All Quiet On The Western Front Analysis Essay

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Recommended: Psychological effects of war on soldiers 2019

Chris Mages
Mrs. Robertson
20-2-18
All Quiet on the Western Front Analysis Essay
The Horrors of War
The horrors a soldier experiences on the frontlines is the stuff of make believe made real. There are certain novels that attempt to spread a message about these nightmares. The novel All Quiet on the Western Front is a story that follows a German soldier named Baumer, as he tries to survive the horrors of the western front. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front Remarque expresses the important theme, that war contains a horrible level of brutality that no person should ever have to endure. The theme, the brutality of war, is a very important message that Remarque tries to send to readers. It means that war is a horrific event that occurs, causing a massive loss of human life, while achieving nothing. More specifically, the theme means that people who experience war firsthand also experience a severe level of ruthlessness that some wouldn’t think possible. After being on the front for such a long time, Baumer explains that “war is the cause of death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery. The deaths are merely more frequent, more varied and terrible” (Remarque 271). This quote perfectly describes the horrors of war which the source of is the extreme ferocity. Massive amounts of life that …show more content…

Remarque tries to point out that it also destroys the lives of those who survive the war by breaking their mental state, giving them PTSD. This becomes very apparent in Baumer when he states that “I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow” (Remarque 263). Even if he survives the war, he will never be the same. The astoundingly cruel war turns him into a soulless husk of a man. So even if the war didn’t kill them directly, its brutality permanently changes all those who experience it for the

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