...The War’s Effect’s Towards Soldiers World War I was one of the most significant wars in U.S. history. It was significant because it created a gateway for new tactics, weapons, and it carved the way for a whole new style of warfare. In the book All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul Baumer, the main character, and his comrades go through horrifying experiences that affect them both physically and mentally. Throughout the book Paul shows how war is a dehumanizing experience, but he continues to find ways to make him more human by appreciating the little things that he didn’t notice before his previous war experiences. Throughout the war Paul witnesses things that make him more empathetic and compassionate. These specific war experiences have influenced Paul in both negative and positive ways. For example when Paul comes to realize that the Russian prisoners are suffering he suddenly shows sympathy towards them by, “I take out my cigarettes break each one in half and give them to the Russians.” (194) As Paul overlooks the violence and fighting of the war he realizes that the so called “enemy” is just another man fighting for the same reason as he is. Paul now has a new outlook on the war and he is showing a very unexpected sensitive side, which is most definitely him being “human”. During the intensity of the war Paul was holding nothing back while being in battle with the men shooting at them with no feelings or regret. As Paul now looks at the enemy...
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...Imagine being a soldier during World War I. All you hear are bombs going off in the distance, bullets being shot, and the smell of poisonous gas. In the movie “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which takes place in 1914 Germany during World War I, the protagonist, Paul Bäumer just graduated high school with his friends, who have all decided to enlist in the army after their teacher Kantorek persuaded them to join and help their country. They enlisted thinking it would only be three weeks of war, but instead it turned into three years. The boys were told that the war they were going to take place in is a life of great honor and respect. What they didn’t know was that by joining the war, they would encounter death, suffering, and despair. The...
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...enabled more effective, but cruel methods of killing opponents. These new technologies wiped out soldiers by the thousands within a matter of minutes, which many soldiers could not handle, ultimately leading to “shell shock” within the soldiers. All Quiet on the Western Front depicts these tragedies vividly, and by depicting the horrors of war, and how these horrors shape men around the war, it proves to be the greatest anti-war novel to ever be written. The greatest war novel of all time must have the most disturbing imagery of the horrors of war, and while walking through desolate woods, ravaged by mortars, Paul and his company stumble upon something truly horrific. In the branches of the trees, they gaze their eyes upon “dead men hanging” and a naked soldier sitting in the fork of a tree, with “only half of him sitting up there, the top half, the legs [were] missing” (Remarque 208). Despite this atrocious sight, Kat found humor in the situation, because he most likely died from a concussion. Here,...
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...All Quiet on the Western Front Juxtaposition Essay In any war, there are two separate and shockingly different perspectives: that of the warrior, and that of the average citizen. To those not actually fighting, casualties might seem simply a number while to the soldiers, they are a constant reminder of the price their friends, brothers and more often than not themselves are willing to pay for the protection of their country. In Erich Remarque's revolutionary novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque shows the world what is really like to fight a war. By juxtaposing seemingly polar opposites, Remarque shows the reality of war. Remarque weaves a substantial amount of war imagery into All Quiet on the Western Front, using this technique to further exhibit the appalling realities of war. Though all the general public might see is that a soldier has been injured, Remarque vividly describes how that injury came to be, saying, "His hip is covered with blood...If he has been hit in the stomach, he oughtn't to drink anything. There's no vomiting, that's a good sign. We lay the hip bare. It is one mass of mincemeat and bone splinters. The joint has been hit. This lad won't walk anymore" (68). Using graphic and striking adjectives, Remarque brings the reader into what a common soldier's train of thought in times of great stress. Due to the fact that Remarque's main character Paul is in the middle of a battle, his thoughts are few, though precise. Writing sections of a novel...
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...I wish I could send you some sort of picture so you could understand these horrid sights. I can’t even begin to talk about how dirty it is here. I mean, I’m no pretty princess, just take a look at my house, but this is no way to live. There’s dirt, mud, corpses, rats...just try to imagine living your worst nightmare, and that should give you a fraction of an idea of what I’m going through. Oh, the sight is only one element of it all! The smell too! Gah! I wish I were home breathing in the fresh air of the country. Its been months, yet I still haven’t gotten used to the smell. I never could have thought that such a foul smell existed. Believe me, I’ve smelled lots of foul things in my life, but nothing could compare to this. Oh, how those posters have lied to me. Telling me to be a MAN! Fight for the women who couldn’t fight. To fight for the good of my country. To fight because my comrades were. I’m such a fool, and now I’m going die for my actions. For all of my friends have already died from various reasons. Some in no man’s land, some from starvation, some from disease, some from the climate, you can presume the rest. I’m always wondering, why was I one of the lucky...
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...Violence is something that is very prominent and affects our world today in many different ways. Violence happens all over the world on a daily basis, and acting violent is very tempting due to this. People have many different drives to their violence, for example to fight for their own survival, to gain power, and to get revenge on others. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the epic poem The Odyssey by Homer, and the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, violence is a major theme. In All Quiet on the Western Front, soldiers in World War I have to fight for their own survival every day. In The Odyssey a soldier returns to his kingdom after a twenty year journey from the Trojan War only to have to fight to reclaim his throne and revenge on the people who attempted to steal it. And in Macbeth, a man cheats his way into becoming the king of Scotland and then kills anyone who he believes is a threat to his throne. Humans are driven to engage in violence when they are fighting for their survival, revenge on others, and for their own power. Humans turn to violence when their survival is at stake. In the novel All Quiet on a the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, main character Paul and his friends are fighting for Germany in the First World War. While Paul is scouting out enemy...
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...appearance. He wore the same armour and brandished the same weapons. Yet he did not conform with the unit of men before him. With an expressionless frown this man walked to the side the entity, examining the posture and positioning of every soldier. His eyes held no emotion, so one could only guess his opinion of the soldiers before him, and yet he remained staring. No soldier dared to move. In this man’s presence, it seemed like even blinking was a risk. Silence once again filled the valley. Though it was short-lived, as a new mass presented itself with thundering roars and laughter. Among the red tree line appeared an army of men covered from head to toe in fur wraps and dirt. They had more axes than men and more men than the troop in front of them. Their estimated numbers cold only grow as more men appeared from the forest that shielded them, who knows how far back into the forest this army of barbarians goes. Soon they stopped, staring at the group of tightly packed soldiers before them. A blood curdling war cry filled the sky where silence once reigned. This war cry should instil fear deep in the heart of any soldier… Should. Yet when the cry died, only silence took its place. Not a single grunt in response. The mass of black soldiers stood still, unwavering, basking in the silence. Their eerie stillness made some the barbarians uncomfortable, taunting was their tactic to raise morale, they expected a response. The black statues however, gave them nothing. Only one...
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...The door creaked open, and I walked inside, my grandma right behind me. The house was exactly like it was before; tall, warm, and welcoming. I still wondered how my grandmother managed to keep this big house so clean all by herself. The house was completely silent except for the footsteps of my grandma and me and the birds chirping outside. I sat down on a sofa in the living room, finally, at last, after all those tiring days at the army. After sleeping for about 2 hours, my grandma and I decided to mosey over to the garden. My grandma and I started talking about what the army was like. Suddenly my grandma asked me, “Wouldn’t it be great if the East Germany just let all the barriers fall and let us make our decisions for life by ourselves?...
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...All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, written in 1929, is in the perspective of a German soldier named Paul. This novel is based on World War I and follows Paul and his unit throughout the war. In the novel, it showed four different types of themes such as, universal brotherhood, comradeship, horror of war, and questioning of authority. After the end of World War I, most still thought that war was a good idea, but little did they know the horrific experience of the soldier and the large numbers of deaths from the war. Remarque using the four themes, made this novel to convey that fighting in war was not a good idea in hopes of preventing future war. Horrors of war is used to back up the main idea not to fight wars. Remarque shows the central idea when Kemmerich’s leg was amputated. Kemmerich was struck in battle with an intense injury and you can tell from descriptions that he is not doing too well. Kemmerich painfully and slowly died in the end. Another way the author makes the main idea more prominent was bombardments, a continuous attack with bomb, shells or other missiles. There was a lot of shots that hit and weakened the German army in this, like when Kat dies from the shrapnel splinter in his head, many other people died...
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...The first thing that I noticed upon my arrival in the trench was the rats. It seems to me that the soldiers devote an almost equivalent amount of time waging war on the rats as the Germans. The biggest difference is that they have a fair chance at defeating the Germans. Some of the rats are the size of cats- large cats. They have overrun the trenches and rage a form of guerrilla warfare that none of the men are prepared to combat. It is good for us that the rats are content for the most part to act as a nuisance-if they ever took up arms themselves than we should be severely outnumbered. The rats aren’t the only plague in the trenches, the smell is enough to make most men vomit-as I myself did when I arrived. The air is thick with the odors...
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...As we danced above the fires and wounded earth, I flitted about lightly, clouding the skies and welcoming our new kinsmen, born from those powerful bombs and humans chipping and plowing away at Mother Earth. A yell sounded and we swarmed with delight. While watching those now little pawns charge across No-Man’s land, a round of bullets were fired, and yelling, metal clanking, screaming, and all forms of chaos rushed forth. Sprays of blood and heavy bodies fell to Mother and clouds of us flew upward. The humans hacked and stumbled with tearing eyes as we poked fun at them before large masses of us settled down. I flew higher up in the tainted air and could feel myself slipping away too, but all was well, because we as a whole would live on. I melted and before I knew it, a bullet cut through our thinning cloud and we bounced back and dissipated. The winds are picking up! There’s acid eating away at an ash cloud up north. Ugh, that...
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...bloody war to spend my life sitting on dirt and muck to rot away as the rats grow fat! It is awfully quite these days. The damned Huns are hushed; as we, Frenchmen and British men act as if they are mute, not even daring to snore while we visit our dreamland at night. It seems as though any sound that disturbs the stillness would cause the gate to purgatory to open unleashing the demons of bloodshed to take us all away to the underworld; one of the demons succeeded in taking one of my friends last week. His name was Albert...
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...People look at soldiers as either heroes or killers. In the time around World War I, the Front soldiers are more like animals. In All Quiet in the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, the soldiers on the Front are faced with life or death situations and have to use their instincts to survive. Paul Baumer is the main character and has his group of friends that were convinced to join the military by one of their old teachers. They go into the war as young men who have a bright future and are doing this to be looked at as brave. These young soldiers are instantly mortified by the dramatic deaths taking place at the Front. They have to survive off of a small ration of food. The sad part is that the soldiers do not even get sad when people die,...
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...In the war novel All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul Baumer is a very significant character. Paul is a character that conveys Remarque’s experiences and point of view to the readers. Paul and his friends are faced with the intensity of the war, which causes them to disconnect their feelings and lose their emotions. Soon, Pauls lifestyle is shaped to be around war. The war diminished Paul and turned his life into constant suffering. Paul’s character undergoes a changes throughout the novel, when he is induced with the horror and anxiety of the war. Paul Baumer is a character representative of all soldiers because he faces the same difficulties a typical soldier would face. In the war, Paul had seen his close friends...
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...All Quiet on the Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque, is a seminal book that offers a vivid depiction of the horrors and struggles from the panorama of a young German soldier throughout WWI. The novel has had a widespread effect on literature, sparking reflections and discussions about the human fee of struggle, the mental toll on soldiers, and the futility of battle. The novel was published in 1929, simply over a decade after the end of the conflict, which had left a devastating impact on Europe. The conflict claimed tens of millions of lives, inflicted untold suffering, and reshaped the world in profound ways. Remarque, himself a veteran of the struggle, drew on his very own stories to create a raw and real portrayal of the brutal realities faced by...
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