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Describe monuments
The Importance of Memorials
Purpose and function of monuments
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Over thousands of years and millions of labor hours, countless memorials and monuments have been built. Why is this? Many a time has this question been asked, but in the words of Kin Hubbard, an American humorist, we find an answer: “Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn’t have as many monuments to unveil.” Thus, we see that monuments come from times of trial and error, mistakes and darkness that seem to find us when we least expect it. Although, many of us remember what happened, a “…monument manufactures its own aura” (Source A). This aura normally presents a new perspective on the way things actually were. As we see every day, monuments have rose from the ashes of darkness to remind us never to return or forget.
This darkness has shrouded the Central Intelligence Agency’s cover-ups and operational losses for years, they say this is for “National Security”. Although, this may be true, they have remembered them through a memorial that bears the somber remembrance that peace can’t exist without sacrifice. This memorial is the CIA Memorial Wall. This wall was created to remember members of the Clandestine Service or any Active Service Branch of the CIA that died while serving on duty. A marble structure with 107 black stars etched into its surface, one for each member, has become a staple of the CIA and is one of its most prominent features at its Langley Headquarters. The wall is maintained by a select staff handpicked by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and is funded by the tax payers of the United States. When a star must be etched into the wall, the CIA allows Tim Johnston a member of the Carving and Restoration Team of Virginia to create it. This wall is not open to the public, but it ha...
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...e drive and dedication to help our fellow man and to improve not only our societies, but have also secured and protected our way of life. Through these monuments we will remember our mistakes, achievements, failures, milestones and especially our work as a species. We will see how our society has shaped itself throughout the ages and how it has overcome barriers; most of all we can witness how our people no matter how different have overcome differences to last our species throughout time.
Works Cited
Savage, Kirk. Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape. Berkeley: U of California P, 2009. Print.
Downes, Lawrence. "Waiting for Crazy Horse." New York Times. New York Times, 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 20 Dec. 2010
Lin, Maya. "Making the Memorial." New York Review of Books. NYREV, Inc., Nov. 2000. Web. 5 July 2011.
Monuments and museums are arenas of public history and for the formation and articulation of identities and narratives.[1] Decisions taken as to the formation of museums and the selection, display and organisation of exhibits are influenced by criteria which are not necessarily politically neutral; these may especially involve devices of political elites to emphasise aspects of communal togetherness and thus exert control over communities.[2] Memory and commemoration of past events and generations is by its nature a political and contested act, especially in sharply divided societies.[3] It is no surprise that recently established governments and states should particularly concern themselves with the production of such forms of festivities, commemorations, and monuments.[4] As rulers of a sharply divided society, unionist elites in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of its eventful creation in 1920-1 had particular reasons to concern themselves, and did concern themselves, with such strategies of power.[5] The integration of the province's Catholic minority may have been, or may have been felt to be, beyond the rulers of Northern Ireland;[6] but this very fact heightened the importance of preserving the highest possible degree of political unity under unionist hegemony among the Protestant majority.[7]
I felt this morbid and realistic presence of the soldiers and for a mere second felt the gloom and menace of the war they were in. I walked around the site to gather more information on what the memorial was dedicated to. I walked past the mural wall and as I did, I paid particular attention to the various images of people and equipment on the wall. All of the facial expressions of the people on the wall gave the memorial a very real presence to it. I continued walking down the granite walk
Lin's work, unlike most previous military monuments, rejects the emphasis on heroics in favor of a poignant, contemplative, apolitical design which conveys an almost unbearable sense of loss. Simple, graceful, and abstract, the design specified two 246.75 foot long walls of polished black southern India granite, set below grade and connected at a 125 degree angle.2 Each segment of the wall is composed of 70 panels. At their intersection, the walls are 10.1 feet high and they taper down to a height of 8 inches at their extremities.3 The largest panels have 137 lines of names.4 The smallest panels have just one line. Each line consists of five names, which were sandblasted into the polished surface by hand, rather than cut into it with machine tools.5 Currently, the monument wall lists the names of 58,175 members of the armed forces who were confirmed killed or listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War.6
Thousands of headstones in the far distance create magnificent mazes against the horizon. The immense land has very little room to spare as it is overflowing with graves of heroic soldiers. The white marble graves are like oversized dominos stacked precisely in the thick wind ruffled grass. It is almost inconceivable to imagine each tomb is the physical eternal home to a once courageous and patriotic warrior of our homeland. As the fireball in the heavens slowly descends, it creates a glorious silhouette of the infinite number of tombstones.
Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Print.
Washington, DC is a spectacular place. This being my first time in DC, I was in awe of everything and all the historical places I encountered. The presence of the monuments and history is what made the capitol so magnificent. Having only read about the Lincoln memorial, I never had the chance to experience the sensation of being inside such an honorable place of importance. The imposing white marble walls of the memorial and the many people surrounding it could be seen from afar. Arriving at the location, an unknown feeling came over me. I was experiencing history in a whole different level. When I think about a memorial, the term remembrance comes to mind. Seeing the statue of Abraham Lincoln brought pieces of memories from history class and evoked thoughts of what it might have felt like to be in his shoes. I was astonished by the statue’s enormousness and how grand Abraham Lincoln looked in his chair. The size of the statue compared to pictures from books and elsewhere was surreal. Abraham Lincoln was a very “powerful and prominent individual” in the history of our nation, the statue’s design and size reflected upon that. Looking around me, I wanted to know what the others thoughts were on seeing his statue and how they felt in that building. I finally had the courage to ask one or two people what they thought; they all had the same appreciation as me. Hearing about an important person or learning about them in a history book gives you vast knowledge but it doesn’t evoke the feeling of utter appreciation as the memorial does. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, many people wanted to build a memorial in honor of him. They wanted to be able to show how important he was to shaping our nation and to “honor his existence”. Ce...
The Vietnam War Memorial. It is a wall, but it is also a monster that many avoid, and many are nervous to visit. In truth, all it is though is facts. It lists the names of all the soldiers that died in the conflict that was staged in a small country in Asia. All the names. There are so many names. Names that go on and on. There are over fifty-eight thousand of them, and every single one of them is a real person. A real man. A real woman. A real person. A real soldier. A real American. It was probably a man who considered whether or not to even serve his country. He probably left his crying mother behind, and when he arrived in the hell that would serve as his home for many miserable days, months, years. A hell that eventually would serve as his funeral home. Maybe he came back in plastic, or maybe he did not come home at all, as several thousand GI's turned into MIA's or POW's, which then changed into names on the wall. Those brave boys, not men, boys who gave their lives for a cause that they didn't understand were reduced from ambitious citizens in the greatest country in the world to names on a wall.
...lding can be, yet it has its own distinctive style and meaning. The Memorial is not a mirror image of its ancient ancestor, rather, it is a descendant of centuries of development and change. The Jefferson Memorial is no simple carbon copy of the original Pantheon, it is a building and a work of art in its own right and should be appreciated regardless of history.
Today we have the Smithsonian Institution that represents the trauma that many of the people today do not have imprinted in their memory. This is a way for all people, who were both present and not present, to pay their respects to the participants and the victims in World War II.5 In creating the Smithsonian, the Americans initially wanted to reflect deeply upon the occurrences by design...
Suter, Keith. “Roadside Memorials: Sacred Places in a Secular Era.” Contemporary Review 292.1692 (Spring 2010): 51+. Psychology Collection. EBSCO: Academic Onefile. Web. 24 Mar. 2011.
History has a strange way of coming back around when it comes to human civilization. It has been said repeatedly that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. However, just because there is a potential for danger in the future, this does not mean that humanity must ignore what once was. History is normally remembered through what is known as a memorial. When a memorial is put into physical representation, it is then known as a monument.
When creating a monument, the group or agency needs to consider if the subject is compelling enough to society. The monument has to have
Americans have often used art to symbolize the relationship between themselves and their history. Therefore, art is used to honor and remember someone or an event where people died, through a memorial. As an example, The National World War II Memorial is a memorial to honor and remember the people who served in World War II. The success or failure of a memorial depends on how well it represents the image that people have of a certain person or event. Especially in America because they find the construction of a national monument so controversial that no memorial has been erected in the National Mall without a discussion. The National World War II Memorial on the National Mall was a poor addition; its location diminishes the formerly open space between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, its design is vague, and it is a poor choice even when compared with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A very good start.
I have seen and been to a few monuments in my life. The one that’s sticks out in my mind the most is my visit to the World Trade Center after the first bombing. I remember the first couple of floors were being worked on, and you couldn’t really walk pass the building. Still, it was a magnificent site to see. I must have looked like a tourist because my eyes were constantly focus on all the huge skyscrapers that surrounded me.
When a place like this is built, it shows the people that there is hope and that...