english@kkc

The video is the first of our Kite Runner clips, I will post all of them so make sure that you have created your soundtracks!

This one is about the opening of the novel. In this clip we listen to the adult Amir who recalls his childhood, his past of “unatoned sins”. He thinks of the moment in the winter of 1975 when he was twelve years old and his life changed forever. It introduces to the the reader the subject of the narrative. In the novel we note that Amir is in San Francisco watching kite flying. There is an image of a pair of kites “floating side by side”, note its significance. Also note that two of the novel’s major themes - friendship and redemption are introduced right at the start of the book. See that Hosseini uses this brief juxtaposition of past and present and the contrasts of America and Afghanistan to alert readers to the oppositions of time and place which will underpin the story.

Those students studying war poetry may be interested in ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. This is a classic of the cinema, now in the public domain. The film is adapted from a novel by German author Erich Maria Remarque and it follows a group of German schoolboys who are talked into enlisting at the beginning of World War 1 by their jingoistic teacher. The story is told entirely through the experiences of the young German recruits and highlights the tragedy of war through the eyes of individuals. As the boys witness death and mutilation all around them, any preconceptions about the enemy and the rights and wrongs of the conflict disappear, leaving them angry and bewildered. This is highlighted in the scene where Paul mortally wounds a French soldier and then weeps bitterly as he fights to save his life while trapped in a shell crater with the body. The film is not about heroism but about drudgery and futility and the gulf between the concept of war and the actuality.

I have put together this simple slideshow to give you some more information about the setting and the author Khaled Hosseini so that you will find it easier to understand the novel.

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Siegfried Sassoon

A little animation for the Year 11 students who studied this poem. The music is from Pete Doherty.

“Have you news of my boy Jack? Not this tide.”
- Rudyard Kipling, My Boy Jack

Here is some homework for the Year 11 students studying Wilfred Owen. This Sunday on TV1 at 8.30 is ‘My Boy Jack’ which is the story of writer Rudyard Kipling’s search for his missing 17-year-old son during World War One. The video above features Daniel Radcliffe discussing his role and it shows clips from the film.

In 1914 England, patriotism is high in the early days of WWI, and writer Rudyard Kipling (David Haigh, Four Weddings and a Funeral) is one of its most eloquent and passionate voices. John “Jack,” (Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter films), Kipling’s only son, is underage, hopelessly myopic, and eager to join the war effort. Kipling’s outspoken American wife Carrie (Kim Cattrall, Sex and the City) remains more sanguine on the course of the war, and the fate of her family. My Boy Jack, based on a true story, tells of a nation at war, and offers an intimate portrait of one family’s complex and divided experience in it.

In September 1915, Jack Kipling was killed in action after being in France for only three weeks. Jack remained on the list of soldiers “missing believed wounded” for two years. The Kiplings were devastated; the effect of losing another child was incalculable. In 1916, Kipling’s Sea Warfare was published, which contained an emotional poem about his son Jack.

“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing and this tide.
“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he didn’t shame his kind
Not even with that wind blowing and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide,
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

Friday is Anzac Day and I know that many of you are very interested in what happened during World War One. I made the video from images taken from the battlefields of Europe which those who are studying Wilfred Owen may be interested in.

Although New Zealanders fought in Europe during the war many associate the Anzacs with the Gallipoli campaign. On 25 April 1915, eight months into the First World War, Allied soldiers landed on the shores of the Gallipoli peninsula. This was Turkish territory that formed part of Germany’s ally, the Ottoman Empire. The troops were there as part of a plan to open the Dardanelles Strait to the Allied fleets, allowing them to threaten the Ottoman capital Constantinople (now Istanbul) and, it was hoped, force a Turkish surrender. The Allied forces encountered unexpectedly strong resistance from the Turks, and both sides suffered enormous loss of life.

The forces from New Zealand and Australia, fighting as part of the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), played an important part in the Gallipoli campaign. At its beginning, people at home greeted with excitement the news that our soldiers were at last fully engaged in the war. New Zealand soldiers distinguished themselves with their courage and skill, establishing an enduring bond with the Australians they fought alongside.

The Gallipoli campaign was, however, a costly failure for the Allies, who after nine months abandoned it and evacuated their surviving troops. Almost a third of the New Zealanders taking part had been killed; the communities they came from had counted the cost in the lengthy casualty lists that appeared in their newspapers. And the sacrifice seemed to have been in vain, for the under-resourced and poorly-conducted campaign did not have any significant influence on the outcome of the war.

Although Anzac Day, the anniversary of the first day of conflict, does not mark a military triumph, it does remind us of a very important episode in New Zealand’s history. Great suffering was caused to a small country by the loss of so many of its young men. But the Gallipoli campaign showcased attitudes and attributes - bravery, tenacity, practicality, ingenuity, loyalty to King and comrades - that helped New Zealand define itself as a nation, even as it fought unquestioningly on the other side of the world in the name of the British Empire.

After Gallipoli, New Zealand had a greater confidence in its distinct identity, and a greater pride in the international contribution it could make. And the mutual respect earned during the fighting formed the basis of the close ties with Australia that continue today.

Virtual Guide of Gallipoli

This Guide provides a virtual tour of the peninsula. It features maps, images and interactive panoramas along with short histories and information about the battles, and memorials and cemeteries where New Zealanders are named or interred.

NZHistory.net.nz
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/node/101 (Anzac Day
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/node/3374 (Gallipoli Campaign)
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/node/1392 (First World War Memorials)
Essays on the history of Anzac Day and the Gallipoli campaign. Also features radio files from Sound Archives, a register of First World War memorials in New Zealand and biographies of a range people who served at Gallipoli.

To show more of the work created by Year Nine students for their Roald Dahl study I have made a short video.

I know many of you have seen this clip but I have had several requests for it and Year 12 students are going to be writing film reviews … so let’s ask a ninja about Pirates of the Caribbean.