The Great War And Modern Memory Essay

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With the Great War beginning over a hundred years ago in 1914 there are no survivors left to reflect or corroborate any first hand accounts of the war that ushered in deadly new practices like trench and chemical warfare. Paul Fussels book The Great War and Modern Memory explores not only the firsthand accounts but also literature to the subject published during that time. There are no shortage of war memories detailed in Fussels book, and many of them look into experiences had by soldiers during the war that are unique only to them. In a book that sets out to chronicle the memory of all of World War I why are these specific memories included? Obviously they are curated by Mr. Fussel, whose primary intention seems to be to give a well rounded …show more content…

Fussel describes this phenomenon in his book “’We’ are all here on this side; ‘the enemy’ is over there. ‘We are individuals with names and personal identities; ‘he’ is a mere collective identity” (Fussel Pg. 75). While this is certainly true, he forgets a crucial by-product of this idea, by lumping the enemy into the “them” category, the writer also identified that the troops, by lumping themselves into an “us” category, begin to lose their individual identities. While many soldiers could have deluded themselves by citing their friends on the front lines, they probably didn’t last long before those same friends limbs fell like rain around them, driving them farther into themselves in order to protect their mental well being. For all intents and purposes the longer time spent in the trenches, the worse this became, “Prolonged trench warfare, with its collective isolation, its ‘defensiveness’ , and its nervous obsession with what ‘ the other side’ is up to, establishes a model of modern political, social, artistic, and psychological polarization. “ (Fussel pg. 76). CONSISTANTLY BEING REFERED TO AS

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