Images from Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others

In the book Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag discussed various images that were thought-provoking and made me very emotional. One image that really caught my attention was Goltzius’s The Dragon Devouring the Companions of Cadmus (1588). The painting is so bold in its nudity and gruesome in its depiction of a dragon eating the head of a man. At the same time, the painting is truly beautiful. As someone with a great interest in art, I find the artist’s attention to detail to be quite phenomenal. When you first look at the painting, you see a dragon devouring a man’s head. If you look closer, there are actually two people being devoured. The way the second body’s legs are placed is quite uncomfortable position to be in. It’s gruesome and disturbing. When you pay attention to particular parts of the painting, you see a man in the background with what looks to be fighting with some beast. But then again, that depends on perspective. Maybe the man is playing around with the beast?  The dragon itself is really beautiful. Every muscle of its body so perfectly depicted, as is the humans. It seems so realistically painted that  it makes you wonder why was this produced and how did Goltzius come up with such a painting?

Huynh Cong Ut’s 1972 photograph from the Vietnam War really struck me deeply. The children are running, shrieking with pain. It’s so gut-wrenching to see the naked child running in the photo. Behind the kids are soldiers running from a black cloud, which is probably from an explosion of a bomb. It really made me tear up thinking about the situation these children must have gone through. I feel like jumping into the photograph and helping these children out. Ut beautifully captures the emotions at the time for the Vietnamese people. Ultimately, it’s the faces of these children that really touch you. Their faces really tell you the situation they’re going through. The one child looking back at the black sky and soldiers is really saddening. She or he is probably being forced to leave their home. These children have to abandon all that is precious to them, including their parents. Who knows? Their parents may be dead, be off fighting in the war, or weren’t able to escape. We don’t know. But the children’s emotions definitely tell us something is wrong. It hurts to see children in pain. I think that’s why this photo tells us so much more about the Vietnam War. When we talk about war, we usually picture adults and soldiers dealing with the fighting. Sometimes, I feel like we overlook the children, who are suffering the most from war. Looking back at our happy-go-lucky childhoods, I feel deeply saddened those children went through that kind of thing. Photographs really do help you develop an understanding for the situation.