There are many underlying themes in this year's summer reading selection. Among them are relationships with families and friends, and land. This essay will barely scratch the surface of the many things that go into these themes. In Of Mice and Men, Cry, the Beloved Country, and All Quiet on the Western Front, the respective authors present the idea that land and all the things humans do with it varies and stand as a high goal, because all people want material possessions of a sort to call their own. Land is a connecting theme through not just these books, but all books throughout history. Whether over beauty, laws, or simply a higher goal, land is an integral part of all human's lives and conflicts. All people want material possessions, and …show more content…
land is highly desired. For example, in Of Mice and Men, Lennie and George's highest goal was to scrape some money together and get a few acres of land- “ “Someday we're gonna get the jack together and we're gonna have a little house... an' live off the fatta the lan'” ”(Steinbeck, 14). George wanted the freedom to do what he wanted with something he himself owned, and Lennie just wanted to feed the rabbits – he didn't get the full scope of the situation. Unfortunately, fate worked against them, and Lennie got into trouble. All that can be assumed is that George spent the money he would have used to buy the land in the way the other people on he ranch did: drink, women, etc. Land is a recurrent theme in all of Cry, the Beloved Country. “Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it, and man is destroyed.” (Paton, 33). This develops the idea of man's law versus the land's law. There's a thin balance between land ruling us, as in the time of the hunter gatherers, and us ruling the land, as some people would argue is happening now. Johannesburg is a prime example – who would build a city so near a desert? Animals don't exactly thrive there – and people are animals. Though man's law killed Kumalo's son, land and man went on coexisting , and a new church was built in Kumalo's village. In All Quiet on the Western Front, though some of the land was ravaged, there was still beauty.
Remarque says on page 295 “... it cannot be that this has vanished in bombardment, in despair, in brothels. Here the trees show gay and golden, the berries of the rowan stand red against the leaves...”. Paul is confused as to how his life and what he took for granted could go to pieces, but nature still stay as it was before. The sky is still blue, the trees are beautiful, life goes on but changes. Men are fighting and dying for their country, their land – isn't it funny what people will do for a few acres of land? In Of Mice and Men, Cry, the Beloved Country, and All Quiet on the Western Front, the respective authors present the idea that relationships of all sorts, whether they be friendships or family ties, change peoples' lives even if they don't necessarily know it. Even strangers a person would never meet again could irrevocably change their lives in a matter of seconds. A smile or a kind word could have a huge amount of impact on a person's life, as could a frown or a nasty statement. Of course, friends have a much more lasting impact on a person's …show more content…
life. As Steinbeck puts it in Of Mice and Men, “ “Never you mind”, said Slim. “A guy got to sometimes.” ”(107). this shows that friends can change people, and make them do things they never thought they could do. Maybe not in such an extreme way, but there aren't many people who wouldn't lie for a close friend. And, as when the other men don't understand what's “eating” George and Slim, what is very important in the boundaries of one friendship is not always understood in the parameters of another. In Cry, the Beloved Country, Kumalo's role as a man of the Lord puts him in the position of being a friend to everyone, even people who, to a normal person, would be considered enemies.
But as he says 'Goodnight, Msimangu, friend of friends.”(Paton, 249), he plays favorites somewhat – and sees some people as better friends than others. In the case of his son, the people the son thought were his friends backed out of the trial, pleading innocent and having waterproof alibis, whether they were truly innocent or not. Kumalo's brother has friends in the city in his crusade to change the government, and his friends changed him, but he still helps Kumalo out in the end with money. This shows that, in the words of the famous cliché, blood is thicker than water – his family ties call to him, and he acknowledges that, though he doesn't renounce his new
ways. As is evidenced in All Quiet on the Western Front, in war, friends are very important, because without them, it's easy to go a little crazy when all the gore and violence and hard, cold truths are staring someone in the face. Paul talks about his friends more than his family, even when he's on leave in his hometown. “I must think of Kat and Albert and Muller and Tjaden, what will they be doing.” (Remarque, 169) He knows that his friends are at the front lines helping with the war efforts, and he's at home doing a little bit of nothing each day, while his mother is dying. Even that didn't cause a strong emotional reaction, showing how deadened his mind and soul are. Things that used to be good have turned sour with the war, and he just wants to be with his friends, where he can just forget sometimes. It really breaks him down when they die, leaving him without much to live for anyway when he dies – he's glad to die at that point. Concluding, the underlying themes in this book selection range between land and its laws, and relationships and their impacts. These serve as good connection points. Even though these books were written in the 30s and 40s, and only cover that short span of years, this connection point theory is true for books published since the first to the most recent. Common themes of love, war, land, and especially just the basic good versus evil have been the same from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Captain Underpants!
At the beginning of chapter seven, the Second Company is taken further back to a depot for reinforcements, and the men rest. Himmelstoss wants to get on good terms with the boys and shows them kindness. Paul starts to respect him after seeing how he carried Haie Westhus when he was hit in the back. Tjaden is won over too after he learns that Himmelstoss will provide extra rations from his job as sergeant cook.
A story review of the book. Relationships change over the passing of time as circumstances in life shape a person's way of thinking and way of life. Whether it flourishes or decays depends greatly upon how people react to these alterations. Before it is too late Relationships change over the passing of time as circumstances in life shape a person's way of thinking and way of life. Whether it flourishes or decays depends greatly upon how people react to these alterations.
Imagine being in an ongoing battle where friends and others are dying. All that is heard are bullets being shot, it smells like gas is near, and hearts race as the times goes by. This is similar to what war is like. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator, Paul Baumer, and his friends encounter the ideals of suffering, death, pain, and despair. There is a huge change in these men; at the beginning of the novel they are enthusiastic about going into the war. After they see what war is really like, they do not feel the same way about it. During the war the men experience many feelings especially the loss of loved ones. These feelings are shown through their first experience at training camp, during the actual battles, and in the hospital.
use nature as the judge to condemn war, along with shocking imagery, so that his
Paul Bäumer's leave from the war is an opportunity for him to see life removed from the harshness of war. As he makes the journey home, the closer he gets the more uncomfortable he feels. He describes the final part of his journey, "then at last the landscape becomes disturbing, mysterious, and familiar." (154) Rather than being filled with comfort at the familiarity of his homeland, he is uneasy. War has changed him to the extent in which he can no longer call the place where he grew up home. Bäumer visits with his mother and recognizes that ideally this is exactly what he wanted. "Everything I could have wished for has happened. I have come out of it safely and sit here beside her." (159) But ultimately he will decide that he should have never gone on leave because it is just too hard to be around his family and see how different he has become. Bäumer finds that it is easier to remain out on the war front than return to his family.
All Quiet on the Western Front. Literary Analysis The U.S. casualties in the "Iraqi Freedom" conquest totals so far at about sixteen thousand military soldiers. During WWI Germany suffered over seven million deaths.
Whenever one reads or hears about World War I or World War II, you hear of the struggles and triumphs of the British, Americans or any of the other Allies. And they always speak of the evil and menacing German army. However, All Quiet on the Western Front gives the reader some insight and a look at a group of young German friends who are fighting in World War I. “This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.....” The soldiers of this war felt they were neither heroes nor did they know what they were fighting for. These soldiers were pulled from the innocence of their childhood, and thrown into a world of rage. Yet somehow they still managed to have heart and faith in man kind and could not look the opponent in the eye and kill him. For he was man too, he too had a wife and children at home, he too was pulled out of his home to fight for a cause he didn't understand.
Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that takes you through the life of a soldier in World War I. Remarque is accurately able to portray the episodes soldiers go through. All Quiet on the Western Front shows the change in attitudes of the men before and during the war. This novel is able to show the great change war has evolved to be. From lining your men up and charging in the eighteenth century, to digging and “living” in the trenches with rapid-fire machine guns, bombs, and flame-throwers being exposed in your trench a short five meters away. Remarque makes one actually feel the fun and then the tragedy of warfare. At the beginning of the novel Remarque gives you nationalist feelings through pride of Paul and the rest of the boys. However at the end of the war Remarque shows how pointless war really is. This is felt when everyone starts to die as the war progresses.
The novel All Quiet On The Western Front contains many incidents where the readers can hold characters responsible for their actions, however his novel in particular relates to the clash of values. Though fictional this novel by Erich Maria Remarque, presents vast detail through the conflicts at the Western Front. Corporal Himmelstoss a character in the novel is portrayed as a stereotypical military man, whose actions, when all's said and done, speaks for itself as the reader really does not question his iniquitous behaviour. However, apart from just the reader holding such characters morally accountable for their actions the novel concerns the rejection of traditional values, Paul’s disillusionment, and life opposed to death. Through such clashing of values, Remarque creates a confronting novel where the plot is for the most part articulated around values in conflict.
War destroys Paul and his friends. Those who physically survive the bombing, the bullets and bayonets are annihilated by physical attacks on their sanity.
time he plans on going home and visiting his family. When he arrives his mother asks
The story of several schoolmates who symbolize a generation destroyed by the dehumanisation of the First World War, All Quiet on the Western Front tells of the men who died, and the tragically changed lives of those who survived. Remarque follows the story of Paul Bäumer, a young infantryman, from his last days of school to his death three years later. Whereas the journey motif is typically used to portray a positive character development, that of Paul is deliberately the opposite. In what has been dubbed the greatest antiwar novel of all time, Remarque depicts the way in which Paul is snatched away from humanity by the brutality of war. However while Paul and his comrades become separated from society, and begin to rely on their basic survival instincts, in their own surroundings they still show humane qualities such as compassion, camaraderie, support and remorse. Paul’s transformation from human to soldier begins in training camp, and is reinforced by the trauma at the front. His return home further alienates him from society, and Paul begins to feel safe at the front with his friends. Nonetheless throughout the novel suffering and mortality bare Paul’s true side, and he momentarily regains his former self. Bäumer, the German word for tree, is an early indication that Paul must remain firmly rooted in reality to survive the brutality of war.
World War I had a great effect on the lives of Paul Baumer and the young men of his generation. These boys’ lives were dramatically changed by the war, and “even though they may have escaped its shells, [they] were destroyed by the war” (preface). In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer and the rest of his generation feel separated from the other men, lose their innocence, and experience comradeship as a result of the war.
He realizes that he has to lose feeling to survive, “That I have looked far as the only possibility of existence after this annihilation of a human emotion” (194). Paul loses all feeling which may be one of the main factors keeping him alive in battle, so that he does not allow himself to process the violence and horror to which he is exposed. Even in the short time where he thinks about all that he has lost he is immediately overwhelmed with feelings and there is no time for this on the battlefront. Paul has no empathy to the enemy and kills without even thinking, “We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control ourselves when our glance lights on the form at some other man” (117). The tragedies during combat desensitize the men of normal human emotions such as remorse, empathy, guilt, and fear; the un-naturalness of killing another human dulls all of these feelings. People were not made to destroy each other, and as a natural defense to this they shut down all of their feelings. Paul 's normal thought of insecurity are gone as he says, “Since then, we have learned better than to be shy about such trifling immodesties. In time things far worse than that come easy to us” (8). The emotions of the average young man are lost at war as their entire lives are put into perspective. Paul 's young adulthood is lost and he does not feel shame in frivolous things any longer. His emotions are not the only thing he loses as he also disconnects from his past, present and
In World War One close to four million soldiers were mobilized from America. Out of those soldiers only 116,708 soldiers died in action. 204,000 were wounded in action, and only 757 american civilians died because of military action. The only reason that there were that few casualties was because of the luckiness of getting in the war late. The novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a novel on the subject about World War One. It shows how an entire age of people were wiped out in one of the bloodiest, and gruesomest battles that America was in. In the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” on of the characters were Paul Baümer. The book showed many people change in attitude, and in the sense of their entire soul was changed in one way or another. This essay is about how one character “Paul Baümer” went from a happy wide eyed young man ready to serve his country, to a shattered disillusioned shell of his former self.