Tragedy in a Poster

            The past week in ALA was an exciting, but it was a lot of hard work in and out of class. On Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday we were given all period to work on our tragic hero project posters. My group, Ryo, David, Tiffany, and I, all worked hard and did as much as we could to make a great poster for our presentation. I'm glad we got to work together, because no one slacked off, and I got to know each one of them better from before. Our group based our project off of the film, Saving Private Ryan, which is a WWII movie based off a real story. We agreed on this movie because Captain Miller, the main character, is a perfect example of a tragic hero, and his character includes a lot of potential analysis which I think we all as a group, analyzed him to the fullest. I am glad we chose this movie because first of all, it is a spectacular picture and is totally worth seeing, but it also contains scenes that are easy to tell what element of the Greek tragedy it is. I wrote my essay on the tragic element of hamartia, and having watched the movie only one time through, I already knew what to analyze and what specific parts showed Captain Miller's hubris and other weaknesses. I may have only watched the movie once, but the scenes I found to show his hamartia I have watched at least five times each, over and over again. The rest of the elements of tragedy in the movie are obvious too, and I know that my group chose the right scenes for analysis as much as I did.

            Our poster is comprised of a few simple things, but all relevant to the tragic hero, the movie, and the elements of a Greek tragedy. For all 10 of our pictures of the scenes according to each element, we placed them on red paper backgrounds, to show pain, blood, and death as the pictures fall down the poster. For a boost in showing the element of blood and death, we splatter painted red paint all over the poster, representing blood itself. Also, we drew and cut out a tank and buildings, normal and burnt, and for the ground of this cut out scene, we attempted to make sand out of brown sugar and glue. Lastly for the big symbol, we made a giant replica of Captain Miller's gravestone, and over the arms of the cross we wrote his full name. Everything we put on the poster has meaning, metaphorical or literal, having to do directly with the Greek tragedy or our tragic hero and the movie. The poster in my opinion turned out great, and even though it may not be completely perfect, it shows the elements and every meaning we want to bring across to our class well enough. We didn't have to present on Friday, but we are ready to present for Monday next week, and I am excited to show all our hard work and eventually find out how we did on the whole project.