All Quiet on the Western Front Portfolio
Objectives:
 To research the art, literature, history, and thought related to WWI and All Quiet on the Western Front.
 To respond, analyze, imitate, react to the various findings of your research.
 To combine your findings and reactions into a “companion” portfolio to the novel that uses a series of
“artifacts” to capture a diversity of perspectives on content relating to the period and the novel itself.
 Create a final portfolio of work that shows your understanding of some of the themes and issues in the
novel and how they relate to the historical and contemporary events and issues.
Research:
 Look for a diversity of perspectives and genres, both historical and contemporary.
 Some suggestions – Literary: poetry, short story, letters, songs, propaganda (written), editorials, news
articles; Artistic: paintings, photography, sculpture, propaganda posters / ads, political cartoons;
Historical – maps, primary source documents.
 Look in a variety of sources: Books, magazines, internet, individuals (any family history / letters from
that era?
 Keep your source information for a works cited page.
Artifacts:
 These are items (images or text) that you find or create that focus on a certain issue or theme in the
book.
 Try a variety of approaches / genres. For instance:
1. Place content from the book into a different form – a poem from the era, a letter, a
drawing / painting.
2. React in prose to a piece: compare contrast an attitude, image, painting of a battle scene
to a similar or contrasting one from the book.
3. Provide a broader background / historical context for a scene from the book: a map of the
area described, an outline of key events from that period, accounts of real battles, plans,
philosophies, songs, propaganda.
4. Find an example of or imitate literature / art of the era
5. Find or write an excerpt from a letter home from the front.
6. Present some statistics of casualties
7. Explain the science behind chemical weapons.
8. Find a period or contemporary photo that evokes a scene or mood similar to one from the
book.
Portfolio Contents:
 The portfolio should consist of nine entries, one for each reading assignment in the book. Each
entry should include
1)
an artifact (something you have found relating to something from that
section of the book) and
2)
a reflection (your work, explaining it, interpreting it and connecting it
somehow to the novel).
 Each entry should have artifact and reflection the same facing pages.
 Portfolio should have a clear purpose and structure to it; it should not just be an accumulation. How
you organize is up to you. You might organize around main characters, chapters, key themes, a single
theme, varying perspectives on the war, genre, etc.
From Odes
Horace
To suffer hardness with good cheer,
In sternest school of warfare bred,
Our youth should learn; let steed and spear
Make him one day the Parthian's dread;
Cold skies, keen perils, brace his life.
Methinks I see from rampired town
Some battling tyrant's matron wife,
Some maiden, look in terror down,—
“Ah, my dear lord, untrain'd in war!
O tempt not the infuriate mood
Of that fell lion I see! from far
He plunges through a tide of blood!“
What joy, for fatherland to die!
Death's darts e'en flying feet o'ertake,
Nor spare a recreant chivalry,
A back that cowers, or loins that quake.
translated by John Conington
Dulce et decorum est; pro patria mori.