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"The Two Joes Meet. Joe College, Joe Veteran": The G. I. Bill, College Education, and Postwar American Culture

1998; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 38; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/369985

1748-5959

Daniel A. Clark,

Academic Freedom and Politics

During World War II several popular Norman Rockwell paintings featured the soldier Willie Gillis. Rockwell depicted Willie as your average, all-American boy, a typical GI. Yet the Willie pictured on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on October 5, 1946, seemed transformed (see Plate 1). Willie sits in the window sill of his college dorm room, smoking a pipe while diligently studying. The window in the center of the picture frames the venerable college clocktower and trees on the Quad. The everyman, dogface Willie had matured. He had been transformed into a college student with an air of confident assurance, comfortable within his new genteel surroundings. One could only imagine a bright future for Willie.