Maria Licciardi

In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, war makes the soldiers act indifferently towards their surroundings, and it shows the demoralizing impact of losing oneself through the character Paul Baümer. Throughout the book, there are many examples of black humor that emphasize the effects that war has had on the soldiers’ identities. Especially when the soldiers are on the front line or going to the front, they are forced to behave in the stereotypical soldier manner of being tough…

Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front depicts Remarque’s experiences as a young German soldier that served his country during WWI. Remarque translated his experiences shortly after the war ended and his novel became a universally acknowledged war story in 1929. Although Remarque received high regards toward his novel, once readers looked deeper into his story, many started to question the message All Quiet on the Western Front was translating. After reviewing All Quiet…

Contrary to the common belief towards war at the time, Gandhi once commented, “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.” Gandhi alludes that violence is not the answer to conflicts. Though war may seem to be for a just cause in the short term, it only encourages violence in the future and eventually leads to permanent negative consequences. From 1914 to 1918, World War I demonstrated the unfortunate repercussions of…

Depictions of sexuality is a key element that intersect in the format of both Ali, Fear Eats the Soul (1974) and Maedchen in Uniform (1931). While the films are released over 40 years apart, both these films depict sexuality and explore sexual taboos in Germany. Ali, Fear Eats the Soul, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, is a tale of interracial love and explores the impact of racism on human relationships. Leontine Sagan’s Maedchen in Uniform contains themes of lesbian relationships and…

All Quiet on the Western Front is written by Erich Maria Remarque about what a soldier truly went through in WWI. A general background of the war is that it was between allied powers of UK, France, Belgium, Serbia and Russia against central powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. This book shows the German side fighting on the western front against France’s front line because of the Schlieffen plan. I will be looking at how in this novel WWI was depicted as a gruesome war that in order to survive…

In the novels A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque the different possibilities of the effects war have on an individual are displayed distinctively. In A Farewell to Arms Henry realizes he is losing himself in the war and tries to find an escape through love. In All Quiet on the Western Front the way Paul views himself changes and puts a perspective not only on the present but on his past and his future too. In these two novels the…

Imagine what it would be like to live during a world war, and the internal and external conflicts one must face because of it. In the book A Separate Peace by John Knowles, The boys at the Devon school deal with war in their everyday lives. Both of the characters Leper and Finny are forced to face the reality of world war II in different ways. Leper and Finny’s experiences with war impact each significantly, although both result in a major loss of innocence. Leper’s naivety about what it…

In the ¨Drummer Boy of Shiloh¨ written by Ray Bradbury, a 14 year old boy named Joby is in the military and is the Drummer during the civil war. In the beginning, Joby and the soldiers are at a camp just waiting for the next day. There is going to be a battle on the next day that all of them are traumatized over. Joby is scared the most because he is the youngest and he cannot defend himself like the soldiers. He feels very insignificant. He only has a drum and drumsticks and they have guns. The…

Millions of young men have gone through life-altering experiences in their time in World War I. In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Bäumer, a 19-year-old German soldier, narrates his personal memoirs of this war. As he is forced to mature from a young boy to an experienced warrior in order to survive, Paul is left permanently scarred from the throes of war and his attitude towards life is forever changed. Paul is used as an example for all of the young soldiers…

The Pearl: Greeds The Pearl, by John Steinbeck, is a novel that depicts the fact that greed can take over a life and the peace of a town. When a penniless pearl diver, Kino, finds what he calls the Pearl of the World, it changes his life. Throughout this novel, Steinbeck uses literary devices to express the way greed can change a small town and a family. The author uses tools such as symbolism, characterization, and foreshadowing to add life to the story. These literary devices all express…