According to a character in Joy Luck Club, with the removal of one’s lips comes the eventual chilling of the teeth. Through constantly declaring to her daughter this metaphorical aphorism, her astute daughter eventually learned what she meant, which was one thing is always the cause of another.
On that account, her incessant mentioning of that awesome aphorism was after all not in vain, for she managed to pass through her daughter such a cosmic actuality that is often overlooked by many people, although such actuality is indeed befitting to every single occurrence in the world. It can be indeed applicable to the situation in which one ccidentally strikes a glass of water that, as a result of the incident, shatters on the floor, or to the First World War, purposely speaking. Just like any other happening, World War I had its effectsits gravely dejecting effects.
It not only butchered the international economy by triggering the German Inflation and indirectly the Great Depression but also rendered the people vulnerable to the false hopes that led to totalitarianismas evidenced through Lenin’s and Stalin’s leaderships and the events surrounding the Russian Revolutionand the artists to compositions whose salient purposes were o repel or avoid the hostilities of the war. While the First World War directly initiated the German Inflation through the Versailles Treaty, it indirectly did so the Great Depression through the United States’ revelry in isolationism.
Via the Versailles Treaty, the Allies required Germany to pay reparations for the total cost of the war. To compensate for the stiff reparations they had to pay, Germany had no other choice but to do exactly what they did, which was the deed of borrowing and printing more money. As a result, Germany’s currency gradually lost its value, rendering the Germans pathetic. And all of these happened because of the war in which Germany ruthlessly executed its purpose to win.
Germany caused the most destruction and was therefore forced to gag on the indignity of taking absolute responsibility for the war, although the truth was all of the countries involved in the war were altogether responsible for the said detrimental war. In addition to the German Inflation, another unfortunate economical effect of the war was the Great Depression, which was basically caused by the 1929 crash of the stock market in which millions of Americans invested. As can be recalled, paranoid Americans turned down the League of Nations and turned instead to isolationism.
At first, the United States did not entirely withdraw from world affairs but did so as soon as a total normalcy was corroborated. Consequently, the Americans, having nothing with which to bother themselves but those that are entirely domestic, prospered and gained such an irrational confidence as to invest their savings into the stock market, which crashed, unfortunately. And if an analytical scrutiny is employed, it can be easily discovered that the root of this misfortune is isolationism, which was accordingly aused by World War I.
Therefore, it can be firmly declared that the First World War effectively wrecked the International economy partly through the German Inflation and the Great Depression. Since Russians became, accordingly to the war, impoverished and hopeless, they basically became such gulls as to conform with and advocate Radical Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and totalitarian ruler Joseph Stalin. As the Russians were poor and agitated by the war, they willingly supported the dethronement of the Provisional Government and the rise of Lenin, a leader whom they undoubtedly believed provided them idespread hope at such a futureless time.
Since they were all poor, they helpfully upheld Lenin’s idea of a classless society as if a spiteful shepherd was leading them to a lava pit, to “the end to the hopes of a more peaceful world,” and thus to totalitarianism. After all, they were all poor and knew that a classless society best suited them at the time, which was why they found no dregs whatsoever in Lenin’s unrealistic concepts, and little did they know that Lenin was merely training them for the arrival of a much more severe ruler.
Hence, with Lenin’s death came Russia’s first totalitarian ruler named Joseph Stalin, the ruler who promised Russia’s industrialization partly via the harsh process of collectivized agriculture to his impoverished and hope-famished people. On the account of their preoccupation on being once again hopeful and out of poverty, Russians willingly allowed Stalin to brainwash them into executing his five-year plans, which unfortunately contained the collectivized agriculture process that required peasants to give up their lands.
Logically, these easants were anything but slow in opposing such an unfair system, yet little did they know that the moment they embarked on their camaraderie with Stalin, they gave up a good deal of their rights. On the other hand, it is only appropriate to say that Stalin’s actions were completely irrational and despotic, that it deserved no form of conformation whatsoever, and that he was utterly heartless in taking advantage of his people’s vulnerability to the false hopes he fed them.
However, it can also be affirmed that the people deserved what they got to have been so tupid and gullible and not astute enough to not forebode what was approaching them. Although the fact that Lenin and Stalin initiated Russian totalitarianism and were thus misleading leaders deserves all the blame, the people, because of their naivete, also weren’t entirely victimized because they after all walked with Stalin a good proportion of the misleading road to the Russian totalitarianism.
While writers wrote prose that openly confronted the war’s abominable outcomes, artists turned to theoretical compositions in hopes of escaping the brutal reality with which the world was enveloped at the time. In the 1920’s, European writers expressed a sense of helplessness and pessimism as their way of denouncing the war. Because of the knowledge that writers only write what they perceive in the world, the said 1920 European writers did exactly what they were accustomed to doing by expressing through their literatures a sense of helplessness and pessimism.
As a matter of fact, Edgar Allan Poe based “The Cask of Amontillado” on a news article he read. ) Their literatures were only a reflection of what they saw around them and thus of the world. On that account, they weren’t necessarily whiners; they were merely doing their job. On the other hand, writers weren’t the only ones who in some manner mirrored a worldly reaction to the war, because artists themselves rejected realism and impressionism and instead settled on creating abstract, escape-reality works of art, such as cubism and dada.
Since painting reality only produced a total atmosphere of dejection and impressionism an air of denial, it was only rational that artists painted abstract paintings. Moreover, these benevolentalthough mentally unhealthy since they preferred to escape realityartists indeed produced nonsensical artistry to the effect f providing the world an accessible flight from the undesirable reality with which the people were living, an air of amusement, and thus hope.
So although these artists can be viewed as whiners and retards, they were merely doing what they have been accustomed to doing since time immemorial and are thus unaccountable for any disparaging criticism. One thing is indeed always the cause of another. Everywhere, this simplistic rationalization is found. From a broken heart comes pain, from pain comes grief, and from grief comes death. Of course a broken heart s not about to be employed as a symbol of the First World War due to the fact that such a strategy is indeed too intricate as to merely cause confusion instead of an elucidation.
On the other hand, perhaps a water balloon is befitting enough to serve the purpose of symbolizing World War I. Imagine a water balloon on which numerous diminutive holes are punctured by innumerable needles, and envision abundant strings of water rampantly coming out of it. These strings of water are the innumerable effects of the detrimental World War I, and each string represents an effect. All of these strings are from one source, from one water balloon and it is amazing how a single water balloon can be so productive.
But it’s not amazing how even only several effects of World War I can be so consequential as to partly wreck an international economy through the German Inflation and the Great Depression, to undress nave people stark naked before the snowstorm of totalitarian rulers, and to produce through artists’ works of art that are either imbued with abstract nonsensicalness or worded with melancholy the despicable reflection of the war. It is rather only credible.