A Literary Analysis of the Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog by John Lewis Gaddis Essay

Chapter 1Chapter 1 is titled The Landscape of History and introduces John Lewis Gaddis (the author) main argument. At the beginning of the chapter, he describes the painting that is on the front of the book called The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog. Then he states that he uses the panting to describe what historical consciousness is all about. He connects historians to the main in the painting by stating that most historians turn their back on the future and focus on the past. Historians believe that the only way we can predict the future is by knowing the past. History is all we have. He states that history gives us a wider view on what is going on. This could be connected to the current war in Afghanistan. After studying history of the Middle East, it is easier for us to know what is going on now and why we are fighting. Another main point of the chapter is that historians are supposed to interpret the past for the purposes of the present with a view to managing the future. Chapter 2Chapter 2 is titled Time and Space. Gaddis discusses how time and space relate to historians and to history by stating that individual historians are bound by time and space, but history is not. He compares historical research to a time machine and then states that historical research goes way beyond where a time machine could ever go. He made an interesting point that we rarely tend to think about what we are doing while we are doing it. Historians have the abilities of selectivity, simultaneity, and the shifting of scale. Towards the end of the chapter he argued that we can think of history as a kind of mapping. This would allow us to be able to see patterns in history. He states that if we think of history as a kind of mapping, it would allow us to get closer...

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