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All Quiet On The Western Front: An Analysis

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I am considering the good and the bad of silence. A friend of mine, a Vietnam veteran, was shot in the head. He was blinded for a few months. Eventually his eyesight returned, but ever since 69, his eyesight has been fading. About to retire, he worries about going blind.

“I still wonder what my friends died for. Why were we there?” he said. Sitting at my desk, I think of him as I hold the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. In this novel, a private asks his sergeant, “What are we dying for?”

His sergeant answers, “We die so the emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, can believe he is powerful.” In the 60s at an antiwar gathering, the speaker said, “My fellow soldiers are dying for American business’s profit.” What does my friend think about that?

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