Relatable And Emotional Senses

In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, author Erich Maria Remarque adopts an exemplary use of diction and emotion to describe a critical moment in the life of the protagonist, Paul Bäumer, as he ends the life of the French soldier Gérard Duval. On a “patrol… sent out to discover just how strongly the enemy position is manned” (209), Paul dives into a shell hole for refuge from the lead storm above. Trapped, an alarmed Paul is forced to stay in the hole for an extended period of time as “minute after minute trickles away” (217), all the while fearfully attempting to escape. When the enemy troops begin to attack, Paul plans what he might do in advance in the event of one of them falling in the hole and finding him. He ultimately decides to pull his knife out as self-defense. When an enemy soldier stumbles and falls on top of him, without thinking and merely responding to survival instincts, Paul stabs the soldier. In that dire scene, Remarque depicts the entire perspective of war as it evolves for both the reader and the young Paul Bäumer. It is only until Paul (who represents the entirety of the armies) discovers what he has truly done as he kills and witnesses Gérard Duval’s life slowly drain from the pool of red on his chest, realizing that everybody is a human, much like himself.

In the book All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque uses literary devices such as metaphors, similes, and imagery to help the reader have a better understanding of what he went through in the war. On page 70 the recruits are getting attacked by bombs and deadly gas. When Paul is talking about being bombed and having to use gas masks to breath he says “I climb out over the edge of the shell-hole. In the dirty twilight lies a leg torn clean off; the boot is quite whole,”(Remarque 70). This piece of text is an example of imagery because Remarque describes a very detailed picture of how graphic and traumatizing it was to be in the war. It is very disturbing to look around and see bloody body parts everywhere, but Remarque does a good

While I read this book, I felt scared, sad, and happy at times. Mix of emotions because this book isn’t easy to swallow, those soldiers were going through rough times. Some of these soldiers lost hope in life, a lot of them cried, and suffered. My favorite passage was “The Artillery at Hazel Grove” because it offered them hope in winning due to powerful equipment.

In All Quiet on the Western Front Paul witness all the horrors of war. He sees death crawling towards the wounded soldiers in the wood, hospital, and on the front. When a soldier was wounded it killed them, they lost a limb or they got sent back to the front. Another awful part of war is soldiers would get shot and stranded out in the woods. They would yell for help, but were never found. Mental wounds were another injury of war. Paul would see people go insane on the front and some soldiers got shellshock. The worst part of the war for Paul was watching all of his comrades die, and his connection with the ones he loved at home fade away. The horrors of war is clearly represented in both Battle Scars and All Quiet on the Western Front with physical wounds, mental wounds, and loss of loved ones.

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.

He explores the grim reality the soldiers' faced on a daily basis and demonstrates the tremendous toll the war took on the mental and physical condition of the soldiers. The author, Erich Remarque depicts the brutality of the front and how the war brainwashes many people into thinking that their opponents are evil. The impulse of Paul killing his opponent shows the survival and fear of death. It is not against the men that they fling their bombs, but it is the idea of them being killed in an instance and ending their lives at a very young age. Out of 4 stars I would rate this novel a 4 out of 4 because of its description of how the war changed a nation and its people. All Quiet On The Western Front paints a very vivid picture of the realities of WW1 and the nature of warfare experienced by the soldiers' at the front. The impact of the war of those at the front was undoubtedly life altering for the few who were lucky to survive, the consequences of which would be witnessed in civilian life for generations to come until the process repeated

In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul experiences the brutality of war. He uses similes and personification to explain the pain he saw and the pain he experienced. In this paragraph, I will go over some ways how Paul describes his experiences. When Paul is at the front line, he says “like a big, soft jellyfish, it floats into our shell-hole and lulls there obscenely”. Paul is talking about the poisonous gas that the French are trying to kill them with when Paul is hiding. Luckily he had his gas mask on but he can feel the gas surround him in the shell-hole. Paul hates war at first, but after years there, he became used to it and he doesn't

Many people say that war is worse than Hell because innocent people die in it. In Beah’s life, this is most definitely true. Throughout the war, Beah goes through many hardships and witnesses the deaths of innocent loved ones, and Beah’s writing reflects how he felt during these times. Beah uses rhetorical strategies like diction, imagery, and detail choice to convey the emotional process he had to undergo in order to survive.

The horrors of war were depicted by the constant threats to the characters lives, the brutal conditions of the bad weather, hunger and combat. Soldiers had to battle the enemy along with nature. Soldiers would become stressed, paranoid and start losing their personalities. As Captain Miller says, “I just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel.” This quote shows the mental toll on these soldiers.

. . . Like I was losing myself, everything spilling out” (O’Brien 202). Provided with only laconic, expository definitions, an audience cannot truly feel the pains of war. O’Brien utilizes descriptions which evoke all the senses and submerge the audience in the unique and powerful sensations of war. Witnessing war’s pains through the familiar tactile crunch of an ornament or the splash of liquid spilling, the audience can immediately understand the inconceivable pressure placed on the soldier’s injured body. O’Brien continues, “All I could do was scream. . . . I tightened up and squeezed. . . . then I slipped under for a while” (203). His abrupt syntax and terse diction conveys a quickness to these events. Not bothering with extraneous adornment, his raw images transport the audience to the urgency of the moment and the severity of the pain. Now supplied with an eyewitness’s perspective of war’s injuries, the audience can begin to recognize the significance of the suffering. O’Brien tells his audience, “Tinny sounds get heightened and distorted. . . . There was rifle fire somewhere off to my right, and people yelling, except none of it seemed real anymore. I smelled myself dying” (203). In the same frame, O’Brien paints the rumbling chaos of the big war juxtaposed with the slow death of the small individual. His description emphasizes the purposeless discord and confusion of war and seeks to condemn its disorder. He argues that war’s lack of

In war, both violence and fear revokes a soldier’s humanity. These elements of war cause a person to shut down their emotional instincts, which causes the soldiers to mature rapidly by taking innocence along with joy and happiness in life. Through the experiences that the soldiers encounter, their humanity is compromised. Thus, as war strips soldiers of their innocence, they start to become disconnected from themselves and others. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque illustrates the negative effects war has on a soldier’s humanity, through his use of Paul’s books and the potato pancakes by revealing the soldiers loss of emotion that causes them to become detached from society. Through these symbols they deepen the theme by visually depicting war’s impact on Paul. Paul’s books helps the theme by depicting how the war locked his heart to old values by taking his innocence. Likewise the potato pancakes reveal Paul’s emotional state damaged by the war with his lack of happiness and gratitude.

In Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front the protagonist, Paul Bäumer, along with five other German soldiers, tell their story of World War One and the physical, mental, and spiritual anguish that it caused them. Paul is a German soldier, fighting in the trenches, who is a nice, caring, and sympathetic man. However, the brutality of the war forces him to become emotionally detached, and as the story progresses, his outlook on life becomes grim and bleak. Through the use of Kenmerich's boots, nature, and women in the novel, it is seen that the author uses symbols to help the reader understand different aspects of war, as seen through the eyes of the characters.

While the disconnection allows the soldier to adapt to the brutal war environment, it inhibits them from re-entering society. When he takes his leave, he is unable to feel comfortable at home. Even if Paul had survived the war physically, he most likely would not have integrated back into society suitably. The emotional disconnection inhibits soldiers from mourning their fallen friends and comrades. However, Paul was somewhat less than able to completely detach himself from his feelings, and there are several moments in the when he feels himself pulled down by emotion. These rush of feelings indicate the magnitude to which war has automated Paul to cut himself off from feeling, as when he says, with unbridled understatement, “Parting from my friend Albert Kropp was very hard. But a man gets used to that sort of thing in the army (p. 269) .”

The reader will get an increasingly detailed image of how the soldiers emotionally respond to the happenings throughout the war due to this composition.

Several images continue to linger in my mind from the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. The scene when the men are severely disturbed, specifically Detering, by the wounded horses affects me in a personal and emotional way. While reading this scene, I felt my body quiver from the thought of seeing and hearing this devastating moment. I related to Detering on wanting and needing to put these poor, suffering creatures out of their misery. This scene produced this everlasting image in my mind because horses are my favorite animal. When I am around horses, my mood immediately changes and I am filled with utter happiness. Another image that perpetuates my thoughts is when the narrator Paul takes cover during a bombardment behind a coffin in