Gassed by John Singer Sargent

This is probably one of the most influential pieces of artwork about World War I that I have ever seen. Sargent drew upon his experiences

from his trip in 1918 to northern france as inspiration for this painting. He saw groups of soldiers who were blinded by mustard gas during that trip. I think that the reason why Sargent uses yellow so much in this painting is to show that the reason for the soldiers' conditions are due to mustard gas. It is a sad depiction of the horrible effects of war but it is real nonetheless. The blinded soldiers are forced to hold on to each other and to walk past their fallen friends. Some of the soldiers seem to be in agony and one particularly is sitting amongst his dead comrades, almost wishing that what he were seeing was not real. The huge open field that they are standing in helps to show that these soldiers are alone on the battlefield. Also in the background there seems to be another group of blind soldiers, showing that many soldiers have been affected by the atrocities of war.

Connection Across Time: The use of mustard gas was new in warfare for the first world war. However, the use of gases in both war and defence has evolved over the years. We received a current event paper not so long ago in class about a new weapon that is being developed. In Gauhati, India, the military plans to use the ghost chili, the world's hottest chili, as a weapon. They will use these peppers to make tear gas-like hand grenades to immobilize suspects. These weapons will stop the intended targets in their tracks but it will not blind them as mustard gas did to the soldiers during WWI. I thought this was interesting because using items found in nature such as plants or peppers as weapons has been going on for a long time.