Date of Award
2012
Document Type
Thesis
Department
History
First Reader
Dr. Chris Mortenson
Second Reader
Professor Judy Duvall
Third Reader
Dr. David Ozmun
Abstract
Each of us is able to experience only small slices of history. We live only a shade of the painting. This does not give us a false perspective, but a unique, slim portion of the bigger picture. Though many of us live through epic periods of history that have been enumerated in many millions of pages, it is only a few dozen of those pages that we can actually point out as moments that we lived. Each memory comes with its own perspective. We can only experience that moment of history from the view of the life that we lived within it. Whether happy, sad, or indifferent, we can only describe it through the emotions that it stirred within us personally. To tell what effects it had within anyone else is to simply write someone else's history. That is what I set out to do in this research, to write the history of someone else. In the meantime, I lived a story of my own, one of a young woman who heard and was able to imagine the lives from a time that I cannot experience myself. I can never live the stories I have been told, I can merely listen and let their impact make an impression on the story of my life that is constantly being formed.
Recommended Citation
Smethers, Mary, "The Making of a War Memoir" (2012). Honors Theses. 15.
https://scholarlycommons.obu.edu/honors_theses/15