preview

Dark Side Of War

Decent Essays

In many war novels you can get a clear depiction of what the individual (s) have gone through and what there families have gone through. Some authors depict war as this honorable and critical part of a man’s life and others show the true nature of war and how it changes someone in a terrible, dark way. Rebecca West depicts war differently than Erich Maria Remarque and Wilfred Owen. Remarque writes about the dark side of war and how it has a psychological affect on a human and how you in some ways are not “curable”. West develops a character that toward the end of the novel seems cured and go back into war even though he suffered a lot of trauma during the war. Wilfred Owen wrote a poem about the innocence of war and how we all go into war …show more content…

In the novel All Quite on the Western Front the main character Paul Baymer is a young man who joined the army voluntarily and quickly realized the harsh reality of war and how his perception of war changed. He believed that fighting in the war was honorable but that quickly changed to violence and constant fear when “the first death we saw shattered this belief.” (Remarque, pg. 12). Throughout the novel Paul has to change his persona and become more animalistic in order to survive and protect himself. The novel gives the reader a sense of what goes on mentally in the war and how this affects a person when they return home from …show more content…

Her book The Return of the Soldier doesn’t describe the emotional and physical toll on a soldier like Remarque, West mainly focuses on the soldier being “cured” and societal order. The two main characters, Jenny and Kitty mainly focus on fixing Chris rather than helping him deal with his war trauma. They claim at the end of the book that “He’s cured!” she whispered slowly. “He’s Cured!” (West, pg. 90). When the two main characters figure out Chris is cured they “believe” he is ready for battle again and he is sent off to war. The author mentions some kind of shell shock and trauma that causes amnesia but doesn’t go into great detail like Remarque. The poem Arms and The Boy written by Wilfred Owen speaks to the idea of innocence and an amateurish soldier (a young boy). They’re some kind of violence mentioned in this poem when speaking about the “hunger of blood;” (Owen, Line 2). This poem touches upon the idea that people go into war innocent and ordinary and come out violent and animalistic. In line 9 and 10-the Owen’s is saying that this boy holding the weapons is innocent and clean of violence, “There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple; And God will grow no talons at his heels, Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.” (Owen, Line

Get Access