All Quiet Ont He Western Front Essay, Research Paper
All Quiet on the Western Front Essay
No man should ever have to experience the things that one does during the time of war. War is hell. A hell with such a dark and deep bottom that very few can make the climb back out and go on living like civilized people. All men are changed, never for the better. The bloodlust of such primitive urges that they would allow themselves to come down to the killing of another human being. War is senseless and no one truly wins.
The concept of war is a primitive and brainless one. With strategies such as trying to maneuver behind people in order to have a better chance of killing them is ludicrous. The whole concept of war started with the laziness and cowardice of leaders. When the first tribal leader sent someone else to fight for a cause on his behalf, humanity took a dramatic step downward on the road to lunacy. I am a firm believer in the teachings of Rousseau and of Henry David Thoreau and their concepts of transcendentalism. The concept behind this is that the human being is essentially good, but it is the shackles of the society around them that binds them to evil. Therefore, in order for a human being to be able to kill another, there must be some outside influence. Government has stepped up into this role.
All wars have started and ended at the will of the government of the fighting entities. Unfortunately, there are always those who feel such strong patriotism that they are ready, willing, and able to go into battle and die for their country. For those that don t do it willingly, the government has been able to step in and threateningly force them into defense. As you are continually taught that you have no choice but to kill or be killed, your natural human emotions are gradually worn away until the very primitive urge of survival overpowers everything. Any type of activity or thing that can wear you away to that point of your life where you are just fighting for your very existence, there is a problem.
Through the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque has wonderfully portrayed his lifelike and accurate views and ideas of the trials of war. His loose basis of a character about his life and war experiences shows a remarkable perspective from someone who isn t writing like a phony who pretends to know what the front is like. So when he shares his views about how war is hell are true and lifelike opinions, not like mine, which are based on no personal experience except pictures and accounts. No one can truly compare their account to one that is from someone who has been there.
Remarque also expresses his ideals of a lost generation very well. He believes that the things he sees and does during wartime permanently change a man. When you send people who are not emotionally or physically growing and expose them to things that even the most hardened man shouldn t see, it is a great loss of life, whether they survive the battles or not. Seeing such death and destruction changes the way a man thinks and acts forever. As the boys state in the novel, there is no way the can go back to civilian life and carry on a real job after they had gone through such training on trying to figure out the best way to kill another man.
Overall Remarque is greatly opposed to war. He talks of the terror, loss, and irony of everything surrounding it. The terror he shows through the feeling a soldier has before going into and after (if they are lucky) a battle. There is the terror of injury, and how seeing a surgeon could hurt more than it helps. There is even the terror of whether or not you will have a meal next time you are hungry because supply lines were always being cut off.
People suffered great losses, on the battlefield and off. When a soldier falls, so many people lose something because of it. A family loses a son, brother and nephew. Another soldier loses someone who could have been physically and emotionally supporting them through the tough time for everyone. Most of all, the government loses one more killing machine. Nobody wins, everybody loses. When a war is over, there is no definitive winner; there is just a multitude of casualties for both sides. The loser is the one who felt that their losses were sufficient enough to deem their opponents superior in the art of taking the lives of innocent men. War is life s contradiction, because it promotes only death and the scramble to survive. Not the peaceful tranquility one should experience along with the bliss of passage into eternity.
War has its great ironies too. The greatest irony Remarque expresses is the death of Paul at the end of the novel. After Paul has survived through so much, the day he dies is a day when all is quiet, and he is a fluke death. One of the wars finest, he fell in a muddy abyss of nothing, to serve no purpose, but to help defend a country that is willing to let him die in such a way. There is also much irony in the discussions of the group throughout the novel. They are always talking and thinking about their futures. Unbeknownst to them, none of the will go back to their lives at home and have a chance at a future. All die, except for one who wishes to kill himself instead of living in such away without a leg that will always remind him off his loss.
Remarque and I have pretty similar views on war. We both agree that is a futile attempt at a way to solve a problem that is actually between to single men. We both feel that war is pointless, that people only fight when put in a position of kill or be killed and instinct just kicks in to save yourself. We both agree that a generation is completely lost after experiencing the trauma of battle. That there is no return to regular life.
War is the beginning and the end of humanity. As we spend more time, money and focus trying to find a more powerful, more devastating and faster way to kill men, people are dying from hunger and disease; people are working to support families and don t care what the Russians think of what we are doing. We are spying and stealing military secrets, instead of sharing and spreading wealth and knowledge for the benefit of all mankind. War is pointless and futile. It serves no purpose, except that many lives are lost and changed forever. There is emotional and physical distress, expressed by soldiers and their loved ones. No one deserves to suffer the effects of war. May God save us from ourselves.