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All quiet on the western front essay effects of war
Conflict in all quiet on the western front
Emotional effects of war on soldiers
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Paul and his comrades face many mental and emotional difficulties throughout the war, and they overcome their feelings by coming to terms with their death. In chapter 2, Paul’s reaction to Kemmerich’s death shows how death in war is hard on soldiers. When Paul sees Kemmerich dying, his thoughts start to take over his consciousness: “My thoughts become confused. This atmosphere of carbolic and gangrene clogs the lungs, it is a thick gruel, it suffocates” (Remarque, pg. 29). Here, Paul reveals his anxiety about death and war. In this moment he realizes his friend is dying from the wounds of war. The war hits home for him; he begins to realize this could happen to him. After Kemmerich’s death Paul wishes to “drop down and never rise up again” so that he doesn’t have to face his feelings (Remarque, pg. …show more content…
Already knowing how it’s been going on out on the battlefield they’ve become so used to seeing what traumatized them in the front. They couldn’t imagine having a future. In chapter five Paul expresses his feelings, “All at once everything seems to me confused and hopeless.” (Remarque, pg. 87). All Paul has experience is pain, death, horror, and hopelessness after trying to help Kat from his wound. As Paul comes to peace he’s finally out of pain, and fear all he ever wanted was to not suffer any longer, he then died in peace and calm without feeling the pain of death. “Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me. I am so alone, and without fear” (Remarque, pg.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul is morphed from an innocent child into a war veteran who has a new look on society. Paul used to have a carefree life where he was able to be a kid, but when he enlisted into the army it all changed. Paul became a person whose beliefs were changed because of the war. Paul doesn't believe in society anymore especially parents, elders, and school, which used to play a big part in his life. He changed his beliefs because society does not really understand how bad war really is and pushed many young men, who were not ready, into the army. Paul connects with his fellow soldiers because they are going through the same situation and feel the same emotions. Paul's beliefs were changed by the lies that were told to him.
Life for the soldiers in the beginning is a dramatic one as they are ordered up to the frontline to wire fences. The frontline makes Paul feel immediately different as described here. "As if something is inside us, in our blood, has been switched on." The front makes Paul more aware and switched on as if his senses and reactions are sharpened. I think Paul and his friends are frightened when they are near the front line. After they wire the fences and they are heading to the barracks their group start to be fired at by the enemy. They manage to get through the shelling unscathed but they hear a horse that has been shot. The horse makes a terrible noise of anguish and is in terrible pain and it has been shot as the author describes here. "The belly of one of the horses has been ripped open and it guts are trailing out." This shows that there are not just human casualties of war; the innocent lives of animals can be affected as much as humans who fight in wars. Detering-one soldier in Pauls group-says." It is the most despicable thing of all to drag animals into a war." I agree with Detering, as animals had no choice about going to war. On the way back to the trucks that would take them back to the barracks Paul Baumers company are hit again by heavy shelling and they have to take cover in a military graveyard. The shells blow huge holes in the graveyard and create large...
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.
Even when the novel begins, all Paul has known is death, horror, fear, distress, and despair. He describes the other soldiers in his company, including his German school mates with whom he enlisted after constant lecturing from their school master, Kantorek. The pressures of nationalism and bravery had forced even the most reluctant students to enlist. However weeks of essential training caused any appeal the military may have held for them to be lost. Corporal Himmelstoss, the boys’ instructor, callously victimizes them with constant bed remaking, sweeping snow, softening stiff boot leather and crawling through the mud. While this seems to be somewhat cruel treatment, it was in fact beneficial for the soldiers.
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...
Erich Maria Remarque, in his book All Quiet on the Western Front,demonstrates the horrors of war and the suffering, both mentally and physically, of the soldiers that are involved. Throughout the book that character and his friends are all in the and feel like they don’t have a purpose for fighting in the war. Every once in awhile one of his close friends dies. With each death all of the surviving characters think more and more about the reality that they face. Neer the end of the story, Paul and his friend Kat are the only ones of the group left. Kat was shot in the shin and Paul carried him all the way back to the medical tent over his shoulder. When Paul puts him down he realized that Kat
From the beginning, Paul has felt constant fear of death, horror, suffering and hopelessness. Hoping there is a future, Paul and his friends often predict what the future might give. One of these prediction includes Paul’s prediction of 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 uses this imagery to attack the horrible way the opposing sides treated their prisoners. This description makes one think of how devastating and inconsolable the war was and how it changes a person perspective of war. The comrades start to lose their interest in everything but war after being surrounded by constant fear of death and suffering. Smothering throughout the novel, the war gradually changes the attitudes and thoughts of the soldiers toward going home. The loss of generation emerged by being through persistent isolation, violence and disillusionment of the German soldier during World War I. Paul elaborates on the fear everyone gets when hearing the suffering cries of the injured horses at the front : "We can bear almost anything. But now the sweat breaks out on us. We must get
Once the war started Paul questioned the reality of what people would think of them when they returned home, “What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing;--it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us,”(264). The men that went into war, joined at such a young age that to them it feels as if their whole life has been taken over by war. As Paul discovers the realities of war, he questions what will come out of him when he gets home. His life for such a long time as revolved in killing, while other 19 year olds were going off to college or jumping into the business world, Paul along with millions of others, were left to deal with death and violence. The entire time they were away they missed out on the progression within their societies, their youth-hood, and coming to full development mentally and physically. World War One destroyed the lives of soldiers, creating a generation of lost
When Remarque writes in the point of view of Paul, he can explain a lot about what is going on and how his friends and himself feel about it. That is how Paul expresses the theme of how bad war really is, by his storytelling. Multiple times in the book Paul recalls memories and how the war has changed them because of terrors he has seen and those memories will never be the same. “After I have been startled a couple times in the street by the screaming of tramcars, which resembles the shriek of a shell coming straight for me, someone taps me on the shoulder” (Remarque 165). This quote shows how normal things of everyday life has changed and Paul knows it is most likely going to stay that way if he gets through the war
And so it would seem. [They] had as yet taken no root. The war swept [them] away … [The men] knew only that in some strange and melancholy way [they] had become a waste land” (20). Early in the novel, Paul has already decided that he and his troop of young men have been destroyed by the war, as a plant that has been pulled up before its roots have taken hold in the soil, the youth have little previous life, and of that nothing remains. Before the warfare, the men had just begun to construct their life goals, but the combat cleared away these hopes, and hence, upon returning home, the young men will be misplaced in the world. Another statement that further expresses Paul’s lack of objectives is given when his comrades are inquiring about what Paul plans to do if he were to return from the war: “When [Paul hears] the word ‘peace-time,’ it goes to [his] head: and if it really came, [he thinks he] would do some unimaginable thing
For example, when an enemy soldier falls into a shell hole Paul is hiding in, Paul is forced to stab the man with his bayonet, and then has to spend the night with this dying Frenchman. Paul talks to the dying soldier and says, “If we threw away the guns, the grenades - we could have been brothers, but they never want us to know that.” These types of mentally traumatizing experiences cause Paul to no longer function as a normal human being. Another example is when he visits his hometown during leave, Paul is no longer the same happy person than when he had graduated. Even though Paul is not physically disabled, he appears to be mentally scarred and all of his thoughts revolve around war. The war itself, rather than the opposing soldiers, is the villain of the
Paul eventually receives leave and returns to home to his family in their little German town. He soon realises that he can’t connect the same way he used to with his family as a “a great gulf has opened up between then and now” (pg. 116) and “can’t find any real point of contact” (pg. 117). He struggles to have a conversation with his own family and has “no real relationship with [his father] any more” (pg. 114) because his father is only interested in war stories. Paul “can’t get back, [he’s] locked out” (pg. 119) from his own life and it becomes evident he doesn’t enjoy his leave and has a “terrible feeling of isolation” (pg. 119) that separates him from the rest of the world. Whilst being at the front, Paul and his friends question, “what will become of [them]” (pg. 60) when they return home. They become aware of the fact that their older comrades “Kat and Detering and Haie will go back to their old jobs” (pg. 60) whilst they never had one. It isn’t just their jobs however, Albert perfectly explains that, “the war has ruined [them] for everything” (pg. 61) because they are still children who “know nothing of life” (pg. 180) and are inexperienced. The war has taken away their “desire to conquer the world,” (pg. 61) their “knowledge of life is limited to death” (pg. 180) and they are “devoid of hope” (pg. 199). Paul’s lost connection with the rest of the world and the soldiers’ lives being ruined signifies that Remarque intended the novel to be interpreted as
During Paul’s time trying to survive behind enemy lines he says his comrades are “more to me than life… than motherliness… than fear; they are… the most comforting thing”(212). This further supports the fact that comrades are what help Paul traverse through the war, because just the thought of them helps him survive during this time. Paul says to Gerard that he is his comrade and he “did not want to kill (Gerard) (223). Gerard is his comrade because he suffers war just as Paul does and he calls him comrade to comfort Gerard and to take the fear from Gerard, his new comrade. During an attack Paul comforts a recruit who “like a child creeps under (Paul’s) arm, his head close to (Paul’s) breast.” (61). This is an example of how comrades help each other during times of battle and in this case it is by comforting which helps the recruit survive that