“The sound of the gunfire from the front penetrates into our refuge. The glow of the fire lights up our faces, shadows dance on the wall. Sometimes a heavy crash leans to shivers.” (Remarque 94) Winston Churchill may have been thinking about how life was a constant living hell for the soldiers that fought in World War I when he said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” That is exactly what the soldiers did in Erich Maria Remarque’s novel and Lewis Milestones selfsame named movie, All Quiet on the Western Front. The brutalities of war not only destroyed these men physically, but mentally. These soldiers lost their sense of humanity and could not experience reality like they did before they went to war. When the author says, “We reach the zone where the front begins and become instant human animals.” (Remarque 56) he wants the readers to realize that the second the soldiers were on the front they lost all sense of humanity. They lived in conditions that were mucky, fetid, and infested with disease. The English Oxford Dictionary defines an animal as “A person without human attributes or civilizing influences, especially someone who is very cruel, violent, or repulsive.” The author chose the word animal because an animal does …show more content…
“We have lost all sense of other considerations because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important to us.” (Remarque 21) Many of the younger men hoped that the war would not end because life after the war was not a fact. They were scared to face reality because it is the opposite of what they have trained for. The older soldiers had something to go back to; they had families, and jobs. Meanwhile, the younger men had nothing, some may have had girls to go back to, but at such a young age, they were not sure if they really loved them yet. They were trained to listen to facts, and how another person felt was not a