surprise me as she lets out a giggle to my cheeks being stained blush red. I feel the pants around my thighs start to tighten and her gaze changes from my eyes to my lap. Her sudden laughter of a drunken fool is off putting. “Oh my god Fred!” She yells. I cover my lap that resembles a bump on a cartoon characters head. My friends look at me in a terrified expression with smiles that confuse me “I want to be somewhere else” I think to myself. My embarrassment disappears along with that time.
Im with Billy Pilgrim in a warm cottage on a hill side. His complexion has drooped and wrinkled. His expression is of boredom and comfortability. “Hello” I say out of instinct and quickly worry sets in but Billy grabs my hand and for the first time I can feel another person on my skin. His tone is sharp and angry “ The tralfamadorians told me about you”. “This guys crazy” I thought to myself. “ They said you were my son, Frederick and that you'll have a way to prove that”. Before I can agree or deny his claim I am quickly thrown into an electrical field. Each piece of electricity is touching a pink and red sponge surface connecting to me. I'm having several millions of memories hit me at once and I can see them through Billy's eyes and then my mind goes blank. I'm in his house again and he stopped gripping me. I reach for him but he is gone before I can touch his sun spotted head. “ He said I was his son” I think suspiciously.
I float in my most familiar place since birth that I can remember. Im here more than I am anywhere especially back and forward in time. “I need to find Billy but how?” My hands start to flare with a pulsing light and eventually im back at the party in 1961 watching Billy Pilgrim shift under the comforter. I make sure to excuse myself from the room and wait for them to finish. Eventually the bed springs stop squeaking with a sigh of relaxation. I walk in the room and touch Billy Pilgrim with a forceful grip. “How do you know me?!” I practically shout in his ear. Hovering a foot above the ground from the jump of fright his heartbeat increases and he becomes furious. “Who let you in here?” Billy yells with a sharp tongue. I am surprised he doesn't remember me but it dawns on my thick skull that we've never met. At least not yet.
I focus my energy again and try to instead of go to Billy have Billy come to me. With a pulse of light Billy in his weathered grandfather chair appears. The younger angrier Billy has disappeared and I am alone with the old man in the pulled apart room. “Who ever had this room must of had a good time” Billy says giving me a wink. As he looks at me his face is filled with fright. “Whats happened to your face?” He says loud enough to worry me.
My hands find my head and it feels like an angry hornets nest buzzing and moving. I look in the window reflection and see my complection shifting. One second my body looks 80 and then shifts to 15 and moves through my years. “Whats happening to me?” I choke out. I fall into a hard desk and it falls with me. When I lean back up the desk is in place as it was. Billy has my hand as before. “I have an explanation for you” Billy says. “I was told you're mine and I am yours” “What does that mean?” says Frederick. “When I was with the Tralfamadorians I was able to watch your life from tonight 1961 to tonight, whatever year we are in.” “Your first chance of creation from me to your mother, to today.” “You said I was your son.” Frederick says with interest.” From my first moments of life I can't remember having a life, I only remember witnessing small chunks of my life and your past.” Frederick says. “The interesting part of you is that your body lived a life in a dormant state just coasting as a regular person while you were thrown out of its consciousness to travel on the energy strings that hold everything together.” Explains Billy only regurgitating the information the Tralfamadorians told him. “This makes no sense what happens when my body dies?” worries Frederick. “You start again” says Billy, You're a traveler. “Maybe even to other places than time” Billy says interested. “Who are the Tralfamadorians?” Frederick asks. “It doesn’t matter” Billy sharply says
After a fierce headache Frederick gives in and believes he can't have a normal life. “This can’t be true, I am leaving” says Frederick out of anger.
Another large explosion, I watch Dresden burn down and the people melt like wax dolls. I'm in the airplane with other soldiers from what looks to be the british army. “1945 has been a good year” says a broad bulky bearded man. His musk is of fear but his confidence is also off putting. Before I can object to his claim of death to victory I leave and wonder memories of several wars. I visit the beginning of World War 2 realize that was me in the atom bomb, or at least I was the reason the bomb worked.
August 6th 1945 I watch as I am deployed out of a plane over Hiroshima and I break out of my atom and kill millions. I no longer have sympathy for people that have normal lives. My feelings drop to depression when I realize I am to blame for killing innocent people. “My killing myself won't fix any of the problems I had caused but it might stop future deaths at my hand.” I whisper to myself in a self loathing tone. I visit the end of the world and watch the sun explode and every planet fade into darkness and freeze. My energy thread runs out and I am on my toes waiting to see what happens to me.
A bright light shines through a circular hole and something has got my arm. Slimy and stretched around a hard surface. I'm pulled through and I can't see, the light is blinding me and something is in my throat, it feels like a finger but its much too big. A new air is coming into my newly made lungs. My hands are shaking and I am crying but I am not sad. The woman holding me, her smile stretches from ear to ear and my belly is warmed. My nerves calm and my head stops hurting.
The End
After Slaughter house 5
By: Kurt Vonnegut
The First Time Traveler
A bright light shines through a circular hole and something has got my arm. Slimy and stretched around a hard surface. I'm pulled through and I can't see, the light is blinding me and something is in my throat, it feels like a finger but its much too big. A new air is coming into my newly made lungs. My hands are shaking and I am crying but I am not sad. The woman holding me, her smile stretches from ear to ear and my belly is warmed. My nerves calm and my head stops hurting but with a splitting of my body and bright light I hear my mother scream. “What's happening!?” The new mothers scream pierces her newly born babies ears as its body is torn to a insect hair size and leaves only marks of blood on her white hospital gown.
Floating in this stream of memories and futures is to me as heroin is to a duly lit soul. It is like it was in the womb, my body coming together again at a more rapid rate than before. I'm putty in my moulder's hands he stretches and pulls my flesh and shapes it to my light that fluctuates as if its trying to get away from my muscles and organs. I can't move to the defeating realization that I have no structure. A round gravity ball pulling human building blocks around myself. The grip of the power tightens and bones are stuffed into my flesh in no particular order. Red mush and white sharp edges poking out slowly staining red. I feel small tinkering sharp angles in my stomach and I stand. My jaw pops and finally is in place and I creak like a tin man without oil.
My brain begins to connect and the electrical current passes through my head like I have been struck by lightening. I retain my name is Frederick and then I fall out of my state of heavenly grace.
Boom!!!!! My body is intact from what felt like a big drop. I look up and realize the city around me is in ruins and I am in a crater. A sign next to me almost completely melted to the pavement and it reads Hiroshima city limits. The last thing I remember was breaking out of the prison I was in inside of a ball being circled by atom looking balls. Another boom but microscopic and I am inside of it. “Was I the cause of that explosion?” Frederick thinks in the back of his mind. I am moulded again and the process starts over again I am nothing made into a red ball of flesh eventually formed to a person.
The way my body is drifting along a stream of warm water filled with time is bliss. My hairs stand up on my neck and I sink down to another time.
I am back in my mothers arms. Her sweat is glimmering like the drops outside of a cup of cold water. The panic in her eyes is off putting and ugly but she is quickly calmed when she looks at me with her brown lush eyes. “Must of been some weird hallucination” she says with a shortage of breath and demands to know what drug she was given for childbirth.
Driving home she seems worried. “I wish I knew what she was thinking.” With the clunk of a car door she takes me inside of a small trailer and sets me on the first step of the hard wood porch covered in splinters and broken nails that I do not dare attempt to climb on. My hands are not working but if they were I would cover my over-sensitive ears when the screen door opens. I can hear her and her husband talking and a large foot steps next to my basket while my back is turned. His large hairy hands with veins the size of my arm pick me out of my basket and anger fills his eyes. A fire filled drop of tear leaves his eye and he whimpers like a wounded animal. His teeth grind as if ready to bite me like freshly cooked steak. I'm dropped back in my crib and second later I hear a gunshot that rings my ears and my first instinct is to cry. My tears roll of my round cheeks but with the swiftness of anger the man comes out and dries my tears with his passing breeze. He can’t hide his face in tears and his white tank top stained with blood contrasting off of his dark skin.
Vroom! as the engine roars to life and smoke is thrown into the forgiving summer air. He is gone. With a sucking sound like someone sucking on a lollipop I am thrown into a deep black hole as the one before was only this time the journey to where I am going is a longer distance.
I can feel the scales of something bigger than myself pressing my feet and rubbing my clothes, soaked. My surroundings are making my head hurt. Creatures fly that I have never seen before. The water is filled with serrated toothed beasts. “Help!” I shout. Washed on dark sand that stains my white clothes like oil. Lightning and dark energy fills the air and sky. “This isnt my universe anymore” I think as a theory. I'm gripped tightly from behind, my rib cage is smashed within my attackers paw looking hand. My limbs stretched and popped out of their sockets. As the light starts to fade from my eyes I see my attacker with matted hair and drool covered lips. Its eyes black with a speck of yellow that seems to go for miles back in its head. Its mouth opens and a foul stench of fish and rotting fruits pours out in a waterfall of mist over my head and sticks to the inside wall of my nostril. His crooked blunt yellowed teeth position over my neck and it bites down. Its teeth click together and its disappointment is seen in its expression. I've disappeared to my universe before his blood lust is fulfilled.
The air smells of spring and rain. I wake up on a street with my friends asking if I am “Ok” I stand up and shake off a thin layer of dust, “What happened?” I ask the boy who feels the most concerned. “You were ran over!” He screams eager as if to impress me with his knowledge. A lack of interest and my emotions drastically change. “I'm ok” I say with a toothed grin and walk to my school. Inside the school I am almost sick from the smell of body odor and sexual frustration. My locker presents itself to my surprise. The window above is only shining on my locker and its lockless. As I pop the latch and cringe at the sound of metal on metal scratching. Empty, my locker is empty and it leaves a presence of deja vu in my head. Before I can shut the door I am sucked into the metal case and thrown back into a hole brighter than the last. I feel my body, this time I am not being torn and recreated and I am fully conscious. I'm shown images of my life up to this point. Frederick Smith, Born 1962, 7 pounds even but that information fades from my subconsciousness. Images flash at my confused brain as if to wake it up. I recognize my life from age -9 months to 16 years old. In a long flash of images, sounds, smells and feelings my eyes close from the irritation of the strobe light of events.
New York 1961 at a Christmas party I am dumbfounded by the architecture of the house. A door to a room is most appealing. The handle is stiff and locked but I walk in without a key as if the door wasn't fully shut. Blankets move that remind me a puppet being thrown by an amateaur puppeteer, moments go by and to my embarrassment, hands on the headboard fiercely grip at the hard wood. I pick up the pants of the man I assume is under the comforter and read his identity. Billy Pilgrim, “I had heard that name once before” I whisper so I dont disturb the bunnies in front of me.
Growing atmosphere of uncomfortability settles over the room and I walk out with the door open. Swiftly I look over my shoulder for there was no click of the handle shutting. The door is shut and I pay little attention. The party is huge with large christmas trees all around in a concert hall. A light jazz band plays and the people hold each other close. I can feel the pitter patter of dancing feet like a small earthquake that brings my spirit up. A guest list shows hundreds of guests on the year of 1961. “That impossible” I say in denial. Shock hits and my legs go weak. The impact is so strong I have lost my voice, all I can think about is how I had sweared it was 1962 on my birth information. I am at age 16 now but I have no idea how I know that, I have no recollection of birthdays or gifts or cake. “OOOH cake” I think to the beat of my rumbling stomach and I forget my problem. After a visit to the buffet I walk into a room without realizing I was in this room with the two energetic souls earlier but now almost fully clothed they sigh together in mutual satisfaction and I see something I had never of dreamed of seeing. My mother with another man, than the one who murdered her for her bearing of a child with another man. Shes in a daze with her red lipstick smeared from ear to ear but her lips are bare and chapped. She's grinning while Billy Pilgrim is rushing out of the door. As the door shuts with a click feelings of guilt and confusion pour over me and my surroundings turn black.
The walls around me are rumbling and shaking back and forth. I'm moving intensely fast flying through slimy liquid. Bam! The wall of a pink ball is no match for my speed and I fly into its thin skin where I sit and wait for something to happen. My tail disappears and I start to grow bigger and for a second time I see a blinding light and big plastic hands reaching for me inside my warm cave. The light is like a doorway with flesh carvings and hinges and as I pass through it im back at the party on the other side of the wall of the room I was previously in. Billy Pilgrim pushes me out of the way and walks out of the party mumbling “Im sorry Valencia”.
I'm six years old and can't process fully what my adoptive mom is telling me. My real mother was murdered by her boyfriend and my real father is still yet to be found. After our talk I am feeling sick but my body is working like it has no problem with the news. I invite my friend Thomas to my house. After 20 minutes of waiting Thomas and his alcoholic mother arrive. In the den we play with my wooden train set I got for christmas but I dont want to play trains. I have no control over my body right now. We continue playing with my train set and Thomas sucks on the caboose I think nothing of it but my body moves swiftly and strikes him over the head with a remote to our box television set. To another six year old this was a crippling blow. When Thomas and his squealing pig of a mother finally diparts I have time to figure out what's going on. I try to move my arm but it does what it wants and plays with trains. I can not calm down, my body is like a person sitting on a basket with me inside unable to move or breath. “Let me out” I furiously shout at myself but nothing happens. I can feel myself stand and walk to the kitchen. I open the fridge and brisk breeze like a wave washes over me but my body seems to be fine with the cold. “Let me out” I shout again angrier and with more power in my vocal cords and to my surprise my bodies finger bends and my vision is blurred and I lose consciousness.
Cold water splashes on my face and laughing fills my disoriented ears. My mother is standing over me looking older than before, “Get ready for school you're late”. I sit up on my silk sheets and yawn almost ripping the sides of my mouth apart. After wiping the sleep out of my eyes I descend down stairs. My mom made me oatmeal and I am not excited but I eat it to make her morning more pleasant. She asks me how I slept but I can't focus on her at the moment, my eyes focus on the autumn leaves falling off the tree outside. The sunshine bounces off the walls around me and makes the whole house bright and colorful due to the stainless glass chandelier. Although the scene is beautiful my mind runs to tangents and I can't stop thinking of Billy Pilgrim, he has something about him I am drawn to.
Boom! Boom! Boom! I can hear the explosions boom above me. Im in a room with Billy Pilgrim and two other soldiers wearing the same outfit he is. The two others I notice after are wearing Nazi German uniform and carrying large machine guns. I stay in the shadow of the corner of the wall in the cold meat room. I smell frozen meat and sweat falling from Billy and his comrades chins. The tag on the meat next to me says “Am besten durch Januar 1945” (Best by January 1945). “ This must be really old meat” I think to myself. I look around at the soldiers again and suddenly I realize its 1945 and that isn't old meat. I start to hyperventilate but quietly so no one can hear me. The booming stops from above us after several hours of heaving cold breath through my tired lungs and I start to calm but the soldiers become squirly and start to become curious. The soldier on the left goes to the door leading to stairs but as his hand grips the shiny silver handle his skin is instantly seared and burnt. He lets out a gasp then a pause and then a loud scream followed by profanity. He puts his hand to a frozen cow and his skin starts to fall off of his hand until its bright pink and raw. The second soldier puts his coat over his hand and lift up on the handle to the outside. When everyone is out of the meat locker its hard to breath. Fire and smoke is all over the area and people are as doomed as the corpses melted to the pavement. British planes fly over my head leading towards another weapons factory with the intent of destruction. The soldier with the raw hand falls to his knees and cries for the city and the people trapped inside but his pants quickly develop holes and his flesh is burnt until he is forced to his thick boots. He screams German and I recognize the word “Dresden” and without giving it a second thought I am in my desk in New York at an unfortunate waste of time called my high school.
My teacher is asking me a question about Germany but I don't know the answer. He says the Dresden bombing of 1945 crippled the Nazi army by taking away the factories manufacturing glass and metal for assault rifles and bombs. My confusion turns to headache. The calendar on the wall says October 7th 1978. “This means i'm 16” I say loud enough for heads to turn. My eyes catch those of a girl with a large chest and eye lashes that stretch for miles. Feelings of love surprise me as she lets out a giggle to my cheeks being stained blush red. I feel the pants around my thighs start to tighten and her gaze changes from my eyes to my lap. Her sudden laughter of a drunken fool is off putting. “Oh my god Fred!” She yells. I cover my lap that resembles a bump on a cartoon characters head. My friends look at me in a terrified expression with smiles that confuse me “I want to be somewhere else” I think to myself. My embarrassment disappears along with that time.
Im with Billy Pilgrim in a warm cottage on a hill side. His complexion has drooped and wrinkled. His expression is of boredom and comfortability. “Hello” I say out of instinct and quickly worry sets in but Billy grabs my hand and for the first time I can feel another person on my skin. His tone is sharp and angry “ The tralfamadorians told me about you”. “This guys crazy” I thought to myself. “ They said you were my son, Frederick and that you'll have a way to prove that”. Before I can agree or deny his claim I am quickly thrown into an electrical field. Each piece of electricity is touching a pink and red sponge surface connecting to me. I'm having several millions of memories hit me at once and I can see them through Billy's eyes and then my mind goes blank. I'm in his house again and he stopped gripping me. I reach for him but he is gone before I can touch his sun spotted head. “ He said I was his son” I think suspiciously.
I float in my most familiar place since birth that I can remember. Im here more than I am anywhere especially back and forward in time. “I need to find Billy but how?” My hands start to flare with a pulsing light and eventually im back at the party in 1961 watching Billy Pilgrim shift under the comforter. I make sure to excuse myself from the room and wait for them to finish. Eventually the bed springs stop squeaking with a sigh of relaxation. I walk in the room and touch Billy Pilgrim with a forceful grip. “How do you know me?!” I practically shout in his ear. Hovering a foot above the ground from the jump of fright his heartbeat increases and he becomes furious. “Who let you in here?” Billy yells with a sharp tongue. I am surprised he doesn't remember me but it dawns on my thick skull that we've never met. At least not yet.
I focus my energy again and try to instead of go to Billy have Billy come to me. With a pulse of light Billy in his weathered grandfather chair appears. The younger angrier Billy has disappeared and I am alone with the old man in the pulled apart room. “Who ever had this room must of had a good time” Billy says giving me a wink. As he looks at me his face is filled with fright. “Whats happened to your face?” He says loud enough to worry me.
My hands find my head and it feels like an angry hornets nest buzzing and moving. I look in the window reflection and see my complection shifting. One second my body looks 80 and then shifts to 15 and moves through my years. “Whats happening to me?” I choke out. I fall into a hard desk and it falls with me. When I lean back up the desk is in place as it was. Billy has my hand as before. “I have an explanation for you” Billy says. “I was told you're mine and I am yours” “What does that mean?” says Frederick. “When I was with the Tralfamadorians I was able to watch your life from tonight 1961 to tonight, whatever year we are in.” “Your first chance of creation from me to your mother, to today.” “You said I was your son.” Frederick says with interest.” From my first moments of life I can't remember having a life, I only remember witnessing small chunks of my life and your past.” Frederick says. “The interesting part of you is that your body lived a life in a dormant state just coasting as a regular person while you were thrown out of its consciousness to travel on the energy strings that hold everything together.” Explains Billy only regurgitating the information the Tralfamadorians told him. “This makes no sense what happens when my body dies?” worries Frederick. “You start again” says Billy, You're a traveler. “Maybe even to other places than time” Billy says interested. “Who are the Tralfamadorians?” Frederick asks. “It doesn’t matter” Billy sharply says
After a fierce headache Frederick gives in and believes he can't have a normal life. “This can’t be true, I am leaving” says Frederick out of anger.
Another large explosion, I watch Dresden burn down and the people melt like wax dolls. I'm in the airplane with other soldiers from what looks to be the british army. “1945 has been a good year” says a broad bulky bearded man. His musk is of fear but his confidence is also off putting. Before I can object to his claim of death to victory I leave and wonder memories of several wars. I visit the beginning of World War 2 realize that was me in the atom bomb, or at least I was the reason the bomb worked.
August 6th 1945 I watch as I am deployed out of a plane over Hiroshima and I break out of my atom and kill millions. I no longer have sympathy for people that have normal lives. My feelings drop to depression when I realize I am to blame for killing innocent people. “My killing myself won't fix any of the problems I had caused but it might stop future deaths at my hand.” I whisper to myself in a self loathing tone. I visit the end of the world and watch the sun explode and every planet fade into darkness and freeze. My energy thread runs out and I am on my toes waiting to see what happens to me.
A bright light shines through a circular hole and something has got my arm. Slimy and stretched around a hard surface. I'm pulled through and I can't see, the light is blinding me and something is in my throat, it feels like a finger but its much too big. A new air is coming into my newly made lungs. My hands are shaking and I am crying but I am not sad. The woman holding me, her smile stretches from ear to ear and my belly is warmed. My nerves calm and my head stops hurting.
The End
Short Story Fraction Reading Exhibition
Reflection
The Short Story Project was assigned to open our minds to a new type of creative writing with a twist of having mandatory WW1/WW2 events. Leading into the assignment I and my classmates created stories that were below mediocre. The worksheets that helped us find beginning, middle, end, climbing climax, climax, and falling action. These showed us how to put our paper into a more sensible story. We then made several drafts to make sure spelling and story line ect, were impressive.
My story was more of a different type of life for Billy Pilgrim and played off of Kurt Vonnugets book "Slaughter House 5", A war story about a man who can time travel to his past war times and can transfer himself to different universes to become friends with the tralfamadorians, an alien race.
My story starts with Billy Pilgrim not understanding why he has the power to travel through time as he does. Ive created a character as his son, who in Kurt Vonneguts book doesn't exist. His son has the power to pull Billy through time holes to try to get Billy to the day of his birth so they can meet because all he wants is for his father to know he exists.
Through several challenges including my characters own implosive demise, eventually billy and him meet which triggers my character to be born over and over again reliving his life until he eventually finds a safe way to meet his father and die happier than without him.
Even though this "short story" is not a short story but rather a novel style story, it met requirements for me to get a clear understanding of the WW2 project we were currently in. Using a short story and having the freedom to turn the story non fiction or fiction helped me use real events in the story. This broadened my thinking process for why those events might have happened and or how they happened.
My story was more of a different type of life for Billy Pilgrim and played off of Kurt Vonnugets book "Slaughter House 5", A war story about a man who can time travel to his past war times and can transfer himself to different universes to become friends with the tralfamadorians, an alien race.
My story starts with Billy Pilgrim not understanding why he has the power to travel through time as he does. Ive created a character as his son, who in Kurt Vonneguts book doesn't exist. His son has the power to pull Billy through time holes to try to get Billy to the day of his birth so they can meet because all he wants is for his father to know he exists.
Through several challenges including my characters own implosive demise, eventually billy and him meet which triggers my character to be born over and over again reliving his life until he eventually finds a safe way to meet his father and die happier than without him.
Even though this "short story" is not a short story but rather a novel style story, it met requirements for me to get a clear understanding of the WW2 project we were currently in. Using a short story and having the freedom to turn the story non fiction or fiction helped me use real events in the story. This broadened my thinking process for why those events might have happened and or how they happened.
Vietnam Project
Artist Statement
Artist Statement
Gabe Garcia, a 16-year-old artist currently attending Animas High School has been following his passion for art for 8 years. He plans to become a tattoo artist in the future. His mediums include watercolors and ink.
This piece shows the massacre and destruction of the Vietnam Buddhist temples. The blue and red flower on the side of the woman’s head shows peace and prosperity. The blue and green planet eyes show a lack of peace around the world. The Olm and the swastika stand for peace and happiness. The explosions in the background represent the downfall of the Buddhist temples. The harsh shadowing on the woman’s face represents anger and her ruby on her face represents the beauty of her culture.
I choose this event for my art piece because of an interest with Buddhism two years ago. My interest in world peace was taken a back by how North Vietnam could so easily attack such peaceful temples. This event interests me because I feel that I can influence other people to learn and care about these types of events and raise awareness to how important peace is.
Gabe Garcia
Gabe Garcia, a 16-year-old artist currently attending Animas High School has been following his passion for art for 8 years. He plans to become a tattoo artist in the future. His mediums include watercolors and ink.
This piece shows the massacre and destruction of the Vietnam Buddhist temples. The blue and red flower on the side of the woman’s head shows peace and prosperity. The blue and green planet eyes show a lack of peace around the world. The Olm and the swastika stand for peace and happiness. The explosions in the background represent the downfall of the Buddhist temples. The harsh shadowing on the woman’s face represents anger and her ruby on her face represents the beauty of her culture.
I choose this event for my art piece because of an interest with Buddhism two years ago. My interest in world peace was taken a back by how North Vietnam could so easily attack such peaceful temples. This event interests me because I feel that I can influence other people to learn and care about these types of events and raise awareness to how important peace is.
Gabe Garcia
The Educational Autobiography
Educational Autobiography
Gabe Garcia
1/7/15
Sellers period 3,5
Alphabetical Aerobics
The song Alphabetical Aerobics describes my elementary because of my lack of understanding of the Alphabet. If I would of had a better understanding my reading would have of been learned faster. I would be a junior in high school and probably would have had classes with all my friends. This song clearly describes my Alphabetical troubles and how it defined my academic life.
I Just Wanna Run
The song I just wanna run because middle school over all sucked. I learned a very small amount of the curriculum and the people were almost condescending. Also this song describes running away to a better place and I would have enjoyed running out of the country or something. So glad i'm done with middle school.
Chinese Man
For High School I chose Get up by Chinese man, this song describes my highschool career because its all about getting up and working. It also say to get up off your butt and work which is something i've always had a problem with. Specifically freshman year I had troubles doing my work. I had trouble because I am a lazy human being in general there for Get up.
Gabe Garcia
1/7/15
Sellers period 3,5
Alphabetical Aerobics
The song Alphabetical Aerobics describes my elementary because of my lack of understanding of the Alphabet. If I would of had a better understanding my reading would have of been learned faster. I would be a junior in high school and probably would have had classes with all my friends. This song clearly describes my Alphabetical troubles and how it defined my academic life.
I Just Wanna Run
The song I just wanna run because middle school over all sucked. I learned a very small amount of the curriculum and the people were almost condescending. Also this song describes running away to a better place and I would have enjoyed running out of the country or something. So glad i'm done with middle school.
Chinese Man
For High School I chose Get up by Chinese man, this song describes my highschool career because its all about getting up and working. It also say to get up off your butt and work which is something i've always had a problem with. Specifically freshman year I had troubles doing my work. I had trouble because I am a lazy human being in general there for Get up.
Entrepreneur Project Reflection:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-DTx-d0w0M6lGyxmgPaFrsGF-ctNy4fp28OP0tow38g/edit
Gabe Garcia
5/17/15
Sellers 3/5
Entrepreneur Project Reflection
Blue Pelican Waste and Septic company is the product of a months hard work. In a group with two partners, we each had jobs and work to share such as the Business Proposal, Marketing, and Project Portfolios. My specific efforts were on the Business Proposal, A small document giving the reader a general outline of the rest of the documents without having to read them, mainly on the Executive Summary where I took what my partners had written in a rough form, and changed the language, the numbers and facts described in the summary and finding these facts and statistics.
This project opened a new type of entrepreneurship for me, already being a network entrepreneur and marketer on my parents business, I didn't realize social entrepreneurship existed before this semester and it's helped me become more conscious of people and ways I can help. Globalization in my view hasn't changed for me because i've always seen it as a way to get ideas and mainstream subjects across the globe to make an impact on where these ideas land. For Example of my new consciousness of people and sharing ideas, I’ve decided to go to Guatemala in June to build bottle schools with children and a social enterprise named Hug It Forward.
My biggest take away from this project was my new found thought process about life and how to make myself and people lead richer stories with my ideas, like the Blue Pelican Septic System, I can make my ideas worth something in this world as I could have with our septic system model. My generation has the tools and the will power to find solutions to problems that other generations haven't been able to fix or have even made worse. I want to be part of the solution.
Being in the prime of change and ideas, I can confidently say that my old thought process doesn't intrigue the people around me or myself for that matter, not as my new ones do. I want to help people and make changes and I know exactly how to do it now, with a little help.
I no longer have to see a problem on the news like starving children and dying economies and sit back and wait for someone to come up with a solution because I have the problem solving skills to make small differences that affect masses.
Collaboration to me is almost like stacking items on top of each other to come out to a final price. I bounce ideas off of my partners and share thoughts until a final product is shown above the large stack of ideas.
Collaboration in the Social Entrepreneur project was important because thinking alone is a disadvantage. Without my partners, I would have never been able to remember the septic system I created two years ago for the pigs and I wouldn't of known how to shift some of the design so it was more effective for Human waste. Collaboration has been easy for me in the past because I love working with people and it seems that my ideas are rarely worth following. While others view their ideas in the same way, I see them working better for me and vise versa. Growth was small but I learned how to give back in collaboration and not just use ideas but trade ideas or add them together. During this project, the only time I didn't collaborate well was on the art piece and regretfully I had about seven drafts because I wasn't satisfied. When I let my partner Emily in and used her ideas, our logo art piece was finalized and professional looking. She specifically showed me how to be collaborative even in my strong suits.
Being too prideful and not wanting others ideas to effect the final product put me at a strong disadvantage and in the future my partners and I will think together and be more communicative because all relationships including school partnerships thrive when all parties communicate and give out an overall better product.
A fixed mindset is when you believe people are born with talent in subjects you might not be good at or are rather productive in. Feeling that you can't grow past a point in a subject because you weren't given the talent.
A growth mindset is when you believe, rather than being born with talent, that you worked hard for your skill and you still have room to improve because there is not a subject you cannot perfect with the right amount of effort.
During the project my fixed mindset came out during the beginning of the writing sections. I know I have room to improve on my writing skills but I believed that I wasn't a good writer. On the project description I started out with a poorly written stack of words. After watching the video “Growth Mindset Animation” I came back the next day and cranked out one of my very best pieces of writing that in the student critique, most kids and seniors picked mine over my partners.
I started the project with a mostly growth mindset but I did have doubt of course in myself and my writing skills. I would have wanted to watch that video "Growth Mindset Animation" earlier in the project because I would have been done with my writing pieces a lot sooner and would have been able to work harder on the model septic system. I seem to have a confidence problem when it comes to writing and very nitty gritty subjects until i'm inspired and now becoming inspired will be a habit of mine.
My experience at exhibition was almost calming, I didn't have to worry about people proving me wrong or saying “That wouldn't work”, which gave me a very positive feel and ended up making my presentation better than when I did it in front of my parents and partners. Power stances and a kale salad was a productive way to spend my time before the exhibition helped boost my confidence too. My emotions barely changed, I was having a really good time the entire exhibition because everything seemed like it could not go wrong. When I had four families come and give me big stacks of cash and praised me on my work was when I felt the “flow of the things” because I was so confident. The hardest question I was asked by an investor was “How can you legitimately introduce this to India to ensure they take your product?” I didn't have an answer because I know he heard my way of showing people our product through hospitals and posters around India. I simply answered “ People will talk and gossip about a new product and eventually anyone opposed to the idea will have to agree to its spread across the lower middle class.
At exhibition my strategy was to be confident and show confidence in my product because no one would want to invest in a product the creator wouldn't invest in herself/himself. For the next time I wouldn’t do anything differently because this was my best exhibition and I honestly don't think my performance could improve by much. Especially being able change how I presented to people each time someone wanted to find out what my product was. My elevator pitch went across the same path each time but I was able to mix a little change between each conversation.
Business Proposal
Gabe Garcia
Emily Williams
Piper Rossi
5/1/15
Sellers 3/5
Blue Pelican Waste Management and Septic Care
Executive Summary:
Blue Pelican Waste Management is an up and coming social entrepreneurship based out of Mumbai with the goal of providing proper sanitation to the lower middle class of India. With 600 million Indians lacking proper sanitation, there is a massive market opportunity. Sick children and adults fill India's population even in the upper middle class to the highest of India's economy. This is because defecating and getting rid of waste in the streets and fields is still a norm in India. We have developed a proprietary affordable, eco-friendly, self-assembling, septic system that will address this huge problem by helping approximately 50% of the market base, the lower middle class.
Our Blue Pelican septic system not only makes more opportunity to use a real restroom but it is reliable for several years’ maybe even decades if taken care of properly. Our product has beneficial qualities such as keeping defecation and human waste away from the streets and fields, and making a more comfortable and safe environment for everyone especially women and children.
In order to position our product in the market we will be showing people several statistics on Indian health and lack of sanitation. Doing this will create an incentive for people to invest in our product. Discussion topics include that approximately 69% of Indians lack access to proper sanitation and the resources to obtain it. Our main advertising strategy will be a public relations based system of outdoor stands manned by people in our target market.
Market Analysis:
Blue Pelican Septic is in the industry of affordable waste management and sanitation. There are not very many companies currently in this industry because there is not very much money to be made through providing something that is typically very expensive for reduced prices. India is a growing economy, most entrepreneurs are more interested in progressing into the higher classes rather than worrying about others less fortunate. However there are still several organizations targeting the same industry as us such as Slum Dwellers International, and the Grameen Bank. What sets our company apart from these is our target group. While these two companies are focused on lower class people who only have an income of about 2 to 4 US dollars a day. We focus on a slightly higher class of people. They make 4 to 10 US dollars a day. (Shrinivasan, Rukmini. "Most of India’s ‘middle Class’ Earns between 1K and 2K." The Economic Times. The Economic TImes, 2010. Web. 2015.)
The target group of our company will be the lower middle class of India, which currently consists of about 244 million people. Worldwide, approximately 2.6 billion people live without a toilet. 600 million of these people live in India, many of whom are in the lower middle class. The lower middle class are the people who are barely hanging on the edge between poverty and middle class. It is quite possible to slip back down the curve into poverty, but equally as possible to climb up into the middle class. To ensure people are doing the latter, the first steps is to consider better sanitation. As people are making their way out of poverty something as simple as a slight sickness could push them back down. A big step these people need to take is to improve their sanitation, and to do this through investing in a Blue Pelican Septic Tank. Buying an affordable septic system will improve their safety and health, while not plunging them back into poverty. The average lower middle class Indian citizen makes approximately 12,000 to 25,000 rupees monthly which will make our septic tank well within their budget, being that it costs 8,239.40 rupees. Our product is a smart investment for these people and is a very reasonable cost.
Marketing Strategy:
We will position our product in the market stream in the lower middle class of Mumbai by advertising through brochures and a stand in an outdoor market place. We will focus on distributing our brochures in hospitals, doctor’s waiting rooms, etc. Our salesmen and Women will be the Indian working class able to connect and empathize with our target audience and thus be able to sell to these people. The stand itself will be a tent stamped with our logo and our slogan, “You can’t have fun without a hole to poop in!” Brochures will also be available at the stand.
Our product will be manufactured in our Blue Pelican Warehouse which will be fully eco-friendly. The product will also be built by Indian people who will be recruited from slums or lower class living arrangements and trained. The product, The Blue Pelican Septic Tank, will cost $130 which is 8,226 Indian Rupees. The average toilet in India costs about $434 making our toilet much more affordable, which will make it available to people with lower incomes. This will place our company in a completely different market than any other toilet company in India, which means we will be advertising differently and selling our product in different venues than most. That is why the primary place our company will be spreading the word about this new product idea is in outdoor markets. Lower middle class people come to these outdoor markets often both to buy supplies and groceries, and to sell their own products. This will be an ideal place to get the word out about Blue Pelican.
Once several of our toilets have been sold and the word begins to be spread we will work on expanding the business to more rural areas and begin to offer ways for even lower income people to afford the product. As our company expands to more cities and rural towns our advertising systems will increase in size and change in some ways. First our advertising methods will grow to include radio broadcasts that provide information on our product and why it is important to invest in proper sanitation. Once our budget increases we will create TV advertisements and possible bus ads. Advertising in these ways will allow us to spread the word about Blue Pelican quickly to the people in our target market group.
Product Description:
The product consists of one toilet, three buckets sizes varying from 5 gallons, 8 gallons, and 10 gallons. Five tubes connecting the buckets that are black and bendable. Two small 4oz containers holding bleach in one and fish poop in the other. One water filtration system and a vacuum connecting to the toilet bowl pouring clean reused water into the bowl for effective waste removal.
The defecation goes into the toilet with bristles lining the inside of the toilet to break up waste. Next, the waste goes into the first 10 gallon bucket that is a quarter full of soil with hungry worms. As the waste goes into the first bucket, the worms eat most of the defecation and the urine is absorbed into the soil and as the amounts rise they pour into the 8 gallon bucket holding two compartments. The first compartment has fish poop to enriched the bacteria and make it vulnerable. The waste goes into the next compartment filled with bleach and white distilled vinegar to kill the remaining bacteria. Extra fluids go into the 5 gallon bucket being heated by a magnifying glass above the ground shining UV rays onto the water making it deadly to bacteria. Next the fluids go into the water filter so the water is clean. It then gets dragged up a tube by a vacuum on the top of the tube. The clean water then pours into the toilet ready for the next use.
This toilet can be used roughly ten times before water in the 5 gallon bucket must be changed. The worms need to be added to the soil approximately every 15 days. Batteries running the vacuum and filter need to be changed after a few weeks maybe longer. The fish poop and bleach need to be refilled every 3 days, roughly 80 times of use. Brought to you by Blue Pelican Sanitation Organization.
Management Plan:
We will start by hiring only one lower class Indian, preferably a women, informing them about our product and working with them to produce our first line of toilets.The reason we wish to employ women is because in India, women are easily raped due to the lack of toilets being around. They must go into fields at night to relieve themselves and it is very dangerous. We wish to hire a women and show her that it is better to have a toilet from us where they live and they can tell their friends how are women. We will then split resources and two members of our team will begin advertisement/selling the product at our stand, while the other two will continue to build in our warehouse. The warehouse is a 7,000 Sq. area that cost in between 8,000 and 50,000 dollars and has a washroom. We will make any official or big business decisions as the managers and creators. Our team will keep everything organized such as finances and employees. We stay in charge at the creators and any changes will be brought to us before being made to get our approval. Eventually the woman we hired first (or whomever has been there the longest with the most experience) will take over a manager position when we leave India but we will still be in full control of any business decisions or changes.
We plan to produce and sell 20 toilets in the first month and double that in the next. Along with hiring one new employee monthly. Over the next year we will expand to selling our toilets in stores while still continuing to sell them at the small stand and markets. When each new employee first starts working with us, they will be paid 204.9 Rupee (3.25 US Dollars) an hour for working in the warehouse. In the warehouse the workers will be putting together the septic kits and packaging them up. They will work Monday through Thursday. They can take off for 7-10 sick days a year along with 2 and a half weeks of vacation days.
Once they have worked consistently with us with little to no problems for 6 months, then they will be promoted to working at the stand with a pay of 269 Rupee (4.25 US Dollars) and hours. They will work Monday through Saturday with 10-12 sick days off and 3 weeks’ vacation time. At the stand the workers will be sealing our product and promoting it to people at the outdoor markets. Then once they have worked for us for a year and a half with no problems, they will be promoted to assistant manager. They will be paid 331.02 Rupee (5.25 US Dollars) and hour and have 4 weeks’ vacation time and 15-20 sick days. The assistant manager will be doing our job when we aren’t there, making sure that nothing goes wrong. Once they have worked with us for 3 years they will be paid 520.17 Rupee (8.25 US Dollars) and will get 20 sick days off and 6 weeks of vacation. They will be helping us, the managers and creators of the product and they will help us make big decisions such as how to spread our product to other parts of India or even other countries around the world. They will also help us figure out how we could make our product more affordable for lower class people and even people living in poverty. Note that none of the vacation time will be paid vacation. Each employee will be given a complimentary Blue Pelican Septic Tank for themselves as a Thank You for working for us. We will have the money to pay our employees once we start selling our product.
Financials:
Blue Pelican Waste Management and Septic will need a total of $60,000 to start our business. This number is an estimate of how much we will need to rent our warehouse, build our first toilets, rent a space in an outdoor market and pay our only employee for the first year. The start up money will finance our basic costs, mostly rent, for the first year while we get the company up and running and from there we will be making enough of a profit to support ourselves.
In the first month our company will be in India we plan to set up the warehouse and manufacture 10 of our septic kits. Each septic kit includes the following things listed in the graphs. The graphs also include costs in Rupee and US dollars of each item we will need.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ephFKJsoKGlLe4PbkAkyzWjWEbkCUcdt2CylYq_biTo/edit
For Graphs Click On The Link
Emily Williams
Piper Rossi
5/1/15
Sellers 3/5
Blue Pelican Waste Management and Septic Care
Executive Summary:
Blue Pelican Waste Management is an up and coming social entrepreneurship based out of Mumbai with the goal of providing proper sanitation to the lower middle class of India. With 600 million Indians lacking proper sanitation, there is a massive market opportunity. Sick children and adults fill India's population even in the upper middle class to the highest of India's economy. This is because defecating and getting rid of waste in the streets and fields is still a norm in India. We have developed a proprietary affordable, eco-friendly, self-assembling, septic system that will address this huge problem by helping approximately 50% of the market base, the lower middle class.
Our Blue Pelican septic system not only makes more opportunity to use a real restroom but it is reliable for several years’ maybe even decades if taken care of properly. Our product has beneficial qualities such as keeping defecation and human waste away from the streets and fields, and making a more comfortable and safe environment for everyone especially women and children.
In order to position our product in the market we will be showing people several statistics on Indian health and lack of sanitation. Doing this will create an incentive for people to invest in our product. Discussion topics include that approximately 69% of Indians lack access to proper sanitation and the resources to obtain it. Our main advertising strategy will be a public relations based system of outdoor stands manned by people in our target market.
Market Analysis:
Blue Pelican Septic is in the industry of affordable waste management and sanitation. There are not very many companies currently in this industry because there is not very much money to be made through providing something that is typically very expensive for reduced prices. India is a growing economy, most entrepreneurs are more interested in progressing into the higher classes rather than worrying about others less fortunate. However there are still several organizations targeting the same industry as us such as Slum Dwellers International, and the Grameen Bank. What sets our company apart from these is our target group. While these two companies are focused on lower class people who only have an income of about 2 to 4 US dollars a day. We focus on a slightly higher class of people. They make 4 to 10 US dollars a day. (Shrinivasan, Rukmini. "Most of India’s ‘middle Class’ Earns between 1K and 2K." The Economic Times. The Economic TImes, 2010. Web. 2015.)
The target group of our company will be the lower middle class of India, which currently consists of about 244 million people. Worldwide, approximately 2.6 billion people live without a toilet. 600 million of these people live in India, many of whom are in the lower middle class. The lower middle class are the people who are barely hanging on the edge between poverty and middle class. It is quite possible to slip back down the curve into poverty, but equally as possible to climb up into the middle class. To ensure people are doing the latter, the first steps is to consider better sanitation. As people are making their way out of poverty something as simple as a slight sickness could push them back down. A big step these people need to take is to improve their sanitation, and to do this through investing in a Blue Pelican Septic Tank. Buying an affordable septic system will improve their safety and health, while not plunging them back into poverty. The average lower middle class Indian citizen makes approximately 12,000 to 25,000 rupees monthly which will make our septic tank well within their budget, being that it costs 8,239.40 rupees. Our product is a smart investment for these people and is a very reasonable cost.
Marketing Strategy:
We will position our product in the market stream in the lower middle class of Mumbai by advertising through brochures and a stand in an outdoor market place. We will focus on distributing our brochures in hospitals, doctor’s waiting rooms, etc. Our salesmen and Women will be the Indian working class able to connect and empathize with our target audience and thus be able to sell to these people. The stand itself will be a tent stamped with our logo and our slogan, “You can’t have fun without a hole to poop in!” Brochures will also be available at the stand.
Our product will be manufactured in our Blue Pelican Warehouse which will be fully eco-friendly. The product will also be built by Indian people who will be recruited from slums or lower class living arrangements and trained. The product, The Blue Pelican Septic Tank, will cost $130 which is 8,226 Indian Rupees. The average toilet in India costs about $434 making our toilet much more affordable, which will make it available to people with lower incomes. This will place our company in a completely different market than any other toilet company in India, which means we will be advertising differently and selling our product in different venues than most. That is why the primary place our company will be spreading the word about this new product idea is in outdoor markets. Lower middle class people come to these outdoor markets often both to buy supplies and groceries, and to sell their own products. This will be an ideal place to get the word out about Blue Pelican.
Once several of our toilets have been sold and the word begins to be spread we will work on expanding the business to more rural areas and begin to offer ways for even lower income people to afford the product. As our company expands to more cities and rural towns our advertising systems will increase in size and change in some ways. First our advertising methods will grow to include radio broadcasts that provide information on our product and why it is important to invest in proper sanitation. Once our budget increases we will create TV advertisements and possible bus ads. Advertising in these ways will allow us to spread the word about Blue Pelican quickly to the people in our target market group.
Product Description:
The product consists of one toilet, three buckets sizes varying from 5 gallons, 8 gallons, and 10 gallons. Five tubes connecting the buckets that are black and bendable. Two small 4oz containers holding bleach in one and fish poop in the other. One water filtration system and a vacuum connecting to the toilet bowl pouring clean reused water into the bowl for effective waste removal.
The defecation goes into the toilet with bristles lining the inside of the toilet to break up waste. Next, the waste goes into the first 10 gallon bucket that is a quarter full of soil with hungry worms. As the waste goes into the first bucket, the worms eat most of the defecation and the urine is absorbed into the soil and as the amounts rise they pour into the 8 gallon bucket holding two compartments. The first compartment has fish poop to enriched the bacteria and make it vulnerable. The waste goes into the next compartment filled with bleach and white distilled vinegar to kill the remaining bacteria. Extra fluids go into the 5 gallon bucket being heated by a magnifying glass above the ground shining UV rays onto the water making it deadly to bacteria. Next the fluids go into the water filter so the water is clean. It then gets dragged up a tube by a vacuum on the top of the tube. The clean water then pours into the toilet ready for the next use.
This toilet can be used roughly ten times before water in the 5 gallon bucket must be changed. The worms need to be added to the soil approximately every 15 days. Batteries running the vacuum and filter need to be changed after a few weeks maybe longer. The fish poop and bleach need to be refilled every 3 days, roughly 80 times of use. Brought to you by Blue Pelican Sanitation Organization.
Management Plan:
We will start by hiring only one lower class Indian, preferably a women, informing them about our product and working with them to produce our first line of toilets.The reason we wish to employ women is because in India, women are easily raped due to the lack of toilets being around. They must go into fields at night to relieve themselves and it is very dangerous. We wish to hire a women and show her that it is better to have a toilet from us where they live and they can tell their friends how are women. We will then split resources and two members of our team will begin advertisement/selling the product at our stand, while the other two will continue to build in our warehouse. The warehouse is a 7,000 Sq. area that cost in between 8,000 and 50,000 dollars and has a washroom. We will make any official or big business decisions as the managers and creators. Our team will keep everything organized such as finances and employees. We stay in charge at the creators and any changes will be brought to us before being made to get our approval. Eventually the woman we hired first (or whomever has been there the longest with the most experience) will take over a manager position when we leave India but we will still be in full control of any business decisions or changes.
We plan to produce and sell 20 toilets in the first month and double that in the next. Along with hiring one new employee monthly. Over the next year we will expand to selling our toilets in stores while still continuing to sell them at the small stand and markets. When each new employee first starts working with us, they will be paid 204.9 Rupee (3.25 US Dollars) an hour for working in the warehouse. In the warehouse the workers will be putting together the septic kits and packaging them up. They will work Monday through Thursday. They can take off for 7-10 sick days a year along with 2 and a half weeks of vacation days.
Once they have worked consistently with us with little to no problems for 6 months, then they will be promoted to working at the stand with a pay of 269 Rupee (4.25 US Dollars) and hours. They will work Monday through Saturday with 10-12 sick days off and 3 weeks’ vacation time. At the stand the workers will be sealing our product and promoting it to people at the outdoor markets. Then once they have worked for us for a year and a half with no problems, they will be promoted to assistant manager. They will be paid 331.02 Rupee (5.25 US Dollars) and hour and have 4 weeks’ vacation time and 15-20 sick days. The assistant manager will be doing our job when we aren’t there, making sure that nothing goes wrong. Once they have worked with us for 3 years they will be paid 520.17 Rupee (8.25 US Dollars) and will get 20 sick days off and 6 weeks of vacation. They will be helping us, the managers and creators of the product and they will help us make big decisions such as how to spread our product to other parts of India or even other countries around the world. They will also help us figure out how we could make our product more affordable for lower class people and even people living in poverty. Note that none of the vacation time will be paid vacation. Each employee will be given a complimentary Blue Pelican Septic Tank for themselves as a Thank You for working for us. We will have the money to pay our employees once we start selling our product.
Financials:
Blue Pelican Waste Management and Septic will need a total of $60,000 to start our business. This number is an estimate of how much we will need to rent our warehouse, build our first toilets, rent a space in an outdoor market and pay our only employee for the first year. The start up money will finance our basic costs, mostly rent, for the first year while we get the company up and running and from there we will be making enough of a profit to support ourselves.
In the first month our company will be in India we plan to set up the warehouse and manufacture 10 of our septic kits. Each septic kit includes the following things listed in the graphs. The graphs also include costs in Rupee and US dollars of each item we will need.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ephFKJsoKGlLe4PbkAkyzWjWEbkCUcdt2CylYq_biTo/edit
For Graphs Click On The Link