After this hefinally realized he would not be able to enlist like everyone else and Gene snaps on him stating,“Phineas, you wouldn’t be any good in the war, even if nothing had happened to your leg.”(12.190) This leading into a blowout and Finny coming to senses with what Gene actually did tohim. That was the last conversation they
In order to emphasize the degree to which the soldiers in World War I changed emotionally, Paul juxtaposes the innocence of his youth with a primal instinct of desperate survival that forms from the brutality of the war. As time passes, each of the soldiers slowly loses his sense of self, specifically seen when Bäumer and Kropp, a fellow soldier, cannot seem to recognize themselves in a regular life in the future after the war. Kropp then interprets this as a loss of preparedness because of war. Paul seems to agree as he reminisces, “We were eighteen
One way Morpurgo demonstrates the conflict between the powerful and the weak is the situation on the battlefront. On the battlefront, Sergeant Hanley acts in a very harsh and a mean way, and he says to Charlie “You’re a blot of creation.” (Morpurgo, 117) This makes the impression of the battlefront very bad for the soldiers and causes them to have no control over anything they want to do. Everything has to be done lined up with the other soldiers, even shaving, inspections, sleeping, eating, training, etc. This leads to the Peaceful boys’
Alex is living through himself with himself only. He lives only by obeying to his own rules and the rules of nature but not following the law. Alex lives at his own interest. At one point, he is caught shooting a deer and is caught in between trouble because no Alex actually exists and also that he did not have a hunting license. When he Is finally let go he refuses to go get a hunting license because he believes that the government has authority to know Alex’s business and know what he hunts and what he eats.
“We were all talking about the space between us all and the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion. Never glimpse the truth – then it’s far too late when they pass away” quoted George Harrison, an English guitarist and songwriter. He meant that some people cannot handle reality, they need a way to escape and be what or who they want. However, when they create these illusions, they create distance between themselves and the real world (a space is made). And the only time people regret having that space is when their loved ones are gone; then they realize that they had something good.
In the first stanza we can see that the figure is “Groping along the tunnel, step by step” and in the third stanza we get the line “alone he staggered on…” These phrases point out the physical and physiological detachment, well known effects of intendance combat. Lastly I will be analyzing the novel All Quiet on the Western Front to look for a dehumanizing theme in the novel. Throughout the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, the young soldiers are affected by the war. Throughout the young soldiers time on the front, they are dehumanized and the also develop an animal instinct while they are completely abandoning their emotions and
(Sassoon, 12.) Similarly, lice and glum are used to describe the conditions of the trenches/front in "All Quiet on the Western Front". Remarque shows the trenches as hell for the soldiers, especially Paul and his comrades. The extent is more severe in "Suicide in the Trenches", because the soldier boy ends up committing suicide, hence the title. However,
It reminds him of his orchard at home and brings back all the feelings of happiness and joy. This image does not lead to rebirth, or to anything positive at all though. It merely causes Detering to lose his judgment and go crazy, he becomes desperate to return home. He suffers at the thought of having to stay on the front lines and tries to run away from the war. He is later found and court-martialed.
Both stories share similar themes throughout them, even though they are vasty different people, in different situations, and with different outcomes, they still have the underlying theme of changing ideals. Paul, in All Quiet on the Western Front, goes from being a young man to a hardened war veteran, whose conscience is full of killing and bloodshed and has naturally come to think like a soldier, rather than the youthful adolescent he was before. As Kambili goes through her life she is constantly abused by her father, as well as her brother too, this causes changes in both of them. Kambili becomes less fearful as her father dies, becomes more free and independent, she becomes her own person as she learns love, freedom, bravery, and to control her own life. Jaja, her brother, becomes a darker person after her father’s death, staying in prison for his murder, and hardens to become more silent and distant.
The title, ‘Exposure’, has two purposes: first, to expose the state of the soldiers to the readers and second, to describe how the soldiers were exposed to the daily horror and danger of the war. In the first line, the phrase ‘our brains ache’, refers to the trauma of soldiers who are always worried about getting attacked even during their sleep. Also, considering that most of the soldiers were young boys, this poem tells us what the soldiers might have felt, scared waiting in the trenches, which must have felt like actual hell. The next line, ‘in the merciless iced cast winds that knive us’, adds on to explaining the horror of soldiers by not only mentioning their mental condition but also that their physical conditions were not well as well. By personifying the wind, which ‘knive’ the soldiers, it shows that soldiers were faced to fight against the weather not just the enemy.