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All quiet on the western front critiques
Emotional effects of war on soldiers
All quiet on the western front critiques
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The theme in a story is a message or lesson that the author wants the reader to take away when reading the story. These themes can teach the reader lessons, get points across or help them understand the book better. All Quiet On The Western Front displays the themes: the horrors and destruction of war and the effects on soldiers, sacrifice, loss of innocence, and friendship.
Because All Quiet on the Western Front is about among soldiers fighting on the front lines of battle, one of its main focuses is the disastrous effect that war has on the soldiers who fight in it. These men and women are subject to constant physical danger, as they are well aware that they could literally be blown to pieces at any given moment. This intense, physical threat also serves as an unceasing attack on their nerves, forcing soldiers to handle difficult situations with initial, instinctive fear during every waking moment. Additionally, the soldiers are forced to live in deplorable conditions—in filthy ditches full of rats, decaying corpses and lice. They frequently go without food and sleep, decent c...
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.
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.
Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front gives you detail and insight into the long, destructive “Great War”. Quickly, romantic illusions about combat are disintegrate. Enthusiastic teenage boys convinced to fight for their country by their patriotic teachers came back feeling part of a lost generation . This novel teaches us what a terrifying and painful experience World War I was for those fighting in the trenches on the front.
use nature as the judge to condemn war, along with shocking imagery, so that his
Everyone knows what war is. It's a nation taking all of its men, resources, weapons and most of its money and bearing all malignantly towards another nation. War is about death, destruction, disease, loss, pain, suffering and hate. I often think to myself why grown and intelligent individuals cannot resolve matters any better than to take up arms and crawl around, wrestle and fight like animals. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque puts all of these aspects of war into a vivid story which tells the horrors of World War 1 through a soldier's eyes. The idea that he conveys most throughout this book is the idea of destruction, the destruction of bodies, minds and innocence.
One of the main themes in All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is Futility of War. The novel takes place during the Great War and takes place in France. Paul Baumer is the main character in the book along with many of his friends. In the book the theme of futility of war appears in the beginning, middle and end of the novel and Baumer slowly becomes more aware of what war is really like.
Just envision you were a soldier running, ducking, and dodging bullets. The heat from exploding grenades burning the back of your neck, having to hide in wet, smelly, muddy trenches in order to survive. The only way to keep in touch with your family and friends is by writing a letter, not knowing when they will receive it or if they will even write back. Imagine having to carry a large amount of weapons, for example: machine guns, pistols, grenades, flamethrowers, or rifles. Now, we are lucky that's only a vision in our minds, because in 1914, that was reality for the soldiers of World War I. the author Eric Maria Remarque used these visions and facts in hi novel titled All Quiet on the Western Front. The question to be answered is; did the characters and setting of this novel deeply portray the time period of World War I or did Remarque make everything up?
In the novel All quiet on the western front by Erich Maria Remarque one of the major themes he illustrates is the effects of war on a soldier 's humanity. Paul the protagonist is a German soldier who is forced into war with his comrades that go through dehumanizing violence. War is a very horrid situation that causes soldiers like Paul to lose their innocence by stripping them from happiness and joy in life. The symbols Remarque uses to enhance this theme is Paul 's books and the potato pancakes to depict the great scar war has seared on him taking all his connections to life. Through these symbols they deepen the theme by visually depicting war’s impact on Paul. Paul’s books represent the shadow war that is casted upon Paul and his loss of innocence. This symbol helps the theme by depicting how the war locked his heart to old values by taking his innocence. The last symbol that helps the theme are the potato pancakes. The potato pancakes symbolize love and sacrifice by Paul’s mother that reveal Paul emotional state damaged by the war with his lack of happiness and gratitude.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that greatly helps in the understanding the effects war. The novel best shows the attitudes of the soldiers before the war and during the war. Before the war there are high morals and growing nationalist feelings. During the war however, the soldiers discover the trauma of war. They discover that it is a waste of time and their hopes and dreams of their life fly further and further away. The remains of Paul Baumer's company had moved behind the German front les for a short rest at the beginning of the novel. After Baumer became Paul's first dead schoolmate, Paul viewed the older generation bitterly, particularly Kantorek, the teacher who convinced Paul and his classmates to join the military. " While they taut that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already that death-throes are stronger.... And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone, and alone we must see it through."(P. 13) Paul felt completely betrayed. " We will make ourselves comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted. Life is short." (P 139) Views of death and becoming more comfortable with their destiny in the r became more apparent throughout the novel. Paul loses faith in the war in each passing day. * Through out the novel it was evident that the war scarred the soldiers permanently mentally. Everyone was scared to go to war when it started.
What is irony? Irony is a figure of speech in which the intended meaning is actually the opposite of what is expressed by the words the author used. This technique is used to ridicule or mock a particular subject by expressing laudatory remarks, but implying contempt and denigration. There are several examples of irony in the novel _All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front_ by Erich Maria Remarque, a realistic, yet fabricated account of a soldier's experience in an international war. The lighthearted irony quickly transitions into dark satire with the use of dramatic irony, the setting, and situational irony to mock the glorification of war and introduce reality.
Through the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, novelist Erich Maria Remarque provides a commentary on the dehumanizing tendencies of warfare. Remarque continuously references the soldiers at war losing all sense of humanity. The soldiers enter the war levelheaded, but upon reaching the front, their mentality changes drastically: “[they] march up, moody or good tempered soldiers – [they] reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals” (Remarque 56). This animal instinct is essential to their survival. When in warfare, the soldiers’ minds must adapt to the environment and begin to think of the enemy as objects rather than human beings. It is this defensive mechanism that allows the soldiers to save themselves from the feeling of guilt, yet also desensitizes them and causes the loss of humanity. At one point, Paul states “we have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation…No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves, to save ourselves and be revenged” (Remarque 113). All Quiet on the Western Front admonishes both the horrors of combat and its dehumanizing tendencies by showing soldiers, regurgitated by the machine that is war, turned into animate objects incapable of emotion.
Why is it we give authority to certain people? What allows us to test them? In the book All Quiet on the Western Front Remarque questions what power we put into figures of authority from seeing how they view Kantorek, the Kaiser and Himmelstoss.
Many of Remarque’s ideas expressed in All Quiet on the Western Front were not completely new. Remarque emphasized things that portrayed the magnitude of issues soldiers face, and how the physical body and senses affects their emotional well-being. The ideas in All Quiet in the Western Front of not knowing the difference between sleep and death, seeing gruesome sights of people, and frustration towards people who cannot sympathize with soldiers, are also shown in Siegfried Sassoon’s “The Dug-Out”, Giuseppe Ungaretti’s “Vigil”, and Sassoon's’ “Suicide in the Trenches”.
All Quiet on the Western Front - A Book Review Professor’s Comments: This is a good example of a book review typically required in history classes. It is unbiased and thoughtful. The student explains the book and the time in which it was written in great detail, without retelling the entire story. a pitfall that many first time reviewers may experience. All Quiet on the Western Front is the story of Paul Baumer’s service as a soldier in the German army during World War I. Paul and his classmates enlist together, share experiences together, grow together, share disillusionment over the loss of their youth, and the friends even experience the horrors of death together.
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, is a classic anti-war novel about the personal struggles and experiences encountered by a group of young German soldiers as they fight to survive the horrors of World War One. Remarque demonstrates, through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier, how the war destroyed an entire generation of men by making them incapable of reintegrating into society because they could no longer relate to older generations, only to fellow soldiers.