Analysis Of La Grande Illusion And Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front
The Criticism of War and the Line of Duty in Renoir’s La Grande Illusion and Remarque’s
All Quiet on the Western Front
During the first half of the 20th century, humanity experienced two consecutive world wars that were among the deadliest in history. This was a new type of warfare that the world had never seen before. It had Napoleonic-style battles but, instead of muskets and swords, they used machine guns and tanks; which produced countless more casualties. This horrible period of tension and war left over seventy seven million people dead and countless wounded or lost. However, the few soldiers that survived were sometimes able to channel their postwar trauma into great works of art that show us the pure truth about war. Two good examples …show more content…
Remarque is trying to convey to the reader that war ages its soldiers quickly and steals away adolescence. There is no room for childhood and innocence on the front. We see this when Paul reacts to Kantorek’s letter and says “Iron Youth. Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? Youth? That is long ago. We are old folk,” (10). This is a very truthful and important quote because Paul isn’t shown as a young man; he is shown as older with almost no youth left in him. It is almost difficult to perceive him as merely a twenty year old boy because his tone and manner are so aged. The war has shoved him prematurely into adulthood. Another facet of war that Remarque shows us is the negative effects of war on a soldier. When Paul says “By midday what I expected happens. One of the recruits has a fit. I have been watching him for a long time, grinding his teeth and opening and shutting his fists. These hunted, protruding eyes, we know them too well,” (52), we see that soldiers have become accustomed to their fellow soldiers having mental breakdowns. The tone that Paul uses to describe all these events is so monotone and withdrawn that it’s disturbing. He is showing us what war is like without sugarcoating one aspect. He’s describing soldiers running across the front on their ankle stumps and having mental breakdowns as if he were describing the way the sun falls onto tree leaves because he’s used to all
All Quiet on the Western Front
During the first half of the 20th century, humanity experienced two consecutive world wars that were among the deadliest in history. This was a new type of warfare that the world had never seen before. It had Napoleonic-style battles but, instead of muskets and swords, they used machine guns and tanks; which produced countless more casualties. This horrible period of tension and war left over seventy seven million people dead and countless wounded or lost. However, the few soldiers that survived were sometimes able to channel their postwar trauma into great works of art that show us the pure truth about war. Two good examples …show more content…
Remarque is trying to convey to the reader that war ages its soldiers quickly and steals away adolescence. There is no room for childhood and innocence on the front. We see this when Paul reacts to Kantorek’s letter and says “Iron Youth. Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? Youth? That is long ago. We are old folk,” (10). This is a very truthful and important quote because Paul isn’t shown as a young man; he is shown as older with almost no youth left in him. It is almost difficult to perceive him as merely a twenty year old boy because his tone and manner are so aged. The war has shoved him prematurely into adulthood. Another facet of war that Remarque shows us is the negative effects of war on a soldier. When Paul says “By midday what I expected happens. One of the recruits has a fit. I have been watching him for a long time, grinding his teeth and opening and shutting his fists. These hunted, protruding eyes, we know them too well,” (52), we see that soldiers have become accustomed to their fellow soldiers having mental breakdowns. The tone that Paul uses to describe all these events is so monotone and withdrawn that it’s disturbing. He is showing us what war is like without sugarcoating one aspect. He’s describing soldiers running across the front on their ankle stumps and having mental breakdowns as if he were describing the way the sun falls onto tree leaves because he’s used to all