Erich Maria Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front' and Tim O'Brien's 'The Man I Killed': A Thematic Analysis of Short Stories

To be engaged in war is to be engaged in an armed conflict. Death is an all too ordinary product of war. It is an unsolicited reward for many soldiers that are fighting for their country’s own fictitious freedom. For some of these men, the battlefield is a glimpse into hell, and for others, it is a means to heaven. Many people worry about what happens during war and what will become of their loved ones while they’re fighting, but few realize what happens to those soldiers once they come home. The short stories "Soldier's Home” by Ernest Hemingway and "Speaking of Courage” by Tim O'Brien explore the thematic after effects of war and how it impacts a young person's life. Young people who

Generals Die in Bed certainly demonstrates that war is futile and the soldiers suffer both emotionally and physically. Charles Yale Harrison presents a distressing account of the soldiers fighting in the Western front, constantly suffering and eventually abandoning hope for an end to the horrors that they experience daily. The ‘boys’ who went to war became ‘sunk in misery’. We view the war from the perspective of a young soldier who remains nameless. The narrator’s experience displays the futility and horror of war and the despair the soldiers suffered. There is no glory in

The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.

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.

The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.

was not the truth. This book showed the harsh reality of war that most people

Imagine being suddenly drafted to war, not prepared for the death and horror. Young, confused, scared, naïve. During the Vietnam War, many young men were forced to face a war that changed them, and not necessarily for the better. Many of the men who went to war experienced terrors that changed them in a way that affected their lives after, as shown by countless war stories and poems. Norman Bowker, from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (1990), is a perfect example of the hard-bitten war veteran archetype. Fighting in the Vietnam War and feeling as if he had a part in his friend’s death (Kiowa) caused him so much guilt and pain that he ended up hanging himself after endlessly driving around a lake when returning home. Similarly, Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem, “The Dead at Quang Tri”, emphasizes the ghosts that haunt soldiers during and after war. Overall, the haunting memories that characters deal with in war stories, like O’Brien and Komunyakaa’s, display the long lasting effects of death and war on the minds of soldiers.

Since the beginning of time, humans have sought after power and control. It is human instinct to desire to be the undisputed champion, but when does it become a problem? Warfare has been practiced throughout civilization as a way to justify power. Though the orders come directly from one man, thousands of men and women pay the ultimate sacrifice. In Randall Jerrell’s “The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner”, Jarrell is commenting on the brutality of warfare. Not only does Jarrell address the tragedies of war, he also blames politics, war leaders, and the soldier’s acknowledgement of his duties. (Hill 6) With only five lines of text, his poems allows the reader to understand what a soldier can go through. With the use of Jerrell’s poem, The Vietnam War, and Brian Turner’s “Ameriki Jundee”, the truth of combat will be revealed.

Hundreds of bodies littered the ground. Sounds of explosions and endless gunfire filled the air. Soldiers, with their uniforms splashed in crimson, fought viciously and ruthlessly. Their main objective, which was to win the battle, took a backseat to their newfound desperation to stay alive. After all, war is not a game, especially one such as the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and left its survivors haunted by a multitude of atrocious events. Terry Erickson’s father and George Robinson, who were two fictional characters from the short stories “Stop the Sun” and “Dear America”, respectively, were veterans of the Vietnam War. The differences and similarities between Terry’s father and George Robinson are striking, and they merit rigorous scrutiny.

Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the greatest war novels of all time. It is a story, not of Germans, but of men, who even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war. The entire purpose of this novel is to illustrate the vivid horror and raw nature of war and to change the popular belief that war has an idealistic and romantic character.  The story centers on Paul Baümer, who enlists in the German army with glowing enthusiasm.  In the course of war, though, he is consumed by it and in the end is "weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope"  (Remarque page #).

The Great War is much like the great irony. Nationalistic ideals has consumed the humanity of individuals and blinded them from the truth. Governments used propagandas, and more to persuade young and naïve soldiers to enlist in the war. In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque, illustrates the life of a soldier, Paul. He and his fellow comrades have to face the horrors of the war. For the soldiers that survive, they are not only physically destroyed but mentally as well. War World One is not justifiable because of the damages, and losses of lives it has created. The war ended approximately 90 years ago. Yet, still in today’s society, people are still going to war. The Great War has killed numerous lives, and put many at stake.

World War I differed from previous wars in the essence that technological sophistication of weaponry such as artillery, poison gas and machine-guns created a vehement war with a massive number of casualties. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, German World War I veteran Erich Maria Remarque delineates the experiences that German soldiers face on the restless front, and the toll that the physical conditions and the mental stress take on the deterioration of the youth of each soldier battling on the terrain. Remarque’s war novel strays away from the romantic and glorifying thought of war in order to emphasize the hardships war forced upon the men who fought for their country. The weapons that are in the hands of the men on the front lines become their livelihood, and the terrain of the battle are the only things separating a common man and a man marked by the scars of war. At some point, war no longer becomes a fight between enemies from two different countries, it becomes a battle between one’s self and the urge to resist barbaric and animalistic acts when in dire situations.

On January 29, 1929, just 10 years, 2 months, 18 days after the Great War, All Quiet on the Western Front, was published and it’s author was of a scarred man by the name of Erich Maria Remarque, who served in the German army during the first World War. The bloodied, bombed, and distraught landscape painted by Remarque was one only a veteran of conflict can picture because of his experiences as a plain and insignificant infantryman wrought by the plague of the Second Horseman, the Red Horseman of the Apocalypse. The intent of the novel was very much akin to being a metaphorical morphine to Remarque as a way to cope with the forever echoing screams and endless gun shots of No Man’s Land but pursues the man to his home. There a stark certainty that some, if not most of Remarque’s experiences find their way into the protagonist, Paul Bäumer.

In an attempt to take away some of the guilt he has placed upon himself from the Vietnam War, O’Brien tells his tales –in the fictional book The Things They Carried- of the many challenges he faced as a soldier. In On the Rainy River, through the illusions on the banks of the river he sees his past, present and future each memory reveals a part of him. O’Brien’s thoughtful story about death -shown in The Man I Killed- illustrates that the jungles of Vietnam blur boundaries between hallucinations and actuality. The killing of soldiers both American and Vietnamese feed into the disillusions and sensations built up from war, but soldiers use an “anesthetic” to shelter themselves from everything that goes on.

In this essay, I will discuss how Tim O’Brien’s works “The Things They Carried” and “If I Die in a Combat Zone” reveal the individual human stories that are lost in war. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien reveals the war stories of Alpha Company and shows how human each soldier is. In “If I Die in a Combat Zone” O’Brien tells his story with clarity, little of the dreamlike quality of “Things They Carried” is in this earlier work, which uses more blunt language that doesn’t hold back. In “If I Die” O’Brien reveals his own personal journey through war and what he experienced. O’Brien’s works prove a point that men, humans fight wars, not ideas. Phil Klay’s novel “Redeployment” is another novel that attempts to humanize soldiers in war. “Redeployment” is an anthology series, each chapter attempts to let us in the head of a new character – set in Afghanistan or in the United States – that is struggling with the current troubles of war. With the help of Phil Klay’s novel I will show how O’Brien’s works illustrate and highlight each story that make a war.