Irony is the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect. We see this a tremendous amount in the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel is a story based on one man, named Paul Baumer’s time during World War I. Paul joined the German army with his friends from school. The way Remarque portrays irony is perfect, as soon as you read it you sense that irony is being used. Irony is an important part in this story because it shows how Paul is battling himself, others and everything around him during the war.
No, they are not, all they know is that their son or brother is gone, and the only reason for their loss, is a war which is completely futile, a pointless war which destroyed an entire generation. The novel also talks about pointless attacks on the enemy that can only result in certain death. A specific example of this is Pages 172-175 of Private Peaceful. This is the section of the novel where Sergeant Hanley gives a direct order to a group of men to storm the enemy’s line in broad daylight, which can result only in death. When Charlie refuses to follow the order, he is sent to the
English; period 4All Quiet on the Western FrontIn the film, "All Quiet on the Western Front" directed by Lewis Milestone, it shows how the war has many brutal affects and it isn't worth fighting for your country and in the end dying, not a hero but as a forgotten angel. In the beginning of the film, the young men are being talked into going to war by a professor. The men are, at first, unsure of going to war but the professor feeds them lies about how war makes you a hero because you fight for your country. But throughout the movie each one of these men dies; and as they die, they are no longer remembered just forgotten; their bodies lying in the middle of nowhere. At one point in the movie, as Paul comes across a French man he gets frightened and he cowardly stabs him.
David Zheng Mr. Gutmann AP literature November 27, 2012 The Impact of The First Person Narrative Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, a fictional account of the Great War, articulates the individual’s struggle against overbearing forces outside of his realm of control. The various countries involved in the complex war, especially Germany, blindly lodge into a conflict so grand that a “lost generation” conceives. The corrupt yet patriotic members of the older generation in Germany impose their fatalistic ideals on the younger generation, which inevitably crumbles under the gruesome nature of war. In the wake of the soldiers walks death, which garners fear in them to the extent of taking up violence as a means to extinguish it. Remarque employs the first person narrative and allows readers to follow the accounts of Paul Baumer, an
Paul tells the horrors of the front-line in battle as well as about life in camp. The struggles and hardships Paul identifies show the reader in many ways the destructiveness of war and its lasting effects. The destruction of war is a theme that is identified in many ways throughout the novel. For one, the war takes away everything the soldiers have; there is no past or future. In the present, there is nothing but war.
The Horrors of War War has been around for many centuries from the very moment man started to become civilized. War has always been brutal and ruthless from the past all the way to the present. The epigraph of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” states an accurate statement about war always leaving a soldier physically and emotionally destroyed. One main reason that makes this story so good, besides it being story of how life of a soldier is, is that it is being told in a first-person point of view. Remarque did an excellent job explaining the dangers soldiers had to go through.
They do not ever want to show fear. Even after the war, the men still carry the grief of the war. Tim O’Brien carries the image of the young man that he killed, and it haunts him every day. Jimmy Cross tells Tim that he still has no forgiven himself about Ted Lavenders death. “At one point, I remember, we paused over a picture of Ted Lavender, and after a while Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he’d never forgiven himself for Lavender’s death.
Jake was willing to serve his country, and paid for it dearly. Jake was mutilated by the war, and because of his injury rendered impotent. In this sense the world broke Jake, and took his life from him. For a lot of men, losing something like what Jake lost is seen as a fate worse than death. After Jake was wounded, and was lying bandaged up in The Sun Also Rises the colonel gave him a speech saying, “you, a foreigner, an Englishman… have given more than your life!” (Ernest Hemingway, pg.
Paul and his friends experienced death scenes from the ones that stood by them since they stepped foot on the battle field to the ones on the other side. They thought war was glorious and honorable. They then realized war was just a brutal thing. What they repeatedly asked themselves was: “Then what exactly is the war for?” (205).
We see in the murder of the woman in the street that the sniper doesn’t seem to mind her shrieks of terror followed by the grim silence of death. It is not until his realization that he killed his brother that his character’s shift is revealed. We learn by his reaction of killing his “enemy” that he may not have been as aloof to death and comfortable with war as previously thought. He was described to have lost the passion of war, perhaps even questioning it’s motives. It’s clear that the author