Paul and his comrades enlist as fresh creatures of the world that change due to the abhorrence in World War One. The young men lose all hope of surviving through the novel because of the severe devastation they encounter. In the war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque exploits nature images such as, water, animals, and the earth, to exemplify the theme of the destructiveness of war. To begin, Remarque employs images of water to demonstrate the destructiveness of combat. For example, as he recognizes the uncertain feeling of claustrophobia setting in Paul describes how he, “views the front as a mysterious whirlpool.
Remarque uses the First World War as a primary setting in All Quiet on the Western Front to show the frontline experiences of Paul Baumer, an 18-year-old recruit for the German army who loses his innocence through his experiences in war. The opening of the novel juxtaposes the instances Paul considers “wonderfully good” (7) with instances of pure terror and fear on the battlefields of France, forcing him to become “hard, suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough…” (26). Remarque uses the battlefield’s unrelenting violence to communicate a sense of terror amongst the soldiers in his vivid depictions of “shells, gas clouds, and flotillas of tanks – shattering, corroding, death. Dysentary, influenza, typhus – scalding, choking, death. Trenches,
Denisse Peralta Period 2 All Quiet on the Western Front is a very famous novel about World War I. Written by Erich Maria Remarque, a veteran of the WW1, the book was banned in Nazi Germany because Hitler believed it portrayed the Wehrmacht (German military forces) in a bad manner. The novel is in Paul Baumer, a 19 year old soldier’s point of view, who is persuaded by his schoolmaster to join the army. He is stationed in the western front where he witnesses the horror and brutality of the war. War previous to this book did not seem so bad by comparison- soldiers stabbed or shot, blood here and there.
Both seem to be condemning this unfair outcome of war on individual peoples’ lives. “Disabled”, a poem written by Wilfred Owen, tells the story of a boy, excited to join the war, to earn his glory, who suffered grievous injuries in service and came home, not to the cheering and pride he had anticipated, but to people who “inquired about his soul”, and exiled him from normal society. This same theme is apparent in ‘Regeneration’ when Sarah comes across the mutilated soldiers at the back of the hospital, in chapter fourteen. Sarah feels anger at their treatment “If the country demanded
Wade Berrigan 5-26-07 The Moral Ambiguity of War In the novel Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Meyers, shows us many examples of soldiers struggling between making morale choices or staying alive. New soldiers look at other soldiers who have been in the war for a while as if they are sick soulless creatures killing everything in their way. Later we find these same characters that are doing the questioning doing the same thing. For example Perry wonders to himself how someone can die in front of them and no one remember it the following day. This shows his morals are still intact.
The men worry they will not live a normal life because of the horrific experiences and horrors of war. To survive war, Paul Baumer and his fellow soldiers behaved like animals, which in turn created a more dehumanizing experience. The young 19 year old soldiers are forced to join the war unaware that they have to change their lifestyles. Remarque indicates that the only way for a soldier to survive war is to turn off their mind and operate solely on instinct, making them less like human and more like animals. “By the animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected.
Each man writes more than just an account of the battles he fought in during World War One; each narrative is his account of the relationships he involves himself in, with men he grew up with, with men he led, with the people of the occupied France, and with the men he fought to kill. Robert Graves describes the apprehension he feels concerning becoming a gentleman through the lessons he learned as a child. That “two sorts of Christians existed – ourselves, and the lower class” was a shock described as his first “shudder of gentility;” (Graves, p. 14), one which Graves never learned to understand. Nowhere in Good-Bye to All That does Graves admit to accepting the facts of the society in which he grew up. Motivated by his disgust of “class hierarchy” and “meaningless privileges,” (as described by Paul Fussell in the introduction) (Fussell, p. v), Graves wanted to escape, at least as long as the war would last.
In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul experiences many atrocious war events which leave him scarred and damaged emotionally, but in the same way other characters carry physical burdens and other such objects. While stranded in a ditch, Paul stabs a French soldier who unsuspectingly falls into the same ditch. Yet as the man slowly dies, Paul regrets this action, wishing “If only he had run two yards farther to the left, he might now be sitting in the trench over there and writing a fresh letter to his wife” and promising “I will help [your wife] and your parents too, and your child…” (Remarque 118). Paul then begins to doubt his action of survival and he allows his mind to become dominated with repentance. This experience leaves him emotionally wounded by the way that the French solider dies and Paul feels responsible for it.
“When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”(Jarrel) This shows the dark side of war which Leper understands is the truth. When he first enlisted in the army he thought war could be fun, clean, and innocent when he film with the American cross country skiing. After joining the army he soon realized that fun does not exist in war and it can make you mad which happened to him by getting a section 8 disband for being crazy. When Leper probably grasp all of the things he would have to do mentally he realized that he could not do it and for that it made him crazy. “Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life” (Jarrel) When going to war a soldier must feel that he or she is six miles from earth and one a distant planet and that right there would make anyone go crazy being pulled out of their everyday life and being pushed in this hell hole called war would be enough for anyone to go crazy and eventually lose their hopes and
Where William Broyles brags that war has allowed him to explore regions of his soul that other men most likely will never explore, the movie shows the devastative effects that war can have on loved ones and the soldiers themselves. For example, at the end of the movie, a mother reads a letter that her son’s comrade wrote about him after his death. This wrenching example is shown at the end of the movie in order to solidify the sense of loss associated with war. In fact, the other texts and songs we analyzed in class, such as “John Brown” by Bob Dylan, share the same perspective on war with the movie: the loss of the futures of so many brave young men is not worth the thrill that Broyles speaks of with sadistic nostalgia. In addition, this same thrill that Broyles speaks of can also have long lasting effects on the soldiers, in the form of PTSD.