Don’t Let Go Just Yet by Sofia Martinez It was October 22nd, 1918 on a cloudy morning where Paul was lying in a war vehicle, uncomfortably as life gave up on him temporarily. I was very cautious to keep myself alive, but to always check to see how Paul was doing. With each and every heartbeat brought blood from the cuts of my face, dripping to his face with my sweat. I was set on the fact that Paul should have been awake by now. I look away from Paul, and noticed an energy on the Frontline; it was quite odd. The loud noises of gunshots toned down, the scent of fresh picked bright yellow daisies grew slowly from the fresh fields. It was obvious that Paul wouldn’t be affected by these factors from the condition he is in. I start to reevaluate why it seemed this way, was it a sign of life, or death? It was too much to handle. I gave it a few breaths when there was a slight movement of his stiff body. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I saw yellow, green, blue and all the colors in between. A feeling of relief, Paul saw my expressions and didn't know how to imagine this being reality. He says to me in confusion, “Who are you, and why are we here?” I respond quickly saying, …show more content…
It was our uniform, our side, for our country. We are extremely worried, for him. Almost instantly, we race there to see if the new recruit is okay. Paul jumps, quickly to pick up the boy. A shot to his chest leaves open and flowing blood from the torso down in a devastating color. Paul takes him in the tank to stop the immense amount of blood the boy is losing. Paul grabs a large cloth, and puts pressure on the hole. The boy yells in pain. I couldn’t bear to watch the rest of the procedure. I couldn’t bother but to hear the boy’s pain. I gasped, and saw the boy breathing less and less. Paul did his best to recover him, but the boy’s body gave up completely. No pulse was recognized and our hope was lost. The boy passed, right in front of
“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.
He was busy dodging bullets and artillery shells, trying to stay alive on Germany’s Western Front during World War I. Paul and I are united on the grounds of age and nothing more, yet somehow, while following him through his service in the War, I feel connected to him. After finishing the novel, I ruminated on this idea for some time and eventually came to the conclusion that the connection I feel with Paul is a mixture of empathy and envy. I empathize with him because he put down the pen and took up the rifle in service of his country, just as I would do if called upon. I envy him because he exudes the qualities of a brilliant soldier, meticulous narrator, and man of faith even in times of mortal danger, especially in times of mortal danger.... ... middle of paper ...
Before this battle, the men are starting to feast on pig and some other foods. All of a sudden they realize that something is wrong because the observation balloons have spotted smoke from their chimney. Soon after, shells begin to drop on them. They race down to the house and feast for four hours. Outside houses are burning, shells are propelled down to the ground. In eight days the men are told to return. Only a few days later are they ordered to evacuate a village. While on their way, Kropp and Paul see people fleeing out of the village with distress, anger, and depression. Everyone is silent as the two walk by them, even the children holding on to their mothers for moment, Paul feels a blow on his left leg. Albert is right next to him, and he cries out to Paul. The men scurry to a nearby ditch. They are hurt, but do the best that they can to run to another ditch. Albert is straggling behind, and Paul helps him to continue by holding him up. They reach the dug-out where Paul bandages up Kropp’s injury, a bullet for an ambulance to be taken. The ambulance picks them up, and they are given an anti-tetanus shot in their chests. When the dressing station is reached, Paul and Kropp make sure that they are lying next to each other. The surgeon examines Paul and tells someone to chloroform him. Paul objects to this order, and the doctor does not do it. The surgeon takes out a piece of shell, and puts Paul in a plaster cast. The two are brought on the train, Albert develops a high fever so he needs to be taken off the train at the next stop. In order to stay with his friend, Paul fakes a fever and they reach a Catholic Hospital together. Paul is operated on and recovers faster than Kropp. His leg is amputated, and he later goes to an institute for artificial limbs. Paul is called back to his regiment and returns to the front.  parts, or lost body parts, and they are thankful that it is not them who are in danger of dying. By receiving injuries, Paul and Kropp experience the war from a different perspective.
War can destroy a young man mentally and physically. One might say that nothing good comes out of war, but in Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, there is one positive characteristic: comradeship. Paul and his friends give Himmelstoss a beating in which he deserves due to his training tactics. This starts the brotherhood of this tiny group. As explosions and gunfire sound off a young recruit in his first battle is gun-shy and seeks reassurance in Paul's chest and arms, and Paul gently tells him that he will get used to it. The relationship between Paul and Kat is only found during war, in which nothing can break them apart. The comradeship between soldiers at war is what keeps them alive, that being the only good quality to come out of war.
On an ordinary day, Leslie opens the main door of her house, when she walked inside she saw her mom and sister Islla sitting on the coach. Islla was crying, and Leslie ask her “What happened?’ Why you crying?’”. Islla told her that she is pregnant and that she wants to keep the baby even if her boyfriend will be against the baby, but she will need to drop out from her University. In a few minutes of thinking, Leslie decided and told her sister “You don’t need to drop out I will help you to babysit with my nephew.”
After their first two days of fighting, they return to their bunker, where they find neither safety nor comfort. A grizzled veteran, Kat, suggests these ‘fresh-faced boys’ should return to the classroom. The war steals their spiritual belief in the sanctity of human life with every man that they kill. This is best illustrated by Paul’s journey from anguish to rationalization of the killing of Gerard Duval; the printer turned enemy who leaps into the shell-hole already occupied by Paul. Paul struggles with the concept of killing a “brother”, not the enemy. He weeps despondently as war destroys his emotional being.
... him. Death, which he once agonized over, is now a daily occurrence and seems commonplace to him. Life, which he once took for granted, is now cherished beyond belief, and holding on to it becomes his greatest preoccupation. These effects are not limited only to Paul Bäumer, but extend to all the millions of people that are involved, directly or indirectly, in the war. WW I has far-reaching impact. It not only touches those in combat on the front lines, but also those who support the soldiers and help to make munitions and supplies on the homefront. Bäumer, and the millions of other people involved in WW I, learn the difficult lesson that the most trying experiences in life, or in this case death, are what make us the strongest and what drive us to survive.
After an event of large magnitude, it still began to take its toll on the protagonist as they often “carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die” during the war (O’Brien 1187). The travesties that occurred with the brutality of war did not subside and began to affect those involved in a deeply emotional way. The multitude of disastrous happenings influenced the narrator to develop a psychological handicap to death by being “afraid of dying” although being “even more afraid to show it” (O’Brien 1187). The burden caused by the war creates fear inside the protagonist’s mind, yet if he were to display his sense of distress it would cause a deeper fear for those around him, thus making the thought of exposing the fear even more frightening. The emotional battle taking place in the psyche of the narrator is directly repressed by the 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.
After entering the war in young adulthood, the soldiers lost their innocence. Paul’s generation is called the Lost Generation because they have lost their childhood while in the war. When Paul visits home on leave he realizes that he will never be the same person who enlisted in the army. His pre-war life contains a boy who is now dead to him. While home on leave Paul says “I used to live in this room before I was a soldier” (170).
The author's main theme centers not only on the loss of innocence experienced by Paul and his comrades, but the loss of an entire generation to the war. Paul may be a German, but he may just as easily be French, English, or American. The soldiers of all nations watched their co...
Paul and his company were once aspiring youth just graduating school thinking about having a wonderful life. Sometimes things don’t always play out the way you want. The effects of war on a soldier is another big theme in the novel. Paul describes how they have changed and how death doesn’t affect them anymore. “We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defen...
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 the future, reducing the quality of his life. At the age of nineteen, Paul naively enlists in World War 1, blind to the fact he has now taken away his own childhood.
The point the author, Russell Baker, is making in his essay, “Writing for Myself,” is quite evident. When Mr. Fleagle, Baker’s English teacher, assigned an informal essay to be completed as homework, Baker immediately became baffled by the daunting task. Though reluctant to start, Baker knew that it he had to swallow his animosity toward writing and select a topic to write on.
There was a drastic change in Paul’s mindset when he came home for his break. For example, he lied to Franz’s mother about his death. He said he had a quick death, but in reality, Franz had a slow and painful death. As a result of the war, many soldiers also gave up on their beliefs as well.