Maria Licciardi

Thousands of people join our military and risk their lives to fight for their country. After many years of fighting in war soldiers are no longer who they used to be. When they return home they are looked at, treated badly, and are not given the treatment needed to recover. The struggles and obstacles these veterans face on their journey home and once they arrive forever face. In the epic poem, Odyssey by Homer, it shows the obstacles a soldier has to face on their journey. Odysseus and his men…

Joe Haldeman once said, “No person can escape Einsteinian relativity, and no soldier or veteran can escape the trauma of war's dislocation” (“Joe Haldeman Quotes.”). This means that the trauma of war is as inescapable as Einstein’s laws of relativity. The authors of these books explore the inevitability of war’s trauma throughout their works. In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, the authors use the rhetorical devices of imagery, similes,…

When Coyotito, Kino’s son, is stung by a scorpion, Kino and his wife , Juana search for a pearl in order to have money to pay to the doctor to heal Coyotito. Turns out, they finds a very large pearl, The Pearl of the World that will lead him to selfish ambition. As the Pearl is found, word about it spread immediately and people began having ambitions about the Pearl. At first, Kino simply wished for his family to have clothes. Gradually, he began to wish for more and more. Kino’s pride begins to…

Sheers’ poem Mametz Wood is based on the 38th Welsh Division soldiers who were sent to fight in France when they unexpectedly died in Mametz Wood, as the Germans were prepared to kill on the other side of Mametz Wood. The Battle of Somme began. This was a singular part of World War I and killed 4000 people. This battle took place between 7-12th 1916. By using language features such as oxymoron, metaphor and plosive alliteration, Sheers can convey the impact and violence of war that these…

cradle. His body collapses, his hands remain suspended as though he was praying. Then his body dropped clean away and only his hands with the stumps of his arms, shot off, now hang in the wire” (Remarque, 112). All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is the story of a young man named Paul and his comrades in World War One. Paul and his comrades suffer through all the horrors of war and are changed by the war and its terrors. In the book, Paul and his fellow soldiers are injured…

world and their concept of war. In Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, he shattered the idea of war everyday citizens had by telling the story of a platoons journey in gruesome detail and unveiling the truth about the horrors of war. Erich Maria Remarque’s primary war experience enabled him to compose a raw war story about his own experiences…

Why does World War I stand out so much when compared to past wars? It is because World War I is the first modern occurrence of total war. Total war, as the name implies, takes over every aspect of the lives of the people involved, stretching farther than just the battlefield. This is what Paul Baumer finds himself thrust into, as he struggles to tread the line between giving his life, figuratively and literally, to the German army, and ensuring his personal survival and the survival of his best…

The character of youth is debatable. To some, youth is a state of carefree naivete. To others, youth is a state of savagery, the condition of humankind before they are tamed by civilization and order. In All Quiet in the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the protagonists are 20 year old young men with no life experience. They are characterized by a sense of cluelessness to the world’s cruelties and vigor for life. Tragically, the youths’ innocence is what causes them to be susceptible to…

From 1914-1918, one of the bloodiest wars in all of human history waged on. Erich Maria Remarque illustrates this reality in All Quiet on the Western Front. The novel follows a young soldier, Paul and his journey from a naive schoolboy to a hardened, experienced soldier, this change is seen quite drastically through the novel. Change is something that is unavoidable, especially in times of war. In Paul Baumer, this change is seen in his changing emotional connection to the war and his views…

Erich Maria Remarque is perhaps one of the greatest German novelists in the early twentieth century. He was born on June 22, 1898, in Osnabruck, Germany. He received U.S. citizenship in 1947, but preferred to live in Europe until he died on September 25, 1970, in Locarno, Switzerland at the age of seventy-two. His famous novel All Quiet on the Western Front was first published in 1928 in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung and published in a book form later in 1929. Because of the nature of…