Comparison Paper #1 I will be comparing “All Quiet On the Western Front” and “Saving Private Ryan”. These war stories show us how war makes us view others and ourselves. Sure it may be easy to view someone else as nothing more than an object, but to view ourselves as nonhumans is hard and takes a lot of demoralizing and dehumanizing. Dehumanization is the mental ability to view someone as less than a human, to not view them as worthy of human treatment or rights. This is an ability that we use to make it easier to find aggression against enemies and kill them. Some things that soldiers view enemies as are dogs, targets, or animals of many kinds. This not only makes the pain of killing easier but it also makes you feel like you are stronger
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In one scene when CPT Miller and his team finally finds PFC Ryan. PFC Ryan was with a team that was given the task to protect a bridge at all cost. PFC Ryan has orders to return home because three of his brothers have already been killed in action, but Ryan rejected their orders and said “These are my brothers, these are the only brothers I have left”. This is a great scene of humanity because it makes you see how strong the bond is between these soldiers. Ryan is saying that these people are like his new family. And we all understand family and friend connections. In “All Quiet On the Western Front”, toward the end, Paul and Kropp end up in a Catholic hospital because Kropp is injured and Paul doesn’t want to leave him. Some time passes and we meet Lewandowski, a 40 year old soldier in the hospital. He has been there for 10 months and is excited because his wife is coming and he hasn’t seen her in 2 years. He says to the soldiers that he wants to make love to her when she gets here. The soldiers say that they will make it happen. When his wife gets here they wait around until he asks her, she blushes. The guys already know the plan so they make noises and guard the doors to avoid interruption from the nuns. This shows how we have human needs to reproduce and have sex. These are needs that all humans feel. And the fact that the soldiers helped by guarding and making noise means that they understand that too. After the sex scene, they are all going to bed and Lewandowski’s wife is coming around and saying goodnight to the men. They call her “mom”, I believe this is also a way for them to feel human again by connecting to another human and making themselves feel more
In one scene when CPT Miller and his team finally finds PFC Ryan. PFC Ryan was with a team that was given the task to protect a bridge at all cost. PFC Ryan has orders to return home because three of his brothers have already been killed in action, but Ryan rejected their orders and said “These are my brothers, these are the only brothers I have left”. This is a great scene of humanity because it makes you see how strong the bond is between these soldiers. Ryan is saying that these people are like his new family. And we all understand family and friend connections. In “All Quiet On the Western Front”, toward the end, Paul and Kropp end up in a Catholic hospital because Kropp is injured and Paul doesn’t want to leave him. Some time passes and we meet Lewandowski, a 40 year old soldier in the hospital. He has been there for 10 months and is excited because his wife is coming and he hasn’t seen her in 2 years. He says to the soldiers that he wants to make love to her when she gets here. The soldiers say that they will make it happen. When his wife gets here they wait around until he asks her, she blushes. The guys already know the plan so they make noises and guard the doors to avoid interruption from the nuns. This shows how we have human needs to reproduce and have sex. These are needs that all humans feel. And the fact that the soldiers helped by guarding and making noise means that they understand that too. After the sex scene, they are all going to bed and Lewandowski’s wife is coming around and saying goodnight to the men. They call her “mom”, I believe this is also a way for them to feel human again by connecting to another human and making themselves feel more