The Road Back

The Common Theme Of Tragedy All soldiers endure traumatic experiences that have a similar effect on them for the rest of their lives. The themes of horrors of war and how the young soldiers lives are changed for the worse are both prevalent in both Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Sassoon’s “Suicide in the Trenches.” The soldiers lost their youth while away in the trenches. While both Remarque and Sassoon exemplify the horrors of war and the theme of the lost generation, Sassoon…

All Quiet on the Western Front and A Long Way Gone: A Psychological and Emotional Comparison Imagine yourself in the middle of a field, your comrades dying around you, people crying out for their mothers. This is the dreadful reality of war. The novels All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah follow the stories of Paul Baumer and Ishmael Beah, two young soldiers experiencing these things every day. The psychological and emotional journey of these…

These men would have nothing to live for if it wasn’t for their comrades. The fact that the men's “Sergeant Major looks after [them] like a mother”(244) is a perfect example of the bonds between men. These men have each others back. That is what is keeping them physically safe and mentally sound. The men who once were fellow soldiers are now “brothers, and press on one another the choicest pieces”(96). They are more than just acquaintances at this point. They are family who would…

There were a total of 38 million men fighting in WWI, these men were Russian, German, French, Italian, English, American, Hungarian, Austrian, Bulgarian or from the Ottoman Empire. They all had the same experiences while at war. There were differences depending where they were placed, but the fundamental characteristics were the same. There were a total of 17 million dead and 20 million wounded; the survivors were left to live with the effects of being dehumanized because of all the death they…

In Erich Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, the author uses metaphor and personification to convey Paul Baumer’s loss of self. Paul Baumer, the protagonist of the novel, joins the war as an innocent twenty year old boy who enjoys writing poetry, but transforms into a detached, stiff man who finds trouble relating to normal, innocent civilians. After witnessing plenty of bloodshed and catastrophe, Paul’s emotional connection to his humanity gradually dissolves. The burdens of war…

When Paul came back from leave he had the potato cakes with him and “then it occurs to [him] that [his] mother cooked them herself and that she was probably in pain as she stood before the hot stove” (198). Something as small as the potato cakes had so much meaning behind…

World War I gave birth to many stories, and with those stories came many pieces of literature. Some of the main ones include All Quiet on the Western Front, a book by Erich Maria Remarque, “The Poet as Hero”, a poem by Siegfried Sassoon and “Who’s for the Game”, a poem by Jessie Pope. These literary pieces had some key differences. Although Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Sassoon’s “The Poet as Hero”, and Pope’s “Who’s for the Game” all shared their opinions on how soldiers should…

War Trauma; The Influence it Placed on Remarque’s Writing “On the threshold of life, they faced an abyss of death…” (A.W. Wheen, as quoted in All Quiet on the Western Front) Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front represents an idea of loss of innocence. Soldiers during this time period are at the “threshold” of their lives, as quoted by Wheen, to only face the brutal horrors of war. The horrors of the war steal the innocence away from these young men without them even knowing. These…

In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque, a man named Paul Baumer is persuaded to join the war by his school teacher. As he gets more into war itself, he questions his decision to join and so do his mates in the war. When Paul has time alone on sentry duty, he really opens up and tells the reader about what he is thinking about the war. As the war progresses, Paul begins to think about memories of home and how pride of being in the war was something that is not all that…

One of the major themes of All Quiet on the Western Front was the brutality of the war. Throughout the book, there were numerous times depicting what war was actually like, not what it was made out to be by the commanders behind the front line. The war brought strangers together and friends even closer. The comradeship that happens during the book is in direct result of how much the brutality of the war has caused. With the increasing brutality of the war, we’ve seen the increase of camaraderie…