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All Quiet On The Western Front Remarque Analysis

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The author of The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, and the author of All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, both use literary devices and overlying theme to show that war changes people. For example, Tim O’Brien has used setting as a great metaphor of a person forever orbiting a vortex caused by the Vietnam War. The theme is also quite prevalent in All Quiet On The Western Front, particularly when Paul goes on leave to his hometown and experiences a sort of “culture shock” because of his experiences in World War I . Each author displays this change of character in their own unique styles.
Tim O’Brien discusses the character Norman Bowker who was inevitably changed by Vietnam. Bowker is a man who almost won the Silver Star for …show more content…

The horrors of combat have forever changed Paul . This sentence displays some of the changes that Paul went through, “The terror of the front sinks deep down when we turn our backs upon.”(AQ,140) In this sentence, Remarque is portraying the feeling of being on the front of the war as a stone sinking deep down into your body, a weight that you are always carrying around, never realizing the full implications of what it has done to you. This sentence also shows that as long as they never think about what they have done, they would never have to face the trauma that they have been exposed to in World War I. As shown even more in this quote, “Terror can be endured as long as a man simply ducks, but it falls if a man thinks about it”(Remarque, 138) While Paul is on leave, as he is crossing the street a trolley goes by and makes a screeching sound that replicates the sound of a bomb, and for a couple seconds he thinks he is back on the front of World War I and breaks into cold sweats because he fears for his life. The author uses that section to create tension in the book and fully display his point of how war changes peoples’ reactions to everyday encounters as well as their natural instincts of survival. Remarque also describes a scene when Paul is home on leave. He goes into his bedroom and tries to read the books which he used to enjoy so much; but now he found that he couldn’t, simply because they no longer held his attention after going to war. Paul actually says, “I ought never to have come on leave”(Remarque, 185). The war has changed him so much in that he is no longer held by books that he had once loved. The change in Paul’s character is displayed by this and that a simple braking noise from a trolley makes him duck and search for cover. Erich Maria Remarque shows with these examples that the war

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