Anthony Doerr

In the incredible book, All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, the reader follows Paul Baumer, a young man who enlisted in the war. The reader goes on a journey and watches Paul and his comrades face the sheer brutality of war. In this novel, the author tries to convey the fact that war should not be glorified. Through bombardment, gunfire, and the gruesome images painted by the author, one can really understand what it would have been like to serve on the front lines in the Great War. The sheer brutality of the war can be portrayed through literary devices such as personification, similes, and metaphors.

At first, the book did not become very popular because it brought forward the darkest zone of humanity; it broached a topic that the world wanted to leave untouched, forgotten. But that is exactly what Wiesel did not want to let happen. One of the great successes of this hugely appreciated and critically appraised book was that it managed to bring out the stark reality of the concentration camps, the Nazis, the Polish and all the people in the world who kept silent on the face of such atrocities meted out to their fellow citizens. Wiesel once remarked that the opposite of good was not evil, but indifference. The horror of the Holocaust was not only the acts committed by a section of people but the fact that a

In the book All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque illustrates the picture of World War I to the reader. This book is the story of Paul Baumer, who with his classmates recruits in the German Army of World War I. This anti-war novel is an excellent book because through the experiences of Paul Baumer, I am able to actually feel like I'm in the war. It is a very useful piece of literature, which increases the readers' knowledge on how the war affected the people at the time setting. By reading this book, one is drawn into the actual events of the war, and can feel the abyss of death. I believe this piece is very well written. It is entirely simple, lacking any bias

The excerpt from All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr tells the story of a little girl who is blind. Doerr’s story is all about how this little blind girl, Marie-Laure. While the plot is the fact that the girl is blind and how she lives her life, the central idea is the fact that blind people can “see” just not the same as everyone else. Marie-Laure has the unique ability to “see” the world in her own special way. She describes the many places in the museum by the way they smell. The fact that she can recognize that “paleontology smells like rock dust” and how all the other places smell is her little way of getting around and “seeing” where she is (Line 4).

The First World War, or the ill-named War to End all Wars, was one that brought hell to Earth and mankind. For the first time in history, industry had appeared to make killing efficient. In static trenches, young men from around the world were killed by artillery kilometres away, poison gas, and disease. All nations in the conflict experienced the creation of a Lost Generation; men who lost their lives, limbs, or the ability to live a normal life. Paul Baumer, the young German protagonist of All Quiet on the Western Front becomes a member of this sad generation through his sad journey to the ultimate elixir, death. In Erich Remarque’s magnum opus All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer is faced by various emotionally jarring tests that serve as a catalyst for his inner decline and eventual elixir. Paul is faced with a fearsome French bombardment and offensive, a hand-to-hand killing of a Frenchman, Gerard Duval, and the death of his mentor and father figure, Stanislaus Katczinsky. For a young man just out of secondary school, in fact, any person in general, these events lead to a loss of hope and a lost future.

The novel All The Light We Cannot See, was written by Anthony Doerr. The novel was set during World War Two era and features two parallel stories with characters from opposite points of view. Doers tells the story of how both characters grow up through adversity and how they overcome their personal struggles. Marie-Laure is one of the main characters. She goes blind and has to learn how to navigate life alone after he father leaves her in the care of her Uncle Etienne. Werner, the second main character, overcame being an orphan and makes a life decision based upon his worst fear. Both characters, though living separate but parallel lives, share similar life experiences that are connected with numerous symbolic objects. Throughout the novel Doerr uses symbolic objects to create a connection for the reader between Werner and Marie-Laure. Doerr’s use of this method to bridge the characters together is done so with the use of several items such as the radio, shells and mollusks, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the Sea of Flames.

In the beginning of the bible, the world was dark. Then God created light in order to make it brighter. However, when the God is not here to protect the light, Night overtook. It is a time of darkness. It is also a place where people cannot see and help each other. Because of the faith in God, the darkness, hopeless of Night, and the period of Night, Elle Wiesel’s famous short novel is called “Night”, which is very significant for Elle Wiesel as well as the Jews during World War II.

The author uses these dramatic pictures to warn people of the dangers of indifference. In paragraph 5, the author give a clear picture of what life for the victims looked like, “ During the darkest of times, inside the ghettos and death camps…” It's hard to imagine that just doing nothing can cause such harm, but by not standing up to the aggressors, it's not preventing them from continuing the harm. Elie Wiesel describes the night of Kristallnacht in paragraph eight, “the first state sponsored pogrom, with hundreds of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues burned, thousands of people put in concentration camps…” Even though this was only the first state sponsored program, the effects were still devastating and that is what Wiesel is describing here through the imagery. It conveys the tone of being cautionary because the large effects were still present and could've been prevented if people who chose to turn their backs had not. Finally, paragraph six does an excellent job of demonstrating the cautionary ton through the use of imagery. Wiesel explains how Auschwitz prisoners thought that it was such a closely guarded secret and portrays that here, “If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene.” The author cautions other world leaders here without even directly saying so by talking about the US government as if they were completely naive.

It follows Paul Baumer and his friends, such as Stanislaus Katczinsky, or “Kat”, after they are drafted into the German Army in World War One. As the war carries on, the comrades slowly but surely question the purpose of war. The book received mixed reviews, some positive, some not. Those who disliked it the most were the now broken up National Socialist Party, or Nazis. The book was banned and burned by the Nazis due to it’s anti-war theme, which was quite the opposite of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s plan for Germany. However, the book became a bestseller, and a movie was produced in the 30s. It was given high praise by the Allies, and still sells to this day. It is an astonishing view of World War One, told through the eyes of a german soldier. The books makes one question why wars are fought, and if an enemy in a war, is really an enemy at all. It asks why governments throw lives at each other to attempt to resolve something. The book truly is a thought provoking read and is a book that many people could learn

Hope is what is given to all at one point in someone’s life where all seems to be lost. Throughout the book Night Elie Wiesel, the author, expresses his experience during the Holocaust. The book allows us to understand how a horrible tragedy causes hope to be lost as well as faith. Elie Wiesel reveals his theme through the use of dark and light. The light presented in his book expresses the good seen throughout this tragedy.

World War II is an important key point in history that addresses to young adolescents. The novel, T4 is based on a true story, in which the author, Ann Clare LeZotte is portraying a novel that is based on the theme of survival. It appears to be that the author’s argument in writing this novel is to simply maintain awareness of the past. Generally speaking, a story about survival is a difficult genre for young readers, “The majority of war stories for children are about World War II and the Holocaust.” (Huck 482) The reason war stories are mainly about World War II and the Holocaust is because it was the most recent, largest, and horrifying war during the twentieth century in Europe. Our textbook also states that these historical novels help children experience the past. Meaning, that it is important for a child to learn about the past including all the wars, conflicts, sufferings, and great happiness that had occurred so they can apply that to the present and to the future.

Although, at the same time German SS guards still treat the workers poorly having physically and mentally worked to death. It is to show how the Germans atrociously plan their ideas to exterminate the Jews simply because they are viewed as animals. By using light and dark atmospheres, Wiesel could successfully let the reader understand his overall message.

“Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other.” - Eric Burdon. The theme of good versus evil can be applied to almost every novel but in different aspects. In the novel, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, plays a good and evil side at the same time. This book is in the time period of WWII in Paris, France following a blind girl and an intellectual boy. The girl, Marie-Laure, is our good side of the story, for instance, always wanting to help her father with what she can, listening and knowing what the right thing to do is, and taking action when needed, adding to her blindness to not let that stop her. The German boy we follow, Werner, he is wanting to help others as well, but not for the right reasons, he lets the evil, in this case, the Nazis, take control of him and use him for his brain.

Moreover, All the Light We Cannot See began betwixt the notorious Nazi Party’s reign in Europe. Going back and forth between time periods, settings, and characters, the book, in the end, composes a mellifluous symphony of parallels that all eventually connect. Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a legally blind girl who continually viewed the glass as half-full, was accompanied by her father, Daniel LeBlanc, throughout the preceding portion of her pilgrimage to refuge during WWII. By fleeing unavoidable harm and siege in Paris, Marie-Laure and her father walked, by foot, to the island city of Saint Malo, France. The pair brought along a sacred, irreplaceable stone: the Sea of Flames from the Museum of Natural History in Paris, where Marie-Laure’s father previously worked. Finally reaching

As long as there has been war, those involved have managed to get their story out. This can be a method of coping with choices made or a way to deal with atrocities that have been witnessed. It can also be a means of telling the story of war for those that may have a keen interest in it. Regardless of the reason, a few themes have been a reoccurrence throughout. In ‘A Long Way Gone,’ ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ and ‘Novel without a Name,’ three narrators take the readers through their memories of war and destruction ending in survival and revelation. The common revelation of these stories is one of regret. Each of these books begins with the main character as an innocent, patriotic soldier or civilian and ends in either the loss of innocence and regret of choices only to be compensated with as a dire warning to those that may read it. These books are in fact antiwar stories meant not to detest patriotism or pride for one’s country or way of life, but to detest the conditions that lead to one being so simpleminded to kill another for it. The firebombing of Dresden, the mass execution of innocent civilians in Sierra Leone and a generation of people lost to the gruesome and outlandish way of life of communism and Marxism should be enough to convince anyone. These stories serve as another perspective for the not-so-easily convinced.