Comparing All Quiet On The Western Front, The Hollow Men, And In The Field

In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front Erich M. Remarque realistically describes the brutalities of war through the protagonist Paul Baumer. Adults encourage the young men to become soldiers since they are the “Iron Youth”(18) as told by their society. The war turns out to be a hellish world where the young men experience horrors such as witnessing the innocent suffer, and taking the lives from men on the other side of the battlefield. As the novel draws to a close, Paul is seen alone, losing his family of comrades to death; including his best friend Kat, who he found to be like a father. War has broken him down to the point that he slowly begins to find death more appealing. Erich’s ability to use forlorn

The trauma that Paul and his comrades are exposed to would have most likely rendered them unable to fight had they not become numb to it due to its relentless recurrence in their lives. Paul explains the journey that they embarked on, from young students entranced by the war’s offers of glory to hardened soldiers following orders without question: “We were still crammed full of vague ideas which gave to life, and to the war also an ideal and almost romantic character. We were trained in the army for ten weeks and in this time more profoundly influenced than by ten years at school... At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent...” (21-22). As he shows the men’s shock at this new brutality fade to apathy, Remarque shuns the image of war as exciting and glamorous.

What is war? Is war a place to kill? Or is it a place where something more than just killing happens? War, as defined by the Merriam Webster is “a state or period of usually open and declared fighting between states or nations.” War, can also be viewed with romantic ideals where heroes and legends are born. Even the most intelligent of us hold some rather naïve notions of war. Upon reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, intelligent readers have been divested of any romantic notions regarding war they may have harboured.

Remarque accomplishes this goal by having a german soldier named Paul Bäumer narrate the story of his life during his time in the war. During his normal life before the war, Paul wrote poetry and considered himself a happy guy; but, as we know, war is an aberration. When Paul and his comrades first joined the war, he wrote, “we became soldiers with eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us” (Remarque 22). During war, only facts were important to him and he had no time to mess with pleasantries like poetry, and this turned him into a cynical person. By the time Paul had been in the war for a long while, he was a seasoned veteran who had seen some terrible things happen on the battleground. When he gets 17 days leave and visits his home, some of the effects of PTSD (post

In Chapter 5 of “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul Baumer and his comrades ponder the idea of life after the war, specifically its effect on their mental well-being and future back home. During their conversation, Baumer mentions to the other soldiers that “The war has ruined us for everything,” (Remarque 87). Because the war is taking a lasting toll on the soldiers’ lives and their time to pursue other interests, it seems as though their grasp on life is slowly slipping through their fingers. In addition, the violent occurrences that the men go through day in and day out are inked in their minds, forever tormenting them on a daily basis. Prior to Baumer’s remark, Albert Kropp points out understandingly that “Two

Vast quantities of military personnel were required to fuel the Great War, however not all of them walked home fine. Many soldiers suffered consequences that lead them to experience the loss of humanity. Throughout the war the soldiers must engage in actions that demoralized humanitarian values and leaves the soldiers with guilt both during and after the war. The demoralization of humanitarian values is present when Paul hiding from enemy fire in a shell hole when a French soldier tumbles onto his body. “I do not think at all, I make no decision-I strike madly at home, and feel only how the body suddenly convulses, then becomes limp, and collapses. [...] The man gurgles. It sounds to me as though he bellows, every gasping breath is like a cry, a thunder-but it is not only my heart pounding. I want to stop his mouth, stab him again, stuff it with

Erich Maria Remarque did a phenomenal job of evoking imagery in his novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front.” His alluring use of adjectives and adverbs made his words jump off the page. The sweeping images of the dead and wounded, linger in my mind. However, sight is not the only sense that his writing induces. Whilst reading the passages that describe the death, destruction, and fighting, one can almost feel, and smell, as if they lived the very moment. The fact that Remarque describes how the soldiers slowly become disillusioned with the war, makes these images more impactful for me. He explains that the soldiers know that the war was not their fault, and the men they are killing are not actually the real enemy; they are just ordinary

A quote that makes one think about the terrible things soldiers see at war would be “If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud (Owen 408).” Owen’s story really goes into a horrific detail of what a solider saw at war, one can see why a person would never be the same. War is full of blood and dead bodies. Soldiers come home with PTSD after seeing such horrific things. In Owen’s story he even describes how someone looked dying.

War is defined as “a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country” in the English Oxford Dictionary. In society, most of us will perceive the word “war” itself as having qualities of violence, clash, casualties and even negative in a sense. Historically, it originates from the late Old English as werre, Old French as guerrer and old High German as werra. Contrary to our modern understanding, cognates describe the word’s original sense was “to bring into confusion.”

War is essentially conflict. In the book, The Art of War, it shows that almost anything can be perceived as a war and by understanding your enemy, you can even approach victory without a lot of battle. Many other strategies throughout the book can also be applied to many things in our current life. To begin with, my grades can be considered as some type of war. The enemy would be the bad grades and the assignments and tests would be like the battles.

War means different things to many people. To some, war is a state of armed conflict between different nation groups within a nation or state. To others, like Thomas Mann “War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. To me, war is a fact of life, a survival of the fittest if you will.

War is a state of armed conflict between societies. It is generally characterized by extreme aggression, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces.

War is people (usually men) fighting, usually for a bit of territory or desired resource. One party wants something another party has. The leader of the first party will use whatever he can to

War is an armed conflict between societies which high rates of mortality and destruction. According to Šmihula D. (2013) war is part of the human nature that spans from our ancestors.

War is what happens when multiple parties do not agree on a common objective or when opposing parties want to create conflict between each other. In war, I feel like the bad has always and will always outweigh the good. People die, get injured, or come back home mentally unstable; sometimes they do not even have a home to come back to. As long as I can remember, there has been war. I would hear people talking about war, going to war, and watching videos on the television about war. War is everywhere. Inner war, war between family members, war between friends, war between states, as well as war between countries. Regardless, war is everywhere; and it affects everything and everyone in its path of destruction. Although some things may be gained from war, the losses are always greater. Therefore based on different viewpoints from material covered in class and my knowledge of war, my feelings about the war have been reinforced.