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Professional literary review of all things quiet on the western front
Professional literary review of all things quiet on the western front
All quiet on the western front analytical essay
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In chapter nine of All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque uses ironic diction and metaphors to demonstrate how throughout the war there are many experiences that cause a soldier to lose his innocence but none like killing someone with one’s own hands and having to live with that fact for the rest of one’s days. While on patrol, Paul Baumer hides in a shell hole for safety. Moments later a soldier from the enemy side jumps into the shell hole. Automatically, fearing for his life, Paul stabs the man in the chest, killing him. Paul finds the man’s pocketbook and reads it, “but each word [he] translate[s] pierces [him] like a shot in the chest --like a stab in the chest” (Remarque 30). The word pierces connotes a strong and painful feeling that
All Quiet on the Western Front is a book written by Erich Maria Remarque. It was a book written to reflect the human cost of war. It shows us how war has a hidden face that most people do not see until it is too late. In the novel, he describes a group of young men who at first think war is glorious. But as the war drags on, the group discovers how war is not all it is set out to be. As the war went on, they saw their friends either die or be permanently wounded. Then the end comes when there was only one person left.
In Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, characters such as Paul and his friends become indifferent to shocking elements of war through constant exposure to them. For example, the characters are unconcerned about the dangers of the front because they are accustomed to being on the front. In another instance, Paul’s friends show no emotions when they witness snipers killing enemy soldiers. Also, Kat finds the unusual effects of mortar shells amusing. These examples prove that through war, characters of the book have become indifferent to things that they would normally find shocking.
In Kirby Dick’s influential documentary “The Invisible War,” filmmaker Kirby Dick uses pathos, ethos and logos to gain information and supplementary details to make his point that there is an epidemic of rape in throughout the DOD (Department of Defense) and the fact that military sexual trauma (MST) in the United States military goes unheard, mostly unpunished and needs to be addressed at a higher level.
“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another (263).” Powerful changes result from horrifying experiences. Paul Baumer, the protagonists of Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front utters these words signifying the loss of his humanity and the reduction to a numbed creature, devoid of emotion. Paul’s character originates in the novel as a young adult, out for an adventure, and eager to serve his country. He never realizes the terrible pressures that war imposes on soldiers, and at the conclusion of the book the empty shell resembling Paul stands testament to this. Not only does Paul lose himself throughout the course of the war, but he loses each of his 20 classmates who volunteered with him, further emphasizing the terrible consequences of warfare. The heavy psychological demands of life in the trenches and the harsh reality of war strip Paul of his humanity and leave him with a body devoid of all sentiment and feeling.
Irony is not always funny; verbal, dramatic, and situational irony are often used to assert truth or to add depth to an author’s writing. In Erich Maria Remarque’s book, All Quiet on the Western Front, the reader experiences years of life on the front of World War I through the eyes of a young German man, Paul Bäumer, who has enlisted with his classmates at the expectation of their schoolmaster. Remarque uses irony throughout his novel, best displayed in the names of the characters, the various settings, and in the deaths of the characters.
To Pursue Remarque’s tone farther, his tone throughout this novel was rather easy to find because of the horrific, depressing, yet at the same time a little sympathetic, scenes. Paul explains a scene after a bombardment, “In the branches dead men are hanging. A naked soldier is squatting in the fork of a tree, he still has his helmet on, otherwise he is entirely unclad. There is only half of him sitting up there, the top half, the legs are missing” (93). The bombs are killing several men at a time. Paul not only observes this in real life, he ultimately has to live through it. Once a war has been going on for a long period, the soldiers know that war is all about death.
In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer, a German soldier, along with his comrades, suffer through traumatic events and devastating losses as they struggle to survive the violent maelstrom of the Great War. As they fight, the grave circumstances and decimated landscapes they witness has a haunting effect on them. In order to cope with this drastic setting, they resort to dehumanization. By seeing their enemies as less than human, the war conditions them to kill, relying solely on instinct alone. They distance themselves from their comrades by dehumanizing them, making it easier to cope with their deaths. To maintain their sanity and face the horrors of the war, Paul and his company must suppress their humanity.
Remarque uses a variety of techniques to display the gruesome affects that war has not only on soldiers but on the nation as a whole. One technique that Remarque uses is imagery. One example that shows the imagery that Remarque displays occurs in chapter six when Paul Baumer talks about what the French do to the German prisoners who carry bayonets that obtain a saw on their blunt edges: "Some of our men were found whose noses were cut off and their eyes poked out with their own saw bayonets. Their mouths and noses were stuffed with sawdust so that they suffocated" (Remarque 103). Remarque shows how horrible the opposing sides treated one another's prisoners. The details used make one think of how bad the war must be and how it changes one's perception of war. Another example Remarque uses to show the brutality of war is through the imagery of sound. In chapter four Paul talks about the paranoia everyone gets when they hear the loud death cries of the wounded horses at the front: "We can bear almost anything. But now the sweat breaks out on us. We must get up and run no matter where, but where these cries can no linger be heard" (Remarque 63-64). The soldiers at war can handle hearing the bombs and shells going off never ending at the front in a small tight trench, but they cannot bear the cries of the horses and become paranoid.
The new technological advances of weapons add to the cruelty and tragedy of World War 1. This ultimately is why Remarque focuses on the losses suffered by Paul and his fellow soldiers. In addition, the observations made by Remarque are not unique to war and are exemplified by the struggles soldiers, like Paul, face physically and
Erich Maria Remarque's classic war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, deals with the many ways in which World War I affected people's lives, both the lives of soldiers on the front lines and the lives of people on the homefront. One of the most profound effects the war had was the way it made the soldiers see human life. Constant killing and death became a part of a soldier's daily life, and soldiers fighting on all sides of the war became accustomed to it. The atrocities and frequent deaths that the soldiers dealt with desensitized them to the reality of the vast quantities of people dying daily. The title character of the novel, Paul Bäumer, and his friends experience the devaluation of human life firsthand, and from these experiences they become stronger and learn to live as if every day were their last.
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.
One of the worst things about war is the severity of carnage that it bestows upon mankind. Men are killed by the millions in the worst ways imaginable. Bodies are blown apart, limbs are cracked and torn and flesh is melted away from the bone. Dying eyes watch as internal organs are spilled of empty cavities, naked torso are hung in trees and men are forced to run on stumps when their feet are blown off. Along with the horrific deaths that accompany war, the injuries often outnumber dead men. As Paul Baumer witnessed in the hospital, the injuries were terrifying and often led to death. His turmoil is expressed in the lines, “Day after day goes by with pain and fear, groans and death gurgles. Even the death room I no use anymore; it is too small.” The men who make it through the war take with them mental and physical scarification from their experiences.
“Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge” a quote from Sir Winston Churchill (1923, p.623) he used to describe the geopolitics of the First World War is found an apt characterization of Publicis Singapore’s WAR (see appx). Created for Crisis Relief Singapore’s “Liking isn’t helping” ad campaign as an argument against self-gratifying passive acknowledgment and a call for substantive action marketed to a global audeance. WAR successfully illustrates this intent with an easily understandable yet deeply powerful nearly universal effect. To better understand the simple strength in Publicis Singapore’s argument requires dissection
While soldiers are often perceived as glorious heroes in romantic literature, this is not always true as the trauma of fighting in war has many detrimental side effects. In Erich Maria Remarque 's All Quiet On The Western Front, the story of a young German soldier is told as he adapts to the harsh life of a World War I soldier. Fighting along the Western Front, nineteen year old Paul Baumer and his comrades begin to experience some of the hardest things that war has to offer. Paul’s old self gradually begins to deteriorate as he is awakened to the harsh reality of World War 1, depriving him from his childhood, numbing all normal human emotions and distancing future, reducing the quality of his life.
Many people who have been in wars suffer from PTSD, and Paul has been unable to avoid it, especially after seeing the horrible things he has seen out on the front. On his leave, he was walking along the street, and he describes his experience: “...I have been startled a couple of times in the street by the screaming of the tramcars, which resembles the shriek of a shell coming straight for one…” (Remarque 165). He has linked the sound of the shell with death, thus giving him reason to be frightened. No longer can he relax at home because anything that resembles the sound of the shell will activate his PTSD, an intentional theme that Remarque uses. In the midst of the war, Paul has another episode where he says, “...I see the grey, implacable muzzle of a rifle which moves noiselessly before me whichever way I try to turn my head. The sweat breaks out from every pore” (Remarque 210). Already, Paul is under a lot of stress being out in the tunnels of the front alone, and on top of that, he has to deal with PTSD. Remarque uses this scene to show that PTSD develops much sooner in wars than most thought, and to show its brutal effects. With both PTSD and depression, Paul is spiraling into a world of physical pain and mental