Christine Rodriguez English 3H Ms. Moretti 31 Oct. 2011 Don’t Let the Bullets Define You “On the threshold of life, they faced an abyss of death.” Voted the greatest war novel of all time All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the main character Paul Bäumer shows subtle changes in his character. Barely an adult Paul heads off to fight in the war, trying to maintain his mental stability and not let the chaos of the war affect him. Paul Bäumer starts as a stage three then stays in stage four, the Conventional Level in Dr. Lawrence Kolberg’s Theory of Moral Development. Towards the end of the book he grabs onto the heel of stage 5 in Level 3, post conventional. Dr. Lawrence Kolberg believes that “as one’s intelligence and ability to interact with others matures, so does
Many of the results of physical pain were due to the oppressed environment and the very nature of war. The emotional injuries were encountered through the soldier’s constant struggle for survival. Soldiers were sent home after their tour of duty but many experienced post traumatic war syndrome; mentally and psychologically scarring these soldiers. In a war it is evident that wounds always remain for those who have experienced it. Physical pain is a primary ‘stereotypical’ effect of war which most people understand of being the broad result of war.
Trench warfare is the basis behind All Quiet on the Western Front. This novel was published in 1929 by Erich Maria Remarque. Remarque himself fought in World War I, and based some of his experiences in the book. After the rise of the Nazi regime, All Quiet on the Western Front, was one of the first books they burned because it was a betrayal to the soldiers who fought in World War I. One reason could have been the way the negative effects of war show through the use of Irony, Symbolism, and Metaphors.
The Nature of War on the Eastern Front 1941-1945 It is undisputable that the Second World War hosted some of the most catastrophic and disastrous theatres of war during its six years, however few come close to the brutality and scale of war that occurred on the Eastern front from 1941 to the conclusion of the war. Due to the geographical location of the start of the war it is only reasonable that the eastern front received the greatest morality rate between the German and Red Army and the surrounding countries such as Romania. Throughout these years the barbarity of the actions of both the German and Red Army has been studied relentlessly as well as the toll taken on the these armies during the last years of the war. The Eastern Front is set apart from the rest of the Second World War for a variety of reasons, mainly due to the actions of the German army, specifically the Wehrmact, and its role in the millions of deaths of civilians and soldiers alike, and the Germans lack of remorse. However many other factors come into play on this front, such as the extreme barbarism committed by the German soldiers against innocent civilians, the growing role of women in the military of the Red Army, and the over and underestimating of the opposing army’s all display unique aspects specific to the eastern front during the Second World War.
There are many opinions on war, it is one of the more controversial subjects and one with no clear cut answers about any of the matters that concern it. Thomas Merton's essay the root of war is fear, discusses the reasons for war beginning and the connection between lack of faith in God and lack of trust in one's self. This essay was written in 1961, after the two world wars had ended and the world was starting to get back to normal again. Thomas Merton is considered quite an inspirational man, having wrote over seventy books, which are mostly about spirituality and pacifism. Merton was born in Prades, France in 1915 - being born when World War One was in its infancy has more than likely affected Merton's view on war and the reasons why war begins.
The men and women currently deployed to these areas frequently engage in combat, and regularly witness injuries, trauma, and death. Even if a person tries not to internalize the horrific events they experience, they will likely be changed by war. Soldiers are negatively affected by combat; many return from war with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts. Some soldiers return from war with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. According to the article "What Is Combat PTSD?”, Diagnosing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can be hard because soldiers view reporting their symptoms as a sign of weakness (What, 1).
For Owen, the anguish brought about by war is manifest within the wretched psychological state of the soldiers embroiled in conflict. Owen depicts a view of the war that is undeniably bleak, illustrating a conflict that ensnares its combatants within a vacillating state of dull monotony and high tension. Within “Dulce et Decorum Est”, the reaction of simply “turning their backs” evidenced by the soldiers trudging in the “sludge” in response to the “flares” of the artillery, conveys a sense of their mental desensitization in the face of the repetitive nature of war. Rather than a more natural response of surprise and even alarm, these soldiers exhibit a startling boredom and disconnection from their reality. Here the descriptors “blind” and “deaf” – conditions that affect them “all” – are particularly apt; it is as if their mental faculties have been entirely dulled by a sordid routine of “coughing”, “fatigue” and the abrupt interjections of “Five-nines” dropping a knell of death behind them.
In the novel, ‘Regeneration’ by Pat Barker, the themes of horror and futility are significantly explored. As a result of the horrific events in the war, many soldiers developed psychological problems such as shell shock. In effect, many soldiers such as Siegfried Sassoon reacted against the war and the fact that it was futile, as the motives turned from ‘a war of defence and liberation to a war of aggression and conquest’. In his war poetry, Siegfried Sassoon shows the horrors of war through vivid imagery, and the futility of war, as non combatants such as civilians and generals do not understand what the soldiers experience at the front. In many ways, Barker’s ‘Regeneration’ contrasts with Sassoon’s poetry, due to the fact that the novel is written in the 20th Century, where the characters recount their horrors of war in the safety of Craiglockhart Hospital.
The mention of the coughing portrays the many illnesses that soldiers suffered from in the trenches. Although both of them present the war and soldiers as unheroic and cowardly, they do so in very different ways. The style of Owen's poetry, which is much longer and contains more description than that of Sassoon's, allows him to expand on the main points and simple description that he experienced during the war. In his poem, he describes in graphic and horrific detail the death of a man who was not able to fit his helmet in time during a gas attack. He uses words such as “flound’ring”, “guttering, choking, drowning”.
Not knowing what’s around the soldiers and the narrator makes them feel terrible. The concept of not knowing what’s going to happen always makes the soldiers believe that something horrible is going to happen. In the war, everything may happen in a single day. In chapter 4 ‘Back to the Round’, the narrator and company have to move around the trenches on their bellies because there is a sniper in the tree that causes a constant fear. Although they know there is a sniper, they still fear him because they cannot discern when he will shoot them.