Barbuse Life In The Trenches Analysis

Barbusse, Jünger and Graves all describe life in the trenches of World War I. Barbusse has an interesting way of describing the events that he is recounting, and seems to be writing his memoir as if the audience is with him at the scene that he is showing to us. Jünger, on the other, glosses over some of the horrors of the war, and instead likes to describe the changes that warfare has brought to the landscape that he is describing. In general, he is very descriptive, and has a preoccupation with the new technology of the war that is probably partially caused by the industrialization that Germany was undergoing before the outbreak of the war. Graves, does take the time to describe many of the horrors that he sees over the course of the
Jünger, although he talks about the deaths and the horrors of war, also has a heroic vision of the war that is absent from the two other authors that we are talking about. Stylistically, he also is much more descriptive about what he sees compared to Barbusse. He is somewhat in awe of the destructive power of the war, and can’t quit keep that awe out of his writing. This gives his writing a very different tone from the short, more script-like, writing that Barbusse uses in his memoirs. A good example of a description used by Jünger is this: “Artillery fire of a hitherto unimagined intensity rolled and thundered on our front. Thousands of twitching flashes turned the western horizon into a sea of flowers.” (Jünger, 673) This description is typical of a lot of the writing that he does in the section that we read. It describes the horrors of war, with very flowery descriptions. This section also points to another feature of Jünger’s writing: he seems to be preoccupied by the use of the new technology, and the affect that it is having on warfare. This is quite likely influenced by his perspective as a German. Germany, in the buildup to the war, had become increasingly interested in the growth of technology, especially that which was associated with warfare. Therefore, throughout this section he makes specific references to the use of many new technologies, and often references the idea that the destruction caused by this war was on a scale that was previously unimagined by the major powers of Europe. Therefore, this section points to the German preoccupation with both the new technology, plus the effects it had on warfare, and the grandiose ideas that many Germans had about the war that they were