The Western Front By Stephen Crane: Character Analysis

Great soldiers are always portrayed with specific defining characteristics, including courage, bravery, and selflessness. In Stephen Crane's Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, the main character, Henry, lacks these specific traits. In Henry's first battle experience, he fights alongside the other soldiers, despite being terrified. However, in his regiment's second battle, Henry flees the scene. Henry's actions are due to his lack of courage and bravery, and his selfish demeanor. He does not realize the intensity of the war until after the first battle, thus resulting in him running away afterwards.

The book All Quiet on the Western Front is narrated in first person by the character named Paul Baumer, who shares his experiences on the battlefield during the final two years of the war. Paul is a German soldier who tells the story as he lives it, in the trenches, and on the frontline. Paul is a compassionate, intelligent and sensitive young man who loves his family more than anything and enjoys reading and writing poetry on his free time. Throughout the book, these character traits of Paul vanish because of the horror of the war and the anxiety it brings to him. Paul learns that death is normal and he becomes unable to grieve over the loss of his friends in the war. Paul becomes bitter and depressed throughout the war as he is unable to remember how it feels to be happy and safe.

War brings the fall down and isolation into a person, no matter how much Henry wants to forget, the horrific memories will follow. Even if you do something terrible wrong like Jesse leaving the train you will always have to face

The First World War, or the ill-named War to End all Wars, was one that brought hell to Earth and mankind. For the first time in history, industry had appeared to make killing efficient. In static trenches, young men from around the world were killed by artillery kilometres away, poison gas, and disease. All nations in the conflict experienced the creation of a Lost Generation; men who lost their lives, limbs, or the ability to live a normal life. Paul Baumer, the young German protagonist of All Quiet on the Western Front becomes a member of this sad generation through his sad journey to the ultimate elixir, death. In Erich Remarque’s magnum opus All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer is faced by various emotionally jarring tests that serve as a catalyst for his inner decline and eventual elixir. Paul is faced with a fearsome French bombardment and offensive, a hand-to-hand killing of a Frenchman, Gerard Duval, and the death of his mentor and father figure, Stanislaus Katczinsky. For a young man just out of secondary school, in fact, any person in general, these events lead to a loss of hope and a lost future.

In the story All Quiet on the Western Front, the protagonist Paul Bämer experiences multiple characteristic changes while experiencing life from another point of view during his service at the front. While living with his comrades at the front, Paul experiences changes of his attitude towards death due to brutal warfare, dehumanization of himself and his comrade’s, and development of friendship with his comrades.

The events in the novel also give way to the author’s perspective on war(s) in general, not just the one happening at the time. By having Gene’s internal battle correlate with the war the boys were training to fight in, Knowles conveys the idea that everybody will be at war with themselves at a time in their life. Another example of a war against one’s self is the character Leper Lepellier’s war with his sanity. He fights so hard to keep it, but the struggle inside his head is harder to win than any superficial war: “The idea of his face on a woman’s body. That’s what made me psycho. Ideas like that. I don’t know. I guess they must be right. I guess I am psycho. I guess I must be. I must be”(141). Leper has gone to fight in the war, done his duty for his country, and subsequently now has to fight the conflict happening in his mind. He second guesses his sanity, which only makes the battle harder. The fictional character of Leper is an example of one of many people who have fought in a war, only to return home to find a completely different war waiting for them. Another instance in which Knowles shows his thoughts on war is when Gene first begins to hate Finny. He is convinced Finny is trying to stop him from succeeding in school, a thought created by his envy for Finny: “I sensed it like a sense of relief when nausea passes away; I felt better. We were even after all, even in enmity. The dead rivalry was on both sides after all”(46). Gene’s conflict with Finny is another

World War I took a devastating toll, not only by dismantling numerous countries economically, but by crippling the millions of dutiful soldiers as well. These soldiers, devoid of any full understanding of the reason for this brutal war, destroyed their entire lives for the cause. All Quiet on the Western Front depicts the how World War I ultimately devastated Paul and his soldier friends, psychologically and physically.

"Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori" War and an honorable death are portrayed as grand and exalted deeds throughout history, even though a war is a series of bloody conflicts that rack havoc on the human mind. WW1 is one of the prominent examples of this. Several philosophers and individuals have pointed out this fact and even published literary works about it. All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the greatest cases of this because it accurately shows the emotions, living conditions, and hardships of the WW1 soldiers.

According to Spartacus Educational, more than 8,538,315 men and women died in World War I. More than 2/3 of the men, women, children, and soldiers that died were from the allied powers. Meaning they might have won the war but with them winning came to a lot of casualties some that shouldn't have happened. Now throughout the novel of All Quiet On The Western front, it's evident that Paul’s character changed from a wide-eyed 19-year-old dreamer to a shattered disillusioned young man.

Both boys in the writing go through the same changes in mentality. Before they enlist, they assume that war was this great thing, and they both want to be a part of it and fight for the nation they both love and live in. What they fail to realize is that they are both too innocent for something as brutal, and devastating as this. They are both affected by this when they figure out what combat is really like. The two have their own way of adjusting to their new lives, but in the end the two emerge as mature soldiers, and courageous young

The war hurt Charlie and he knows that he is slowly dying, and Henry leaves the war with dramatic stress and lives with it for the rest of his life. Charlie dies young from the affection of the war and Henry lives to be older. Henry and Charlie have saw many dramatic events while in war. Charlie helped stack dead soldiers to keep the wind off a surgeon. Henry saw men fall dead while running beside them. These men would never be the same people as they were before the war.

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.

War means sacrificing and dedicating your whole life and soul for your country. In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, demonstrates through a group of young individuals, who all volunteer their hard work for war. The main characters are Paul, Tjaden, Muller, Kropp, Leer, Westhus, Deterring, Kemmerich, Behm, Kanortek and Himmelstoss. This group of teenagers is not like your typical group of teenagers. At first glance, teenagers appear to be immature and not knowledgeable about serious matters such as war. But on a closer inspection, this group of individuals, particularly Paul Baumer presents a value within himself that drives him to be successful and sacrifice his entire life and childhood for his country.

War forces young soldiers to grow up quickly. In Stephen Crane’s Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is no exception. He is faced with the hard reality of war and this forces him to readjust his romantic beliefs about war. Through the novel, the reader can trace the growth and development of Henry through these four stages: (1) romanticizing war and the heroic role each soldier plays, (2) facing the realities of war, (3) lying to himself to maintain his self-importance, and (4) realistic awareness of his abilities and place in life. Through Henry’s experiences in his path to self-discovery, he is strongly affected by events that help shape his ideology of war, death,

Ernest Hemingway and Stephen Crane were both significant writers during the World War I era with their unique writing styles. Both often had written stories about the war, with the experiences of the soldiers at the forefront.