Long Essay #1 In the two books we read in class, All Quiet on the Western Front and Night we see that the two world wars of the twentieth century produced unprecedented destruction to human life. We see this because in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, he says that after witnessing bodies getting blown up, people getting shot, things burning down and loud noises every day, he was forced to realize that he no longer belonged to the society that he came from. He realized that he now belonged to the world of war and that even if he tried to go back to his home, there would be nothing left for him to go back to. Throughout the books he makes references that his family becomes the people he was fighting with, even the people he was fighting against because they were the only ones who understood what he was going through (Remarque, 1929). He and his family no longer kept in contact and so he was basically in the world alone with no practically no loved one to lean on. The same goes for the Ellie Wiesel’s Night. Ellie gets taken away from his family and forcibly put into a concentration camp in which he never knew existed. The camp life was harsh and brutal. He saw sons killing their fathers for food and people dying every day simply for the lack of water. He was forced to do hard work and take long journey’s in which had the intention of killing him and his counter parts because they were Jewish. He no longer spoke to his mother or sister and his father had just died.
The Courage and Strength in All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
First, the Front represents the loss of individuality, loss of emotion, and modernism. For example, in All Quiet on the Western Front, it states, “To me the Front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself”(55). This quote demonstrates the loss of emotion, the loss of individuality and modernism. Although Paul is not near the center of the whirlpool, he still feels himself being sucked inside slowly. The whirlpool is the front because the whirlpool tries to suck in everything that's in its way, just like how the Front is dangerous for everyone. The whirlpool is slowly sucking Paul in, which means that his emotions
This passage is a wonderful example of an opening description of setting. It fits into the structure of the novel by giving the audience a first look at the setting, using imagery and descriptive language to create a picture in the reader’s mind. The author begins using a comparison between hygienic modern bathrooms and the soldiers’ open view. He later uses personification when he writes, “The wind plays with our hair; it plays with our words and thoughts,” (Remarque 9). His calm and carefree diction adds to the peaceful mood.
“We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial, I believe we are lost” (Remarque 123). World War I is a tragic event that occurred in 1914 to 1918. Paul Baumer and the rest of the soldiers in the novel of “All Quiet in the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque are lost; they are broken from the fist World War, they don’t know anything aside from War, and they have lost their innocence during the years of maturation. When the young men heard about the War, they were excited, and full of life, they thought they were going on an adventure.
All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque is a narrative describing World War I from a German soldier 's perspective. The story is narrated by Paul Baümer and predominantly revolves around the experiences of him and his comrades Kemmerich, Katczinsky, Kropp, Müller, and Leer. The novel begins with Paul Baümer and his friends in a cheerful mood as extra rations are being allocated to them due to the missing soldiers. During this event, Baümer introduces and describes the various personalities of his friends and his connection to them. Eventually, Baümer reflects back to the time how he and his friends had been coaxed into joining the war by their, patriotic school teacher, Kantorek only to later find out that they 've been lied to and the war isn 't even comparable to of what they 've been told. Instead, Paul Baümer and his school friends find themselves entrenched in the middle of bloody and what appears to be a pointless war.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a fictional war novel written by Erich Maria Remarque which follows the main character Paul Baumer, a German solider in World War I. Paul, the nineteen year old protagonist, narrates the novel as he and his classmates fight on the German and French front. The young men volunteer to join the German army after being persuaded by the nationalist words of their teacher, Kantorek. After only fighting for two weeks, eighty men remain in the company of the once one hundred and fifty men. Paul, Kropp, and Muller then go to visit Kemmerich, a friend of theirs from school, in the hospital. He was wounded in combat resulting in the amputating of his leg. Seeing that Kemmerich is going to die and no longer needs the new boots that he has, Muller asks to have them but Kemmerich refuses. When Paul later goes back to the hospital, Kemmerich dies and Paul takes his boots to Muller.
An ancient Chinese proverb states “One cannot know peace without knowing war” (Herzberg). In a time where all that plagues many nations was war, it was inevitable that a time of peace needed to follow or at least the sober idea of it. The proverb was created to validate wars and later turned into a way to approach life’s troubles. Being within an individual or on a global scale, war and peace are connected. They exist coherently but never together; they are the cause and effects of each other. One follows the other yet both are needed in order to understand the other one. This relationship between war and peace is developed in the Erich Maria Remarque's novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. While the first major world war is the background
It’s no surprise that soldiers will more-than-likely never come home the same. Those who have not served do not often think of the torment and negative consequences that the soldiers who make it out of war face. Erich Remarque was someone who was able to take the torment that he faced after his experience in World War I and shed light on the brutality of war. Remarque was able to illustrate the psychological problems that was experienced by men in battle with his best-selling novel All Quiet on the Western Front (Hunt). The symbolism used in the classic anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front is significant not only for showing citizens the negative attributes of war, but also the mental, physical, and emotional impact that the vicious war had on the soldiers.
In war, both violence and fear revokes a soldier’s humanity. These elements of war cause a person to shut down their emotional instincts, which causes the soldiers to mature rapidly by taking innocence along with joy and happiness in life. Through the experiences that the soldiers encounter, their humanity is compromised. Thus, as war strips soldiers of their innocence, they start to become disconnected from themselves and others. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque illustrates the negative effects war has on a soldier’s humanity, through his use of Paul’s books and the potato pancakes by revealing the soldiers loss of emotion that causes them to become detached from society. Through these symbols they deepen the theme by visually depicting war’s impact on Paul. Paul’s books helps the theme by depicting how the war locked his heart to old values by taking his innocence. Likewise the potato pancakes reveal Paul’s emotional state damaged by the war with his lack of happiness and gratitude.
There is no doubt that when war occurs, every single human being is affected by it even if it is just a little. In the novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front” written by Erich Maria Remarque, a group of teenage men, who also appear to by classmates, are in the German army of World War I because they have chosen to leave their adolescence at home and school for grown up work at the army. Throughout this fictional novel, they face many challenges that result in them not seeing each other ever again because of death. War affects individuals by leaving behind necessities such as education or jobs, not being able to watch over others such as their health, and injuries that soldiers receive while they are at war.
Iron - In the book we hear the term "The Iron Youth" used to describe Paul 's generation. "The Iron Youth" is an ideal of a strong Fatherland-lovin ' group of young soldiers who enlist and fight in the war as a way of showing pride for Germany and its history. The author and characters in the book tear this ideal apart, feeling it to be useless and empty when compared with the realities of war. These young soldiers are not made of "iron," but of flesh and blood. The term "iron" would suggest they are protected emotionally and physically against all weapons of war, but this book proves to us that that is completely false. Lives melt away in the arms of this violent war.
War is always the worst tragedy of mankind in the world. We, as human beings, were experienced two most dolorous wars that were ever happened in our history: World War I and World War II. A young generation actually does not know how much hardship the predecessors, who joined and passed through the wars, undergo. We were taught about just how many people died in the wars, how much damage two participations in the wars suffered or just the general information about the wars. We absolutely do not know about the details, and that’s why we also do not know what the grief-stricken feeling of people joining in the wars really is. But we can somewhat understand that feeling through war novels, which describe the truthfulness of the soldiers’ lives, thoughts, feelings and experiences. All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, which takes World War I as background, is the great war novel which talks about the German soldiers ' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the hopeless of these soldiers about the “future” – the time the war would have ended.
He was alone. There were so many dead people lying on the ground, and an awful smell of cigar smoke, gunpowder, and dirt that filled the air. There was no nationalism; all Paul wanted was survival. World War I was supposed to be about nationalism and the propaganda forced upon the soldiers to feel superiority over other countries, but Paul helps to prove otherwise, as his story tells what is was like to be at the front, and how tough it was to be a soldier. “All Quiet on the Western Front” portrays war as it was actually experienced, replacing the romantic picture of glory and heroism with an unromantic vision of fear and a meaninglessness feeling. “All Quiet on the Western Front” gives the impression that it is an antiwar novel, due to the deterioration of the war as life becomes meaningless and how brutal Paul and his fellow soldiers’ lives were as the novel went along as there is no nationalism to catalyze their fighting.
Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor who wrote a firsthand account of his experiences – Night. He was from Sighet. Although, given the opportunity to flee to Palestine, most of the Jews who were in Sighet did not believe that the Nazis would be able to get to them before World War II would come to an end (Wiesel 8). Wiesel and his family – his mother, his father and three sisters – were evacuated from their home in 1944 – near the end of World War II. Night by Elie Wiesel demonstrates that tragedy does not disappear from a person’s memory; instead, it shapes that person to be more empathetic, aware of the importance of hope and the need for a purpose in life.
Eliezer Wiesel (Elie) is a famous Jewish author who has written a total of fifty-seven books, one being Night where he talks about him and his family being taken away from their home in 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he keeps horrific memories of the death of his family and the death of his own innocence as a young boy. Although Night is a very informational read, it’s also heart-wrenching as well and can bring you into tears as you image yourself walking through this terrifying experience. To readers, it is obvious that Elie is no longer considered a boy witnessing what he has seen in the holocaust. World War II has taken the innocence from a Jewish child through his experience