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Impact of war and conflict
Two kinds of literary analysis questions
Two kinds of literary analysis questions
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1) On page 271 Paul says “We have almost grown accustomed to it; war is the cause of death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery. The deaths are more frequent, more varied and terrible.” Why does Paul compare war-related deaths to disease-related deaths? Why are war-related deaths so common like the other kinds of deaths?
Tuberculosis, influenza, and dysentery are all very deadly diseases which were very common in the 1900s. It’s terrible that war-related deaths are just as awful. Paul is so used to the deaths in war that he compares it to deaths from diseases. Everyone is accustomed to the thought of death because so many people have died. Death is a motif in this novel because it has happened so many times that it won’t be a surprise if it occurs again. Many
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“Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.” Paul dies with a smile on his face. Why would Paul be happy if he has died?
Paul has gone through a lot and he has suffered a lot, so he is glad that now he won’t have to endure any more pain. On page 293 Paul says that he is the only one left from his class. This means he has seen all of his friends die which must’ve left him traumatized so he’s glad that he won’t have to go through the pain again. Paul is finally at peace and that’s what he wanted all along. On page 296 the narrator is no longer Paul because he has died. The new narrator describes Paul’s death as a fall and nothing more. The new narrator’s diction is very casual to Paul’s death because death is so common.
3) On page 296 the narrator says, “He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.” Why does the narrator say "All quiet on the Western Front” and what does it
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...
In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, the quote “A hospital alone shows what war is,” (263) has so much meaning to me. In my mind, hospitals are places where people get healed and become better. However, this hospital as well as other hospitals during the war make patients feel worse instead of better. Before Paul arrived at the hospital, I assumed it would serve as an escape from the terrors of war. Instead with all of the other ill soldiers surrounding him including his friend Albert whose leg was amputated, were constant reminders of how gruesome and horrific the war truly has become for Paul. This quote reveals the larger theme of survival in the novel because the entire novel Paul fought to stay alive, especially in the hospital.
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.
Soldiers faced diseases like measles, small pox, malaria, pneumonia, camp itch, mumps, typhoid and dysentery. However, diarrhea killed more soldiers than any other illness. There were many reasons that diseases were so common for the causes of death for soldiers. Reasons include the fact that there were poor physicals before entering the army, ignorance of medical information, lack of camp hygiene, insects that carried disease, lack of clothing and shoes, troops were crowded and in close quarters and inadequate food and water.
All Quiet on the Western Front shows the change in attitudes of the men before and
“No, I never had any experience in nursing,” said one; “but one just nurses, doesn’t one?” (pg 139). This quote would give readers an idea of what kind of aid that was given to the injured. The inexperienced nurses do not have proper training in safety and may cause the injured to only get worse. This would then lead to infectious diseases, such as smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria and more. “ Smallpox, scarlet fever, scarlatina, diphtheria rated along the great roads and in far villages, and already there were cases of cholera, which was sure to spread with the coming of the summer in the that devastated land; where battle fields, villages, and roads stank with lightly buried dead, and the streams were polluted with the bodies of men and horses,” (pg 143). Thus this would cause readers to have a negative view on the war due to lack of trained nurses and infectious diseases spreading.
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.
In conclusion, the point of view in paul’s case provides a sort of feeling to this story that could not be shown. If the point of view where any different, the readers would not understand why paul killed himself or why he enjoyed frustrating his teachers and making people nervous. Or why he was so kind and let go at the theater. Who would not know the reason he stayed awake all night in the basement rather than just go to his room and confront his father.
All Quiet on the Western Front includes many clear-cut examples of irony throughout the duration of the novel. From word play in the names of the characters that led to dramatic irony, to the paradox that is obvious in the setting, and finally the situational irony that is critical to the impact of the character’s death on the reader, Remarque provides depth to the novel and the emotional connection that the reader has to the characters in the book.
...ly he went home, back to his hostile environment, never escaping reality. Paul refused to give up on his dream and refused to go back to reality. Instead of giving up his dream on a glamorized, extravagant life, Paul gave up on his average life and killed himself.
Around the end of the story, Paul decides to run off to New York for a week to finally live his dreams. However, by making his dreams a reality he exposes himself to something he wasn't prepared for, the truth. At first, everything is all Paul ever wanted it be. He is able to finally live life as he sees fit. He spends his money without care, and is able to live up to all his lies. (Although this reaches its climax when Paul meets a young man in the street), "The young man offered to show Paul the night side of the town, and the two boys went out together after dinner, not returning to the hotel until seven o'clock the next morning" (Cather 11). After this, Paul's fake reality falls apart quickly. Faced with the reality that he will have to return home, Paul decides to take his own life. Instead of ending it quickly with a gun, he decides to go a different route, "When the right moment came, he jumped. As he fell, the folly of his haste occurred to him with merciless clearness, the vastness of what he had left undone. There flashed through his brain, clearer than ever before, the blue of Adriatic water, the yellow of Algerian sands. He felt something strike his chest, and that his body was being thrown swiftly through the air, on and on, immeasurably far and fast, while his limbs were gently relaxed. Then, because the picture-making mechanism was crushed, the disturbing visions flashed into black,
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.
On page 227 paragraph 13 it says, “I saw you face down Erik and those other guys, and I saw Arthur Bauer hit you with a blackjack.” This choice impacts Paul because Luis was someone that Paul cared about and to know that it was Erik and his friend Arthur that hit Luis that caused Luis’s death, will cause Paul a lot heartache and emotional pain. But this inevitably makes Paul stronger because now he has the drive to somehow get back Erik for all the horrible things that Erik has done. On page 245 Paul is very distraught because he finds out that Luis has died and knows the reason why. This bothers Paul an incredible amount that he even goes home early from school. This shows that Erik’s choice affected Paul because Paul will forever acknowledge himself as Erik’s little brother, the brother of the person that killed Luis Cruz and this is something that will take Paul a long time to get
...l’s legs and forearms, and the river’s rapids colliding with rocks. The viewer is shown that this is a battle between two giants; two entities that Norman has, and will, never fully understand. In the end, Paul is swept underwater, and reappears in a calm part of the river, holding the fish high in celebration. The river is tamed, and Paul is finally victorious in his rebellion. This is the final scene of Paul in the film, and he dies in a bar fight of which the details are not fully disclosed.
At the beginning of this chapter, Paul reflects back on how the war abruptly uprooted his life and the lives of his comrades. He ponders how the war has destroyed the lives of the men of his generation because they no longer have anything to return to. He acknowledges the fact that the war swept him away and now he doesn’t know what he can make of his life. He and the other men have become, in his words, wastelands. Even with all of the mental anguish they endure, the men are not often sad. In this paragraph, the reader is introduced to the frame of mind that the men are in.