Unveiling War's Misconceptions: Media vs Reality

Wilfred Owen once said “the old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” which means

“the old lie: it is sweet and honourable to die for the fatherland.” Many people are being pressured by the societies they are raised in to sign up for the military. They are persuaded by the misconceptions of fighting for one’s country shown in everyday media, but Enrich

Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road exposes the misconceptions of war portrayed in media such as the false idea that fighting in a war is a glorious enterprise, and the false representation of the identity of soldiers. While they take different stances on camaraderie between soldiers during wartime.

War movies give us the conception

Xavier knows that war is not glorious but instead a horrible thing to ever exist and he wants to end it as soon as possible. Xavier doesn’t believe there is any honour about killing people, or risking your life to do so. Nothing is honourable about watching people die left and right.

Similarly to Three Day Road, All Quiet on the Western Front depicts war as an atrocious being to ever have existed. During the war, Paul had to end the lives of many people. He believes that war has not given him any glory, but instead leaves him “indifferent and often hopeless”

(Remarque, 187). Paul and his classmates were taught that fighting in a war would bring them honour and glory, but fighting in a war only has made him realize that “he cannot understand why there should be so much anguish over a single individual…” (Remarque, 115). When Paul gets into his first melee encounter, he kills the man, but ends up losing his composure. If given another chance he “would not do it…” if the other soldier “would be sensible too…” (Remarque,

223). After the encounter Paul realizes that there is another person with another life and feelings on the other side of the gun