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How Is War Presented In All Quiet On The Western Front

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All is Lost in War Before World War I, war was glorified and many a young boy hoped of becoming a soldier. After World War I, war had been given a new darkness of scarring memories from veterans of the debacle. All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, and In the Field, by Tim O’Brien, help shed the light on this shade that looms over war now. In All Quiet on the Western Front and In the Field, common themes of lost generation and horrors of war are present in a bold fashion. The lost generation has become a theme of World War I as a whole. In All Quiet on the Western Front Remarque portrays this with ease. Paul reflects on his life and how “all [his] generation is experiencing these thing with him” (Remarque 263). Paul’s entire generation …show more content…

In All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul has seen the deaths of many and several other scarring scenes unfold in front of him. The use of flamethrowers is extremely dangerous and at the time they had just been invented. The operator was a walking bomb and if the flamethrower was shot “fire squirts about on all sides and the man burns” (Remarque 284). Not only did the soldiers witness death by bullet or shrapnel from bombs, but they also witnessed death by fire. A human burning to death is a horrific sight because they do not die right away but they struggle through a painfully slow death. The use of horrors of war is exhibited in In the Fields as well. O’Brien illustrates this field as a place where bad things happen from the beginning. The things the soldiers experienced and saw like when they were searching for Kiowa and found “an arm and a wristwatch and part of a boot” (O’Brien). After already coming to terms with the death of a camarade the soldiers also have the image of a disembodied limb and a boot from the very same camarade burned into their young minds for the rest of their

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