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All quiet on the western front essay effects of war
Conflict in all quiet on the western front
Emotional effects of war on soldiers
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Paul and his comrades face many mental and emotional difficulties throughout the war, and they overcome their feelings by coming to terms with their death. In chapter 2, Paul’s reaction to Kemmerich’s death shows how death in war is hard on soldiers. When Paul sees Kemmerich dying, his thoughts start to take over his consciousness: “My thoughts become confused. This atmosphere of carbolic and gangrene clogs the lungs, it is a thick gruel, it suffocates” (Remarque, pg. 29). Here, Paul reveals his anxiety about death and war. In this moment he realizes his friend is dying from the wounds of war. The war hits home for him; he begins to realize this could happen to him. After Kemmerich’s death Paul wishes to “drop down and never rise up again” so that he doesn’t have to face his feelings (Remarque, pg. …show more content…
Already knowing how it’s been going on out on the battlefield they’ve become so used to seeing what traumatized them in the front. They couldn’t imagine having a future. In chapter five Paul expresses his feelings, “All at once everything seems to me confused and hopeless.” (Remarque, pg. 87). All Paul has experience is pain, death, horror, and hopelessness after trying to help Kat from his wound. As Paul comes to peace he’s finally out of pain, and fear all he ever wanted was to not suffer any longer, he then died in peace and calm without feeling the pain of death. “Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me. I am so alone, and without fear” (Remarque, pg.
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 were 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 starts to be fired at by the enemy. They manage to get through the shell unscathed, but they hear a horse that has been shot.
Paul told the story of the war as it happened to him. The reader is taken from the front line, to a catholic hospital, to his home while he is away on leave. His story tells of the sacrifice the soldiers gave defending their country. It also tells of the difficulties of losing friends, killing another man, and going day after day without much, if any, sleep. He died in October of 1918, just before the war ended. His death was described as this, "...his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."
Erich Maria Remarque, in his book All Quiet on the Western Front,demonstrates the horrors of war and the suffering, both mentally and physically, of the soldiers that are involved. Throughout the book that character and his friends are all in the and feel like they don’t have a purpose for fighting in the war. Every once in awhile one of his close friends dies. With each death all of the surviving characters think more and more about the reality that they face. Neer the end of the story, Paul and his friend Kat are the only ones of the group left. Kat was shot in the shin and Paul carried him all the way back to the medical tent over his shoulder. When Paul puts him down he realized that Kat
When Remarque writes in the point of view of Paul, he can explain a lot about what is going on and how his friends and himself feel about it. That is how Paul expresses the theme of how bad war really is, by his storytelling. Multiple times in the book Paul recalls memories and how the war has changed them because of terrors he has seen and those memories will never be the same. “After I have been startled a couple times in the street by the screaming of tramcars, which resembles the shriek of a shell coming straight for me, someone taps me on the shoulder” (Remarque 165). This quote shows how normal things of everyday life has changed and Paul knows it is most likely going to stay that way if he gets through the war
Once the war started Paul questioned the reality of what people would think of them when they returned home, “What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing;--it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us,”(264). The men that went into war, joined at such a young age that to them it feels as if their whole life has been taken over by war. As Paul discovers the realities of war, he questions what will come out of him when he gets home. His life for such a long time as revolved in killing, while other 19 year olds were going off to college or jumping into the business world, Paul along with millions of others, were left to deal with death and violence. The entire time they were away they missed out on the progression within their societies, their youth-hood, and coming to full development mentally and physically. World War One destroyed the lives of soldiers, creating a generation of lost
And so it would seem. [They] had as yet taken no root. The war swept [them] away … [The men] knew only that in some strange and melancholy way [they] had become a waste land” (20). Early in the novel, Paul has already decided that he and his troop of young men have been destroyed by the war, as a plant that has been pulled up before its roots have taken hold in the soil, the youth have little previous life, and of that nothing remains. Before the warfare, the men had just begun to construct their life goals, but the combat cleared away these hopes, and hence, upon returning home, the young men will be misplaced in the world. Another statement that further expresses Paul’s lack of objectives is given when his comrades are inquiring about what Paul plans to do if he were to return from the war: “When [Paul hears] the word ‘peace-time,’ it goes to [his] head: and if it really came, [he thinks he] would do some unimaginable thing
Paul eventually receives leave and returns to home to his family in their little German town. He soon realises that he can’t connect the same way he used to with his family as a “a great gulf has opened up between then and now” (pg. 116) and “can’t find any real point of contact” (pg. 117). He struggles to have a conversation with his own family and has “no real relationship with [his father] any more” (pg. 114) because his father is only interested in war stories. Paul “can’t get back, [he’s] locked out” (pg. 119) from his own life and it becomes evident he doesn’t enjoy his leave and has a “terrible feeling of isolation” (pg. 119) that separates him from the rest of the world. Whilst being at the front, Paul and his friends question, “what will become of [them]” (pg. 60) when they return home. They become aware of the fact that their older comrades “Kat and Detering and Haie will go back to their old jobs” (pg. 60) whilst they never had one. It isn’t just their jobs however, Albert perfectly explains that, “the war has ruined [them] for everything” (pg. 61) because they are still children who “know nothing of life” (pg. 180) and are inexperienced. The war has taken away their “desire to conquer the world,” (pg. 61) their “knowledge of life is limited to death” (pg. 180) and they are “devoid of hope” (pg. 199). Paul’s lost connection with the rest of the world and the soldiers’ lives being ruined signifies that Remarque intended the novel to be interpreted as
For example, when an enemy soldier falls into a shell hole Paul is hiding in, Paul is forced to stab the man with his bayonet, and then has to spend the night with this dying Frenchman. Paul talks to the dying soldier and says, “If we threw away the guns, the grenades - we could have been brothers, but they never want us to know that.” These types of mentally traumatizing experiences cause Paul to no longer function as a normal human being. Another example is when he visits his hometown during leave, Paul is no longer the same happy person than when he had graduated. Even though Paul is not physically disabled, he appears to be mentally scarred and all of his thoughts revolve around war. The war itself, rather than the opposing soldiers, is the villain of the
From the beginning, Paul has felt constant fear of death, horror, suffering and hopelessness. Hoping there is a future, Paul and his friends often predict what the future might give. One of these prediction includes Paul’s prediction of what the French do to the German prisoners who carry bayonets that obtain a saw on their blunt edges: "Some of our men were found whose noses were cut off and their eyes poked out with their own saw bayonets. Their mouths and noses were stuffed with sawdust so that they suffocated" (Remarque 103). Remarque uses this imagery to attack the horrible way the opposing sides treated their prisoners. This description makes one think of how devastating and inconsolable the war was and how it changes a person perspective of war. The comrades start to lose their interest in everything but war after being surrounded by constant fear of death and suffering. Smothering throughout the novel, the war gradually changes the attitudes and thoughts of the soldiers toward going home. The loss of generation emerged by being through persistent isolation, violence and disillusionment of the German soldier during World War I. Paul elaborates on the fear everyone gets when hearing the suffering cries of the injured horses at the front : "We can bear almost anything. But now the sweat breaks out on us. We must get
Paul says, while Kat and him are roasting the goose, “we have a more complete communion with each other than even lovers have.” (Remarque 94). This shows the strong and unbreakable relationship that forms during the war; and it is stronger than love, and without it they would surely die. Espirit de corps is described as “the finest thing that arose from the war.” (27). This shows that the common goal of the war is what has unites them and brings them to overcome it. The death of Kat destroys Paul and afterwards Paul “know(s) nothing more” (129) and he soon dies afterwards. This shows the importance of comradeship because without it a soldier cannot
“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. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another (263).” Powerful changes result from horrifying experiences. Paul Baumer, the protagonists of Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front utters these words signifying the loss of his humanity and the reduction to a numbed creature, devoid of emotion. Paul’s character originates in the novel as a young adult, out for an adventure, and eager to serve his country. He never realizes the terrible pressures that war imposes on soldiers, and at the conclusion of the book the empty shell resembling Paul stands testament to this. Not only does Paul lose himself throughout the course of the war, but he loses each of his 20 classmates who volunteered with him, further emphasizing the terrible consequences of warfare. The heavy psychological demands of life in the trenches and the harsh reality of war strip Paul of his humanity and leave him with a body devoid of all sentiment and feeling.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul is morphed from an innocent child into a war veteran who has a new look on society. Paul used to have a carefree life where he was able to be a kid, but when he enlisted into the army it all changed. Paul became a person whose beliefs were changed because of the war. Paul doesn't believe in society anymore especially parents, elders, and school, which used to play a big part in his life. He changed his beliefs because society does not really understand how bad war really is and pushed many young men, who were not ready, into the army. Paul connects with his fellow soldiers because they are going through the same situation and feel the same emotions. Paul's beliefs were changed by the lies that were told to him.
People who have actually been through war know how horrible it is. Society on the other hand, while it believes it knows the horrors of war, can never understand or sympathize with a soldier’s situation. The only people who can understand war is those who have been through it so they can often feel alone if they are out of the military. Paul cannot even give a straight answer to his own father about his dad’s inquiries about war. Paul’s dad does not understand that people who have been in the war can in no way truly express the horrible things that that have seen and experienced. Nor can Paul fit in with the society who does not understand him. Paul and so many others were brought into the war so young that they know of nothing else other than war. Paul held these views on society as he said, “We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered;-the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall in to ruin.
After entering the war in young adulthood, the soldiers lost their innocence. Paul’s generation is called the Lost Generation because they have lost their childhood while in the war. When Paul visits home on leave he realizes that he will never be the same person who enlisted in the army. His pre-war life contains a boy who is now dead to him. While home on leave Paul says “I used to live in this room before I was a soldier” (170).
Remarque describes Paul’s expectation of war and the reality of war by stating how Paul always thought fighting in a war is a honorable and noble thing to do so ("Mrs. Jernigan's Class Discussion." ). The reality of it turned out to be horrible. He realized it was all just a cliche. He watched his comrades die in pain. Paul grew up to be a compassionate young man, then he became a person who is unable to mourn the deceased, and unable to express his feelings, nor be around his family. “Paul’s experience is intended to represent the experience of a whole generation of men, the so-called lost generation…” (SparkNotes).