The Murder Of Mankind By Isaac Rosenberg

Imagine you’re lying on the muddy, damp Earth and all around you can hear the screams of people you know dying. Shells explode, bullets race through the air, and poisonous gas seeps around you, all with the intent to harm you in some way. Yet, you willingly put yourself in that position day after day, year after year. The question surrounding this situation is, why? Who would be masochistic enough to choose to put their lives in danger and live in the most perilous environment possible? Two very different books give us insight into the thoughts of the soldiers who continuously put themselves in these environments. Your Death Would Be Mine by Martha Hanna and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque lets us into the minds of Paul Pireaud and Paul Baumer as they try to survive life as a soldier in the Great War. I argue that Pireaud and Baumer had very different reasons for continuing to fight despite having suffered beyond belief. In this paper I will analyze how the varying degrees of patriotism, brotherhood, family life at home, and age affected how these two men endured the treacherous life on the front of World War I.

Man loves to kill. In response to the question asked, man will continue to commit such atrocities as a genocide. Man will never learn from past mistakes or all of a sudden stop mass killings or genocides. Humans have always killed and they will continue to do it. Humans will not all of a sudden be pacifists and stop killing. This has happened with the Rwandan genocide and with the Holocaust in Night by Elie Wiesel. Man will not stop committing such atrocities and have a brighter future and these are only a few reasons why.

The psychologist Sigmund Freud once said, “Because every man has a right over his own life and war destroys lives that were full of promise; it forces the individual into situations that shame his manhood, obliging him to murder fellow men, against his will.” He initially stated this when he was corresponding with Albert Einstein via letter. This quote is also a great explanation of the events that take place during war that people chose to not recognise. War is terrible, and no matter how hard we try, nothing will change that. Erich Maria Remarque shows us that soldiers have endured dreadfully throughout World War I in his book “All Quiet on the Western Front”. The character in the book, Paul Baumer, endures through the tragedies of war with some of his old schoolmates as well as new comrades that he meets along the way. They survive through all of the tragedies together, but in the end, the war made them lose their friendships as well as their lives. The reality is that war comes with consequences while it destroys people, and there is nothing that will ever be able to change that. The book “All Quiet on the Western Front” shows how war comes destroys people's lives with its consequences through three of its themes: the importance of comradery, the loss of innocence, and the horrors and brutality of war.

Under the rule of the Nazis, and in the battle between life and death, the caring, courageous, and thoughtful Elie Wiesel recounts his life events in the memoir Night. As a Jewish boy growing up in Sighet, Transylvania during World War II, Wiesel experiences firsthand the cruelty of mankind. The author depicts the unpleasant living conditions contributing to the starvation of the prisoners in the concentration camps and the violence in the struggle to survive. Throughout Wiesel’s writing, there are a variety of literary techniques to describe the horrors he has experienced. Elie Wiesel utilizes figurative language to describe the men and their actions, and he writes a flash-forward to complement the greater ideas about humanity and savagery

Elie Wiesel wrote this non-fiction book to alert his audience of his and his families experiences in the Holocaust and what they went through. He notes his journey through chronological events using extreme description. He accomplished this purpose by detailing every little thing that he experienced and that the people around him experienced. The central thesis of Night by Elie Wiesel is that a hostile and insensitive environment and world can cause even the strongest person to lose faith and identity. His thesis is clearly stated when he says, “ Never shall I forget that night, that first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed...Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.  Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”(pg.32) This thesis is related to the purpose because since Wiesel is a holocaust survivor, it showcases the horrors of the Holocaust and the effects it had on the surviving victims.

“Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live,” from the thoughts of Eli Wiesel after his first night at camp (Wiesel 34). The Holocaust, lasting over ten years, not only did it seize the lives of millions, it disfigured the souls of corpses who survived. Gratefully some of these outlasts shared their stories to protect society’s future. In Night, Eli Wiesel uses foreshadowing, imagery and figurative language to illustrate the brutality aspect of humanity.

Not many historical works have achieved more success and have generated more heated debate than Daniel Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners. Goldhagen’s thesis relies on the idea that since medieval times, a specific kind of eliminationist anti-Semitism had developed in Germany. According to Goldhagen, the German population was already open to the idea of eliminating the Jews. He also claims that when Hitler came to Power in 1933, rather than slowly convincing the Germans to commit mass murder, he merely gave them the opportunity to do what they have wanted to do for years. Goldhagen also inflated the number of people involved, suggesting that hundreds of thousands were participating in the killing and that millions more would have willingly joined in, given the opportunity. Despite the rejection of the book by many German and non-German historians, the German version of the book, published in August 1996, sold very well. Eighty thousand copies of the German edition sold in the first month of the book’s release. By the time of Goldhagen's tour in September, three thousand copies were being sold every single day. Facts like these show how important communication is with the public. Hitler’s Willing Executioners was successful in Germany because of the accessibility of the book to the German population, the social context in which the book was produced, and the powerful marketing campaign that preceded the book itself.

When people lose their dignity, they also lose a part of the very thing that makes them human. Despair, hopelessness, fear and apathy are all ways a human can lose their humanity. The eyes provide a window onto the soul, and thus a view on the person’s mental state. The eyes also function in reverse, as a symbolic gesture of control over someone. All of this is present in Night, by Elie Wiesel, an account of human tragedy, human cruelty, human dignity, and the loss thereof.

After completing the book “Night” by Elie wiesel I believe that his main theme was ,The brutality of the Holocaust caused a loss of humanity in those it affected. This theme can be seen strongly near the end of the book as Wiesel describes the S.S officers behavior “They had orders to shoot anyone who could not sustain the pace. Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of the pleasure” showing that they truly did not care about the lives of those they were treating so horribly, showing their intense loss of their basic humanity. Another instance of the loss of humanity caused by the holocaust is when the German civilians throw bread onto wiesel's train car "Meir, my little Meir! Don't you recognize me … You're killing

Everywhere thick, hot gory blood drips from comrade’s wounds. The stench of death hovers in the air and encases every movement. A faint buzz whizzes into the ear drums as shells and bullets fluster by with brilliant flashes of light. These are the everyday encounters of a soldier on the front. No words can even begin to touch the realness of terror that soldiers experience every day. Young recruits are reeled into this torture and sacrifice everything they have and love for their country. Lively hopefuls are transformed into the unfeeling. The soldiers must think of memories as, “too grievous for us [them] to reflect on them at once.” (pp. 138) They forget, lest their state of mind plummet. Few, if any capture the graphic life and thoughts of the soldier better than Enrich Maria Remarque in his moving book All Quiet on the Western Front. This epic book follows a young German military recruit named Paul Bäumer and his classmates who come face to face with the gunfire of the Allies during World War I. Through Remarque’s well-chosen words and imagery, an average citizen is transported from their comfy home to the trenches and front lines of heated battle. In Enrich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, he successfully illustrates what it’s like to be a soldier during war and the extent in which everyday people sacrifice their lives when fighting for their country.

The beginning of the 20th century saw the most devastating war in human history. World War 1 cost ‘nine million lives and in the end no ground was gained’(O’Connor). Those who fought and lived through the war became known as the Lost Generation. They were cynical with society and “lost faith in traditional values like courage, patriotism, and masculinity’(O’Connor). The Short Story ‘Soldier’s Home’ is an example of a Lost Generation story.

“She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Liesel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist's suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers...She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on...”

An estimated nine million people lost their lives in the Great War. “War is nothing more than deception”-Sun Tzu The Art of War. “Pro Patria” by Seaman Owen, uses deception to lure young men into modern warfare injecting them with self pride, sense of heroism, fabricating the truth, and understating war. However in “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, the very neat stitching of the lies are unraveled, what seemed to be honor and virtue turns into the last few valuable gulps of breath.

During World War I, people were told that going to war and dying for your country is something you should be proud of. However, is it really something that makes a person proud? In the poems “Base Details” and “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen have written what war is like from their experiences in World War I, something completely different from what a person would find proud.

The final lines end on a note of tragedy for the poet returns us to the inside of the concentration camp where ‘inside the wire …strong men wept’. The poet again emphasises the extent, the immensity of this event, when strong men are unable to