Great Wall of LA - Essay Example

However, it could be hoped that such a remarkable endeavor would receive more credit for its brilliance than to be allowed to fade away in the blazing sun, damaged by the periodic floods and blurred by layers of city pollution. Adding even more community benefit, small little parks have sprung up along the entire length of the mural, offering biking and walking trails with attempts to raise funds for more extensive parkland in the future. These parks are great because they give people a reason to stop and look at the mural and perhaps understand a little bit more about what they’re trying to say.

Since a lot of the images are complex, containing a lot of history in a short amount of space, driving by and taking a quick glimpse is not sufficient for full appreciation. I will demonstrate this by looking at two panels of the wall, the Japanese internment and the development of suburbia, to show how these panels speak of the pursuit of the American Dream within their complex imagery. In the Japanese internment, the panel depicts images of a dead tree, a broken-down automobile, a row of drab barracks presided over by a watchtower and a small group of people.

The entire scene is pictured in the California desert, immediately indicating the part California played in this period in history. The dead tree in the desert indicates the loss of the American dream for the Japanese Americans who had everything they had taken away from them, symbolized in the pile of things pictured toward the end of this panel, and for all of America in the absence of green, growing things. The wrecked automobile stands for the abrupt halt of any forward progress the country was making up until this point in human advancement and opportunity as well as the threat to prosperity in the country’s decision to act as its enemies.

The barracks are