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All Quiet On The Western Front Analysis

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War is seen as horrific at any point of history as it exhibits unjust death and destruction. Most exclusively shown by World War I and its new and improved technologies and powerful governmental drives lead to millions of lives not only lost but also destroyed. Rich Maria Remarque expresses this view of war through his renowned novel “All Quiet on the Western Front”, a story about a group of soldiers who fought in this horrific war. War forces a soldier to find comfort in unlikely places, such as the earth, emphasizes meaning but takes away the quality of life, as shown through the symbol of boots, and shows how war takes away passion and replaces it with a forced drive, shown through the horses. These symbols are all expressed within Remarque's story.

Earth, which symbolizes comfort, helps to develop Remarque’s theme that soldiers must find comfort in the things around them rather than the people around them. This is because war has taken those away who give this sense of comfort. Paul explains that “to no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier...when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother” (55). The earth holds a comforting feeling, the same that one would feel with a mother or significant other. These men have comradeship, but they don’t have the physical comfort of a loving relationship. The earth is there to provide that for the soldiers, making it more

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