Mrs_Z_Garanito

ESSAY 1 1. DESPITE THE OPENING DECLARATION BY REMARQUE OF IMPARTIALITY – THAT THIS BOOK WAS NEITHER AN ACCUSATION NOR A CONFESSION – IT WAS IN FACT BOTH. WRITE AND ESSAY OF 500 WORDS IN WHICH YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THIS STATEMENT SUPPORT YOUR OPINION WITH EVIDENCE FROM THE TEXT. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT “The book is intended neither as an accusation nor as a confession, but simply as an attempt to give an account of a generation that was destroyed by the war – even those of it who survived the shelling.” I agree.... I see this novel as for what it was intended; many have their own ideas and have drawn their own conclusions regarding the novel. But Ii see this novel as a testimony and it speaks for all soldiers. Thus I agree with the opening statement (declaration). Remarque was sixteen when the First World War broke out and he was called up for military service on 26 November 1916. After his training he was sent to a position behind the Arras front. During the offensive in Flanders Remarque was wounded by British shell splinters and he was taken to a military hospital in Duisburg. During this time Remarque got firsthand experience of the war and he thus applied these findings to his novel; whereby he highlights the horrific reality of the First World War. Remarque’s novel in fact deals with the political and social upheaval in Europe during the First and Second World War. The horror of war and its effect on the soldiers are emphasized. The novel brings forth the gruesome reality of the war and how the soldiers experienced it. In the novel the narrator Paul describes the events in the first person creating a realistic picture of how they unfolded. He started by how his friends and he got to sign up as volunteers. Their schoolmaster Kantorek expressed the fact that it was their patriotic duty to sign up and he filled their young minds with ideologies by saying that they were “Iron youth” and he kept glorifying them as heroes. After being in the war and witnessing death and the death of their closest friends they began to despise Kantorek for pushing them to join and exposing them to the horrors of war. Paul endured seeing his friends suffer and fighting for their lives and in the end paying for their lives. Poor Behm was the first of his friends to pass after being shot through the eye, thisshattered Paul and his friends. Kemmerich’s death made Paul realise how meaningless death actually was and how life during the war was cheap. He gives an example of the cheapness of life in the novel where he refers to “Kemmerich’s boots”. Whereby the boots continued to outlive their owners. Paul often recalled his life before the war and he realises how empty and cynical he feels and that he learnt more hard lessons being a soldier than he did in a decade at school. Their generation is often regarded as “the lost generation” because they were cut off from life just as they had begun to live it and deprived of having had a job and a family. The war has become their entire lives. Paul feels that he is cut off from humanity and his only feeling of love and loyalty was to his fellow soldiers. Remarque emphasises throughout that the soldiers cut themselves off from their own feelings in order to endure the hardships, horrors, dehumanization and a tragic end of one’s life inthe war. He quoted that the war strips one of one’s humanity. In the novel Paul and his friends voice their opinion of the war and they regard the war as being pointless and that one man has more power over another man coming from top in their hierarchy right up by the front. The graveyard scene emphasises the dehumanization of the war; where it blurs the boundaries between the living and the dead. Paul’s reaction to the front stripped the romanticism out of war and the experience thereof. Here he expresses the fact that a soldier fights for his life rather than for honour and glory. Paul and his friends revealed that they had no post-war plans and that they enlisted straight after schooland they were termed the “lost generation”. The older men had jobs prior to the war and they could return, however for the young lads, they knew no other work besides being a soldier and fighting for their lives. In the novel, chapter six is a gruesome chapter where it fuses it all together and it focuses on the soldier’s physical repulsiveness, gore, psychological drain on their animalistic savagery of the battle this points a realistic picture of the trench warfare and the combat in World War One. Further more besides the war there was the psychological events that took place whereby Paul’s romantic idealization clashes with the reality of war when he seeks refuge in the arms of the enemy – The French woman. In chapter eight the patriotic, nationalistic ideals of war is emphasised and brought to light when Paul guards a POW camp with Russians prisoners. Here he sees the Russians as peasants and not as the enemy and not as an abstract force that threatens his fatherland. He sees the Russians as no different or less human than German peasants. In this chapter Remarque implies that the shared experience of humanity is more basic and morally relevant than nationalism. Paul realises as time progresses that the irony of war is that soldiers on either side have been sent to fight on exactly the same ideals. And due to these realizations it was difficult to distinguish right or wrong. Here he concludes that war is only useful for power seekers who have never experienced combat themselves. Soldier’s traumatic experiences brought on the harsh conditions and they were scared for life. Here they highlighted that the war wasn’t only for killing but also seen in a historical point of view, that the killing was anonymous and it was conducted for away at the front this brings forth the dehumanising factor. Paul kills a French soldier Gerard Duval in hand to hand combat; both soldiers are forced to see that they are the source of each others fear. By being in contact face to face, Paul realises and understands the true cost of taking another humans life. This event causes Paul to suffer a traumatising experience and the only way he deals with it is to cut off his emotions. Here one can say that most soldiers from any country might experience the same emotional breakdown as Paul. This refers to a generalization and all soldiers can relate. In chapter ten we explore how humanity can survive horrors of war, furthermore the brutality of war is seen in the hospital scene and this is where Paul and most other soldiers as well as us the audience understand the actual meaning of the war rather than the idealistic patriotism and honour. The final chapters of the novel arefilled with the irony and it reflects on the lives of the soldiers prior to the war and that they no longer can imagine a peacetime existence afterwards. The soldiers share a bond with one another however they also have a character bond between each other like fellow convicts sentenced to death. Here the war has become like a mental prison for them and therefore it adds a romanticized ideal of comradeship. One also sees that their individual identities no longer have real meaning to them and that they are like coins that can be replaced and only their identity is that of a German soldier. They know that they are losing the war and they are starting to crack under the pressure. Here one of Pauls friends, Detering is homesick cracks under shell shock and deserts the unit. During World War One the penalty for deserting the German army was punishable by death. Detering met his end as a traitor. This was for the same country he was defending. AQWF portrays soldiers fighting to stay alive and not due to patriotism. Most of the soldiers in the end died only within the last few months before the peace agreement and this hold an irony because even though some soldiers in Paul’s generation survived they were declared as lost because the war portrays the conflict as having symbolically eradicated an entire generation. The narrator in AQWF speaks as the first person throughout and then in the end he shifts from first to third person telling us about Paul’s death. This highlights the cruel reality of the war to light. This novel emphasises that a soldiers death means nothing and you are simply refer to as “Quite” and that their mortal sacrifice for empty ideals and nationalism and patriotism that forced them into war was meaningless and in vein. In the twentieth century we are still finding these aspects of dehumanisation and senselessness. Currently in Iraq British soldiers are facing these circumstances and shortages. IN MEMORY OF ..... On the 06 August 2009 the last Tommy of World War one was buried, he died at the age of hundred and eleven years old. His name was Mr Harry Patch who fought in the trenches. He witnessed firsthand the brutality of the war when three of his friends (mates) were killed before his eyes and he was wounded by shrapnel in his groin. He never spoke of the horrors till recently and he always protested against the war. He quote that the trench war was brutal and filled with horrors and futility. He said; that the war wasn’t worth single life, irrespective of our uniforms we all (all armies) wore, we were all victims. “The war is a legalised death sentence to all soldiers!” He didn’t want to have a state funeral for he saw himself as an ordinary man. They sang the anti-war song “Where have all the flowers gone'” Based on the afore mentioned quotes from the novel AQWF and the spark notes I personally believe that the War is unnecessary and it is a disgrace that so many innocent soldiers and civilians were killed in cold blood due to some politicians’ idealistic view on PATRIOTISM.