Carle’s Chronicles is based on the life of Emilia a girl who narrates her life experiences before, during and after the war. It is a captivating way of writing history because the readers follow Emilia step by step in her life as she recaps every event that took place during that time the book is based on. She gives a detailed view of her ambitions to become a teacher and how the war took that dream away from her.
She narrates what her family had to go through during the war and after. She was young had two brothers and two sisters. She had ambitions of becoming a teacher which she worked hard to achieve. She was only in her family who had the desire to go to school. Although she desired to go to school, it was not easy for considering the house chores that she was required to do on a daily basis. However Emilia was a very hard working girl, she found a way to convince her father to let her go to school after finishing her work, and she would wake up very early in the morning do all her house chores and go to school. The school was several kilometers from where she lived. The long journey to school gave her a chance to catch up on the school work because she would read on the way there. Since she was the only one who went to school, the other siblings were very jealous of her ambitions and the fact that her father supported her decision to go both financially and through moral support. He helped her apply for a scholarship which helped her attain her brevet.
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Unfortunately, her older sister passed away, and that only meant she had to help out at the house, her studies had to be kept on hold. Her dream of going back to school became even harder when her brothers were drafted to help in the war. She was left with her younger sister and father. It was hard for her since she had to do both house and farm chores. She hated the war because it kept her from pursuing her dreams and always prayed for it to be over. Emilia went through a lot, but she finally finished her education got her brevet superior and went ahead to become a teacher. She finally returned home to be with her family after she got sick. The narration of Emilia makes the readers respond to her fears, like when she got a letter from Joseph telling them he was in captivity and they should send him packages or he was going to die of starvation. When we think of the world war to us, it’s just a collection of people, places, and events, but when we read the Carle’s chronicles about the story of Emilia and her family, it brings order to it. We can clearly understand the effect the war had on people during that time; this is one advantage of narration in writing history students get convinced that they know what happened during that period. It is also a disadvantage to writing history since the past does not have character or consistency; it is a just combination of events, locations, and individuals. For students, it gives them a notion they understand what happened instead of looking for alternative perspectives or clarifications. In simple words, the student is not critical of stories because they are so influential.
Historical fictions are more influential to students more than their textbooks. Historical books give illustrations through pictures or cartoons, which tends to be more interesting. It means as they read they expect to see characters, a story setting, and to solve a problem. It is beneficial because they participate in the events in history. Therefore, the understanding of the particular events becomes personal. A drawback to this is that the stories focus more on the individuals telling the story. In this case, the focus is more on Emilia and the events she goes through during the war, whereas the focus should be on the government that encouraged the war or what effect the war had on the economy of the country. Most of the time when students are instructed to explain the events in history they focus their explanations on the individuals instead of an emphasis on the broader perspectives. In this case, the focus is on Emilia and her family, the death of her brother, the friends she met who were deserters instead of focusing on how the war affected the education system and how the governments violate civil rights in killing those young men who chose not to participate in the war.
To ensure that historical fiction is entertaining and it does not make the students deviate from the real issues, teachers should teach their students how to look at societal contexts influence the behaviors of the characters they study. They should help them understand the various societal, governmental or economic powers or inhibited the selections these individuals made as well as methods in which people might have joined to solve the issues that faced them. An obvious example is when the community worked together to hide the two brothers who deserted the war instead of working with law enforcers to eliminate them. It is a clear example of choices that people make for the greater good instead of encouraging malevolent actions.
