Salute Your Innocence Away

 

In my Narrative Illustration I show the ending of the story of a soldier that had gone through boot camp and how his humanity was lost in the process. After the brutal, mind-numbing training and the standardized equipment that he was issued, he became nothing more than another killing machine. At the moment of the illustration we can see the soldier’s final resignation to his fate as a tool of war as he stands at attention and salutes away his humanity.

I used dirty conditions, splattering rain, and drab colors to portray the military atmosphere of the scene. The high contrast of the bright rain drops and white lights against the black night sky and dirty brown colors is used to give the scene intensity. I chose to replace his face with a skull to show how his identity has been lost and replaced with a permanently scowling mask. The “I am become death” writing on the soldier’s helmet is a quote from J. Robert Oppenheimer, the main inventor behind the atomic bomb. It’s a direct translation from a Hindu story. The quote is also used in a similar context in Stanley Kubrick’s movie, Full Metal Jacket on a soldier who relishes in war.