Character Analysis: All Quiet On The Western Front

In the novel, Tomorrow When The War Began, by John Marsden is about eight teenagers who confronted a situation that is out of their security and are trying to save their families. Fi, Homer, and Ellie are few of the characters that showed courageousness in the novel; finding out their unknown courage, taking risks, and not giving up to everything that happens. It is some of John Marsden’s message about courage. The characters also demonstrate it while they were in conflict with the soldiers who invaded their town and imprison their families in the Showground.

World War I was a brutal and murderous fight. Over 38 million people suffered casualties. There were 17 million deaths and around 20 million soldiers were wounded during the war. Soldiers showed courage by fighting and learned how important it is to trust other men. They faced hard conditions and suffered many injuries. In the novel, All Quiet on The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque portrays the main character, Paul Baümer, as a superior comrade, a smart decision-maker, and a brave soldier.

We were all sitting around the lunch table, and then suddenly my two friends Briaden and Joel started fighting each other. I tried to see why they were fighting when I noticed a bag of chips between their clashing bodies. They were fighting for a bag of chips! Both of them looked like barbarics de-evolutionised back to their primal instincts to fulfill their one craving, hunger. The need to fulfill a hunger for something brings out the darkest in all of us. This correlation is what can cause a society to turn bad and against one another.

When it comes to the novel, Lord of the Flies, some of us will readily agree that the boys’ immoral and savage acts exposed at the end of the novel, demonstrates the evil that lives naturally within humankind. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of was the cause for the boys’ immoral and savage conducts a biological or an environmental factor. Whereas some are convinced that biological factors are to blame, others maintain that the situation or the environment is to blame for their behavior. In my own view, both factors are to blame for the boys’ immoral and savage behavior, but the environment the boys’ where force to live had the most impact on their actions.

As I was choosing which 8 point project to do, a friend in the class suggested researching Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. Prior to this assignment, I actually had not heard about this experiment. After researching this happening, and reading the full story, as written by Dr. Zimbardo, I, in all honesty, immediately began to feel ill. How could people be so horrible to one another? How could the people portraying the guards live with themselves after treating the prisoners so poorly? There was so much that happened here that was so, so wrong, all because of power. In this paper, I will be explaining why this experiment could not, and should not, be conducted today.

This article concerns the Stanford Prison experiment carried out in 1971 at Stanford University. The experiment commenced on August 14, and was stopped after only six days. It is one of the most noted psychological experiments on authority versus subordinates. The studies which emerged from this have been of interest to those in prison and military fields due to its focus on the psychology associated with authority.

It has been said several times throughout history that human nature is constitutionally a negative force. This is further shown in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies when numerous young boys aged twelve and under are stranded on an island after a plane crash during World War 2. These children abandon all civilization and grow more savage as the literature progresses. The main boys: Ralph, Simon, Piggy, and Jack change exponentially throughout the novel, gradually losing themselves and any culture they had. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, depicts human nature’s inherent evil and man’s inability to escape it.

In “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Erich Maria Remarque makes the protagonist also the narrator of the novel; his name is Paul Baumer. In this writing, I will start of by telling you about Paul Baumer, his appearance and his bigger ideas and feelings towards life. Then I will explain a little about what he went through in the novel. Finally, I will give a few examples of literary elements that are noticeable.

Are humans born savages? Yes, humans are born savages; and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies proves this. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding shows the kids’ return to their natural state of savagery as they drift further and further away from civilization. Civilization is just a facade and inside each and every human there is the basic instinct of survival, and that drives the savagery within. Everyone is capable of stabbing, shooting, or murdering someone, however, everyone has their own trigger… for some, it might be jealousy or envy and for some, it could be pure anger. Since humans are born savages everyone has an evil lying within, therefore when something happens that triggers that evil the human will resort to their natural sense of savagery because that is their nature and because civilization is just a concept that keeps us from showing our true selves.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that, “envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide.” (370). John Knowles’ A Separate Peace is set during World War I at Devon School, a boarding school for boys. The book centers on Gene Forrester, a student at Devon, who could be described as an intelligent, but jealous, conformist. A Separate Peace illustrates Gene’s envy and imitation of his friend, Finny, and how it affects himself and his relationship with Finny, and also how Gene eventually finds peace.

Whether working with a co-worker, learning with a classmate or hanging out with a friend, the thought of any of them having the potential to be evil does not cross the mind. Everyday people are not typically evil beings, but if people are not evil beings then why do they commit actions like torture, killing and genocide? Could it be that the certain people committing the acts are just monsters deep inside, or could the actions be mere products of circumstance? In his article "The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror", Crispin Sartwell, a journalist and philosopher, advises his audience to take a look at the heinous acts people have committed throughout history as a way to show us how anyone could commit evil acts, including ourselves. Marianne Szegedy-Maszak,

themselves if they are malicious like shown in the short stories The Cask of Amontillado, The

Why do humans commit evil acts despite good intentions? It is due to the flaws that each human possesses, be those flaws major or minor. Good intentions always have the opportunity to become corrupted depending on how a person acts on them. In the novel Lord of the Flies and the anime Death Note it is made evident that humans are flawed creatures holding equal opportunity for good and evil.

Humans have the ability to be evil inside them ever since birth; and British Literature is a good analysis on how evil is presented in people’s lives and how people ‘become’ evil, such as how Grendel and Macbeth become evil in their respective stories. There are many theories on why people act evil, including theories from, Hannah Arendt, Elaine Pagal, and Thomas Hobbs. Most of the theories say generally the same thing. Evil is essentially a part of a human’s character and nature, and the evil inside of one can be triggered by a number of things, such as self interest and being influenced to do evil.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a 2006 novel by author Max Brooks, which depicts a post apocalyptic world, in which numerous aspects of daily life have completely transformed. The transformations occur in environmental, political, and social structures as well as religious and economic aspects. To fully become aware of all the transformations the narrator travels to numerous parts of the world to collect the testimonies of dozens of survivors.