“They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor.”…
The soldiers that were continuously pouring in were all muddy and wore blood stained clothes. The soldier’s faces pale and…
Through the eyes of the narrator Paul Baumer and the graphic use of language, Remarque, exposes the reader to the gruesome reality of the war. When Paul and his fellow soldiers have just been under attack by the French and the men have been exposed to the true horror of the war, Paul observes his own comrade being carried off after the attack. “Haie Westhus is carried off with his back torn open; you can see the lung throbbing through the wound.....” (p.g 93). Readers are confronted with disturbing images which turn many people away from war. The war does not only destroy the soldiers but also the animals that are involved in the war. This is evident when the horses have been wounded in an attack. “The belly of one horse has been ripped open and its guts are trailing out... wounded horses who have bolted in terror, their wide- open mouths filled with all that pain.... it is the most despicable thing of all to drag animals into war” (p.g 44-45). Furthermore, the men mostly speak about fighting the French and see them not as the enemy but as the victim. The war is the enemy and the armies are the sufferers. “We’re out here defending our homeland. And yet the French are there defending their homeland as well” (p.g 140). This scene was purely about the injustice war and it is also about propaganda. The novel outlines the fact that the soldiers are against their parents and their teachers. “These people here are different, a kind I can’t really understand, that I envy and despise” (p.g…
1.What happens as the soldiers are marching out to rest? What is the author’s reaction to these events and how is this reaction conveyed through the use of language?…
Fatigue. Explosions. Blood. Guts. Death. These are only a few of the horrid images that the World War I soldiers endeavoured. Serving in war is not for the faint of heart or those considered not able to stomach the sight of gore and dead bodies every step. In the story, All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, this story depicts these exact horrors during Remarque’s time spent on the German battlefront. Deaths are of the norm. Soldiers become immune to the smell of rotting bodies and bits and pieces of flesh everywhere. Although comradery is a positive aspect of war, corruption and lost youth outweigh comradeship, therefore making war a negative circumstance.…
During the Civil War the death is almost incomprehensible today. Between the years 1861 and 1865, the number of soldier fatalities is approximately equal the total American fatalities in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, Mexican War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War combined. Faust first reports death in the role of the soldiers experiencing the “business end” of war. “The soldier needed to be both ready and willing to die; turning to culture, codes of masculinity, patriotism, and religion to fortify himself for that possibility of death” (5). War challenged means and practices that were not to be quickly undertaken, and since many soldiers were killed suddenly in the intense action of battle, their comrades made efforts to write condolence letters to the deceased’s loved ones. Many of these letters were sought to make absent loved ones “virtual witnesses to the dying moments they had been denied.” Faust also gives us valuable insight into the human psyche in the process of killing.…
When Tom is in the forest, he finds a skull with a tomahawk in it. The part of the text where it says, “It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.”, it creates a sad and mysterious mood of the event that had taken place in that location sometime ago. The words, “dreary”, and “fierce” describe the event in a depressing way.…
Fatalities are part of every person’s life. To a normal citizen, death is often followed by sadness and grief. As portrayed in “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, a soldier has to deal with the situation much differently. Death is portrayed in a negative light due to the fact that soldiers are greatly fearful of it and that they are forced to be unaffected by death. In order to cope with all the deaths he witnessed, O’Brien uses the retelling of war stories to heal from these traumatic events.…
Throughout a war, many men will be titled as a casualty. The amount of death resulting from war is emphasized when the narrator says, “On the last day an astonishing number of English heavies opened up on us with high-explosive, drumming ceaselessly on our position, so that we suffered severely and came back only eighty strong” (Remarque 2). Just before this bombardment, the company consisted of 150 healthy men. Sometimes, other battles could be even more damaging to an army. Although the men were injured during the war, sometimes even the animals suffered. The pain endured from animals is shown when the narrator says, “Those are the wounded horses. Some gallop away in the distance, fall down, and then run on farther. The belly of one is ripped open, the guts trail out. He becomes tangled in them and falls, then he stands up again” (Remarque 63). It is so disheartening when one realizes how much these innocent animals suffered because of the war. Animals are not looking for violence or killing. They are merely there because they are forced to pay for everyone elses mistakes. The…
War is not only causes physical injuries, but emotional ones as well. Throughout history, soldiers returning from war have acquired emotional damage after enduring to the harsh conditions of combat. They suffer from illnesses such as PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress disorder, a disorder in which traumatizing experiences from the past still affect an individual to which they are unlike themselves anymore. Along with PTSD they suffer from moral injury, the pain that results from damage to a person's moral foundation. In All Quiet on The Western Front By Erich Maria Remarque and Thomas Hardy's’ “The Man He Killed” characters struggles with the emotional effects of war. Despite the internal struggle faced by Paul and the speaker from the poem, both…
I thought back to that faithful day. That face that still haunts me today. All those innocent people who died so that we may stay alive. He was nothing but a scholar, maybe. Years taken away from his life. He laid face-up in the center of the trail, a slim dead, almost dainty young man. His chest was sunken and poorly muscled. His one eye was shut, that I would’ve thought he was at rest if it wasn’t for the star-shaped hole in his other eye. His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone. The skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips. His neck was open to the world. The world that killed him. His rubber sandals had been blown off. One lay beside him, the other a few meters away. He lies there to forever be…
Owen reflects on the price paid by soldiers during wartime as he shows how the war takes away the soldiers lives. Owen describes the soldiers as being “Bent double like old beggars” this shows the price paid by soldiers as war has aged them. Owen then goes on to describe the soldiers as hags and wearing sacks. Instead of wearing smart uniforms they are now dressed like beggars in sacks. This again shows the price paid.…
Another way the author conveys the circumstances of war on a personal level is by communicating the psychological effects. He says, “…But his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic.” This shows how the sniper is excited about killing people and possibly dying in the process. That is not normal, so there is some sort of psychological damage. The author also states, “He began to gibber to…
“To die for something, he says, is better than to die for nothing – and that is, after all, the alternative.” These warriors legitimize themselves by showing off the virtues that are of necessity on and off the battlefield. On the battlefield they, without hesitation, instinctively act in the way needed to survive. Yet, simultaneously, they’re capable of analyzing the situation and absorb the fact that, ultimately, the cost of their duty is indeed with their own lives. When on…
of the battlefield imprinted themselves on the thinking of human beings who had, to come to…