Question 3: Analysis & Application: What is the MAIN theme of each story? Prove the importance of these themes with examples from the novels. Where do you see these themes occurring in self, society, OR history?
Millions of people have gone through life-altering experiences in their time in World War I. In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Bäumer, a 19-year-old German soldier, narrates his personal memoirs of this war. He describes the mental change and suffering he goes through as he is forced to mature from a young boy to a soldier in order to survive, leaving him permanently scarred from the throes of war. By employing juxtaposition to contrast Paul’s mindset, before and after the war, Remarque demonstrates how the mental health of the World War I soldiers is damaged because of the abrupt loss of their youth, leaving them in a state of survival and mental instability.
1. What do you find is the most crucial in the plot in Chapter 1?
All Quiet on The Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque, is a novel composed after World War One to convey the experiences of German soldiers during this horrific time of fighting. He brought to light many important issues that occur during wars. In this book, three horrors of war that had the largest impact were the lack of sanitation in the trenches, the loss of comrades, and the shock that came from unexpected and ongoing shelling.
My historical novel is titled Sunrise over Fallujah. The Author 's name is Walter Dean Myers. This book is a sequel to his earlier book Fallen Angels. This book centers on Robin “Birdy” Perry and his new life joining the United States army. Robin is from Harlem, NY and was living a normal life until the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He felt as if he was obligated to serve in the military to defend his home and his country. His father was outraged and was against it but his uncle understands his decision to wants him to defend the country. His father has no choice but to respect his decision even though he doesn’t like it. On the plane going to the U.S. military base in Doha, he meets a few of his fellow soldiers. They all have conversations about
“War is hell” was said by General William Tecumseh Sherman, there is no expression quite as short that captures the image of war, and he said this quote as he was on a mission to raze the South to the ground. At the beginning of the book Paul is a hopeful soldier. It will end only as what you would expect of watching all of your friends die and spending years at the front. Erich Maria Remarque wrote All Quiet on the Western Front to show us the horrors of war, and in vain to teach us lesson, that we finally realized by WWII. The story follows the life of a 19 year old schoolboy pressed into service by his teacher, trained in 10 weeks in a barracks, then learns the reality of war through experience. Throughout the novel, you can watch as he
All Quiet on the Western Front is narrated by Paul Bäumer, a young man of nineteen who fights in the German army on the French front in World War I. Paul and several of his friends from school joined the army voluntarily after listening to the stirring patriotic speeches of their teacher, Kantorek. But after experiencing ten weeks of brutal training at the hands of the petty, cruel Corporal Himmelstoss and the unimaginable brutality of life on the front, Paul and his friends have realized that the ideals of nationalism and patriotism for which they enlisted are simply empty clichés. They no longer believe that war is glorious or honorable, and they live in constant physical terror.
All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque is a story of a young man named Paul Bäumer who volunteers to be a soldier in the German army during World War One. Being at a very young age Bäumer, and three of his friends whom also enlisted to the German army from the same school he attended, felt proud when enlisting “we were a class of twenty young men, many of whom proudly shaved for the first time before going to the barracks” (AQOTWF p.21). Very soon, however, Bäumer and the young men he enlisted with begin to feel indifferent and embittered of being in the army “At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent.” (AQOTWF p.21/22). Joining the army for Bäumer changed the way he felt about everything he knew in the past, and the way he thought of the people who stayed back home. Bäumer said that as soldiers they “saw that there was nothing of the world left.” (AQOTWF p.13) and that they “were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.” (AQOTWF p.13). Meaning that Bäumer knew that people back home wouldn’t understand what they had gone through so they had to see it through alone, together as soldiers. As if they were different from the people who stayed back home.
Brutality and images of war are abundant in this book, giving the story a feeling of reality. From the first few pages, it reveals that Second Company has made it out of a battle, losing close to half their men. Soon after, we see a detailed description of Kemmerich’s death, a fellow soldier injured and amputated before the beginning of the story. The way his fellow soldiers reacted, not with apathy yet not with unbridled misery, immediately sets the tone for the book. Other scenes throughout the
In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the young men in battle quickly learn that the war is a awful, destructive force that ruins lives. The boys, who are pressured by their teacher to join the army for glory, soon discover that the war is not glorious, but rather devastating. Paul, the narrator of this novel, goes through a lot of pain as a result of this war. The war destroys Paul and his friends’ lives, both physically and mentally.
Have you ever mentioned the subject of child soldiers in a standard conversation? Most likely not. Child soldiers are not an everyday discussion topic, but recently they have grown more and more popular. While in the past, “children were not particularly effective as front-line fighters since most of the lethal hardware was too heavy and cumbersome for them to manipulate” (unicef.org), weapons have become lighter, and younger infantries have followed suit. While childhoods usually don’t consist of shooting people, taking villages, and other awful acts of war, they can, and this physiologically impacts a child. However, although the acts that child soldiers carry out may be horrific, they can still be forgiven and the children can be reconciled.
Before World War I, all of Europe in 1914, was tense and like a bomb or a fire was waiting to erupt. Europe had not seen a major war in years, but due to Militarism, Imperialism, Alliances, and Nationalism tensions grew high. Each country was competing to be the best by gaining more territory and growing in their military size and successful economies. World War 1 was waiting to happen and the assassination of the Archduke was the spark that lit Europe up. In All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque we see the effects of the assassination. In the story, the audience, is immersed in a typical Germans soldiers life when going to the front, waiting to go to the front, injured, and when on leave. The audience is shown the terrible experiences the soldiers experience and the emotions that they feel in many
When first writing in my journal I struggled with how deep to go with my discussion questions and what I should be asking my classmates. I feel that I have struggled with this because I lack confidence on what I am trying to prove or say in my writing. When reading in the past I have never pushed myself to question the author’s purpose or ask questions that invoke much thought. Up to this point in the year writing in my journal as well as annotating in the text, has helped my reading and writing immensely. My journal this year mostly contains quotes from texts and points from in class discussions that I felt were useful to understanding the novel and its purpose. I do not journal as much as
From 1914 to 1918 World War One occurred due to the murder of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by a Serbian group named the Black Hand. Additionally, several powerful countries, including Germany, France, and Britain, established a series of alliances that amplifies the size of the war. Likewise, the war expanded by the strong nationalist beliefs of each country, therefore a countless amount of men desired to fight the war, in order to support their country. This sense of nationalism is a theme explored throughout Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, through the lense of a young German Soldier. The protagonist, Paul, a 19 year old soldier, explores the horrors of war through strong comradeship, the death of companions,
The First World War was a lengthy and brutal affair that claimed the lives of over 17 million individuals. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, its effects were equally as ferocious on the intellectual front, where it marked a turning point in the clash of European intellectual values. Philosophers such as Nietzsche had already challenged established institutions of Positivistic thinking toward knowledge and progress; however, his movement lacked widespread support. It was the disaster of WWI that accelerated their movement by inspiring culture-wide undermining of prior intellectual beliefs through newfound uncertainty: authors such as Erich Remarque and Vera Brittain drew upon sudden doubt underscored by the war to completely reverse prior thinking by breaking down pre-war notions of intellectual