I don’t think that we’ll ever go back.” (Pg.86-87, Remarque)Kropp convinces himself that war does change a man after they come from battle. Nothing feels the same no more after coming back home and all you do and think about is regretting the things you did in your past. Paul even finds himself a different man after this war. “Speak to me- take me up- take me, Life of my Youth- you are care free, beautiful-receive me again- I wait, I wait. Images float through my mind, but they do not grip me, they are mere shadows and memories.
However, do they realize that he was only 17 years old and had a mother back home waiting to be comforted by his next letter home telling her he is alive. He will never feel the warmth of love or the restlessness of being a father. In the novel, Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut gives the world a wake up call, showing to them that there is no glorious victor or side, everyone suffers from the raft of war. Vonnegut uses his characters to express his anti war feelings. Vonnegut cannot express his feelings on the war and the Dresden firebombing directly because he believes “there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre” (Vonnegut 19).
In both poems life without war or before war is resented as unfulfilled and not glorious. In An Irish Airman Foresees His Death he uses the last line of the poem to compare his life before, during and after, ‘ A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death’. The use of chiasmus creates a crossing structure at the end of the poem. It creates a balancing of the claims of the future with the past in his mind and neither seems worthwhile what was in-between; serving Britain in world war one. Correspondingly in the Volunteer Asquith uses language to present the power and fulfilment of joining the war by saying that life before was ‘Half his life’’.
By the end of the short story, the narrator, who is a soldier in this war, , reports to the reader that the old man “got to his feet, swayed from side to side and then sat down backwards in the dust.”(3) This description is very telling because it reflects the inevitability of death when it comes to war. This is why the old man was unable to cross the
Sunny seems to be a direct parallel of K for Doc. Doc attempted to move out of Japan and forget the war, to retire in a picturesque town, but brought within him everything he physically left behind. The war was over but it still existed within him, and K was gone but he brought her back to life with the adoption of Sunny. He arrived in New York with no title, but soon adopted “Doc” as a nickname and runs his own medical supply store, both a clear, everyday reminder of his previous title in the war, with
A memory is the opposite of a dream. Because Charlie is focused on his memories and past, he is mindless of the future. The narrator portrays Charlie’s whiskey glass as, “empty”, and the sole word used to describe the way he feels is, “alone”. Both of these words have a depressing, negative connotation which implies that Charlie lacks the desire and motivation to keep himself focused on his future. Charlie feels as if his life has come to a halt, and that he has no sense of direction after being denied custody of Honoria: “There wasn’t much he could do now except send Honoria some things”.
"Last week he tried to commit suicide", "why? ", "he was in despair", "what about?" ,"nothing" (Hemmingway, 1926). This is saying that the old man may not have been having problems in life, and it would seem that he had nothing to be in despair about, yet he was old and had nothing to look forward to, nothing worth living for. In the story it tells how he has tried to deal with this despair
Neither understands having though, passion, feeling, or emotion in life. The Myth of Sisyphus helps explain some of the meaning of some of the events taking place in The Stranger. In The Stranger the main character Meursault takes life for granted in a way of not enjoying it. He seems more satisfied with the usual as if no excitement lives in his life. The death of his mother doesn’t even bother him so show sadness.
He does not see his alienation because he is so used to it. Gregors guilt kills him knowing he is now no of use. As the novel progresses, Gregor tries to rebuild himself that he had lost by living for others and ignoring his desires. He cannot, however, escape what he sees as his family duty, and continues to serve his family by doing his best not to trouble them Gregor manages to escape his sense of duty only in the last chapter, when he realizes that his family has been neglecting him. Gregor's search for his identity seems hopeless, but, because he never had an identity to start with.
The protagonist of The Outsider, Meursault, is estranged because he does not fit into the social norm. At the news of his mother’s demise, Meursault does not feel the agony that normal people do when hearing their parents’ deaths. His lack of emotion is further evinced by his sending his mother to the Senior’s House. In Meursault’s psyche, he feels that his mother is a burden to him. He thinks that the Senior House is a better choice for the both of them as his mother would be happier there.