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Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

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On June 28th, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot and killed by Gavrilo Princip of Serbia. The assassination of the Austro-Hungarian leader by a Serbian terrorist should have been an event of limited significance on the world but because of an ill considered alliance system it would become the direct cause of the single deadliest war on the European continent until World War 2. The allied powers, Great Britain, France, and Russia, battled it out against the central powers, Austria Hungary, Germany, and Bulgaria. This became the backdrop to the German classic All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The book deals with the short term implications and hints at the permanent injury war causes. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder …show more content…

Veterans returning from the front, some with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or others with more debilitating conditions may have been unable to fully contribute to their community and economy. In many ways, had these men not gone to war, the men may have been able to head more productive lives. In the opening of the second chapter of All Quiet on the Western Front , the narrator, Paul Baumer is venting about the romanticism of war versus the reality they are experiencing and speaking about how the older men deal with it, “They are able to think beyond it, we however are gripped by it. … We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a wasteland. All the same, we are not often sad.”(Remarque 20). Paul talks about how the older man have lives back home, and thus are able to “think beyond” war, it doesn’t define these men, it is just a part of their duty. For the younger men, however, since they haven’t had time to develop any real significant identity out of war, it has become a part of who they are. They have become like the war they are fighting, evident where he calls the younger men a wasteland, like the area they are fighting in. Saddest of all, the men have lost the ability to feel emotion, even though

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