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All Quiet On The Western Front Corruption Essay

1024 Words5 Pages

Corruption’s Evil and The Prospect of Betrayal War is a cruel and dehumanizing prospect which causes the suffering and distress of millions, both civilians and soldiers, across the globe. Whether it be through famine or bombing, it seems as if everybody gets the shorthand of the stick; however, there are a few individuals who benefit from the horrors of war, such as ones in power, and they become corrupt men themselves. Men, and women, like these see themselves as more powerful than the soldiers underneath them, and revel in the power of their position. When people like this turn corrupt, however, there is a sense of betrayal to the soldiers, many whom already suffer due to the sights and acts of war. Corruption of power, and the …show more content…

During that time period, war was displayed as a noble and honorable thing to do for ones motherland; dying for one’s country was seen as an admirable thing to do. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Kantorek, the teacher of many boys in the platoon, strongly created an impression that they had to go and fight for Germany. He “gave [them] long lectures until the whole class went... and volunteered” for the war (Remarque). This action alone caused the doom of many characters in this book, and undoubtedly there are many people in real life who were persuaded by their teachers and mentors to join the war. Similarly, in Sassoon’s poem, the civilians, rather than being frank, often cheered on the war in order to give the soldiers morale. However, in the end, civilians “pray [that they] never know / The hell [to] where youth and laughter” disappear (Sassoon). This poem, and moreover the book, display the betrayal of soldiers during that time period. Young men, often between the age of seventeen and twenty-one, went to WW1 upon the egging of the civilians around them. Most did not return, and the ones that did were often crippled and unable to immerse themselves into civilization once more, hence, the betrayal of a generation of men, some barely

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World War One was one of the most vicious and brutal battles of the time of this novel. Men like Paul Baumer and his comrades were made to believe that joining the war would be a heroic and idealistic experience. For instance, Baumer’s old schoolmaster, Kantorek, encouraged his students to become soldiers. However, Kantorek did so with a complete and utter ignorance of what the war is actually like. Moreover, Paul describes the many horrible aspects and consequences of the war.

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1. Erich Remarque’s purpose for writing All Quiet on the Western Front was to show the devastating effects of war on soldiers and to protest against the war. He does this by depicting the experiences of a group of young German soldiers who are fighting in World War I. One example of how Remarque fulfills this purpose is when the protagonist, Paul Baumer, reflects on the futility of war and the sacrifices soldiers are forced to make. On page 49, Paul says, "We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial - I believe we are lost."

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Throughout the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator of the story, Paul Baumer goes through the realization how joining the war was destroying his and others’ youth while turning people against each other. Remarque uses the phrase “abyss of sorrow” as figurative language to describe the suffering and heartbreak the young boys experience in the front line, earning the generation of boys that served in World War 1 the name “the Lost Generation”. After Paul observes the pain of the prisoners that he is assigned to watch, he sees for himself “how people are set against one another, and in silence…slay one another”. Just because two sides are waging war, people are brainwashed or persuaded to sacrifice themselves for a fight that is

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A story that tells only of death, sorrow, and the bitter truth about World War One, Erich Remarque’s book, All Quiet On The Western Front, is simply a story of a generation of men who were lost to war. Told through the eyes of a 19 year old boy named Paul Bäumer, as he shows what World War One was, in all of its horrific glory. This ‘glory’ so to speak was a gruesome, traumatizing experience for many of the soldiers that fought in World War One, this experience engraved in their memory, that would continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives. In the epigraph in All Quiet On The Western Front, it tells that “ even though [the soldiers] may have escaped shells, [they] were destroyed by the war”. It is evident to say that even though some soldiers escaped death from the war, they all will be scared from the experiences they had.

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War is a harsh reality that is inflicted upon the unwilling through the “need” of it’s predecessors and those whom wish it. All Quiet on The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is about 19 year old Paul and his friends in the “Second Company”. Even though they are just out of school age, they have already seen things that many could not bear to even think about. Eventually, all of his friends die, and even Paul too, dies. Remarque uses diction and syntax as literary devices to express his anti-war theme, or lesson.

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War is the graveyard of innocence for boys who become men through the loss of humanity. The book “Fallen Angels,” by Walter Dean Myers, is a story about Richard Perry, a young man who mistakenly joins the Vietnam War to avoid the shame of not going to college. As the book goes on Perry discovers his mistake and in the process, not only loses his innocence, but also his humanity. Wars will always be the dark parts of our history and no war is devoid of horrors that can strip anyone of everything they are, and in war soldiers must use coping mechanisms to deal with these very apparent horrors.

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All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque is a story of a young man named Paul Bäumer who volunteers to be a soldier in the German army during World War One. Being at a very young age Bäumer, and three of his friends whom also enlisted to the German army from the same school he attended, felt proud when enlisting “we were a class of twenty young men, many of whom proudly shaved for the first time before going to the barracks” (AQOTWF p.21). Very soon, however, Bäumer and the young men he enlisted with begin to feel indifferent and embittered of being in the army “At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent.” (AQOTWF p.21/22). Joining the army for Bäumer changed the way he felt about everything he knew in the past, and the way he thought of the people who stayed back home.

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The novel All Quiet on the Western Front Written by Erich Maria Remarque is not only a specific story of World War I, but also a criticism of the destruction and pointlessness of war. The book was banned in Nazi Germany because it was critical of German military, and the idea of the “Iron Youth”, a campaign that promoted patriotism and war to young men. The novel tells the story of soldiers who endure the terrors of battle, and shows how war destroyed and entire generation of men and irreversibly detached them from the normal world. Remarque uses his experience in the war to explain that the entire generation of “Iron Youth” were either dead after the World War I, or too separated from their previous lives after experiencing the hatred and

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In All Quiet on the Western Front, many young soldiers around seventeen years old are being sent to fight in the war without sufficient training. These young recruits are not being sent into this war because they are powerful and prestigious soldiers, but are rather sent in because the German soldiers are losing hundreds of thousands of men and are desperate for replacements. These are teenagers who have a whole life ahead of them, but in All Quiet their lives are being wasted and destroyed in the cruel war, showing that these soldiers are dehumanized because their lives and futures are not valued. In the book, Remarque is able to show the harsh consequences the war does to adolescents that destroy and dehumanize them. One soldier that Paul encounters in All Quiet on the Western Front to a young recruit, described as “such a kid,” (73), by Kat, suffered from a serious injury: “a hip covered with blood,” (71) only recently after arriving at the Front.

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Present throughout the book is the theme of disillusionment. In the school, they’ve been told by their schoolmasters and parents that unless they join the war, they would remain cowards. They see propaganda after propaganda, all alluding towards the glory of battle and warfare. Out on the front, they realize that nothing was further from the truth. Their dreams of being heroes shattered, like when they compare themselves to the soldier on a poster in chapter 7.

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1064 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the ages, wars have wreaked havoc and caused great destruction that lead to the loss of millions of lives. However, wars also have an immensely destructive effect on the individual soldier. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, one is able to see exactly to what extent soldiers suffered during World War 1 as well as the effect that war had on them. In this essay I will explain the effect that war has on young soldiers by referring to the loss of innocence of young soldiers, the disillusionment of the soldiers and the debasement of soldiers to animalistic men. Many soldiers entered World War 1 as innocent young boys, but as they experienced the full effect of the war they consequently lost their innocence.

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To him, the war represented newfound uncertainty of ridiculous social norms and thus a complete remodeling of those rules and strident challenging of Positivistic thinking. Entering the war, Germany was a confident nation full of “noble” young Nationalists ready to die for their country, but the realities of the war soon dispelled that veil of Positivistic thinking. Prior thinking states that it is noble to die for your country, but Remarque is deeply critical of this belief. There is no reason to die for the cause – he calls for soldiers to break the social norm of unwaveringly fighting for your country. The war dashed the confidence of young soldiers and shocked them into realizing that what they perceived before was not so certain.

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Millions of people 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. He describes the mental change and suffering he goes through as he is forced to mature from a young boy to a soldier in order to survive, leaving him permanently scarred from the throes of war. By employing juxtaposition to contrast Paul’s mindset, before and after the war, Remarque demonstrates how the mental health of the World War I soldiers is damaged because of the abrupt loss of their youth, leaving them in a state of survival and mental instability.

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Erich Maria Remarque, a World War I veteran, took his own personal war experience to paper, which resulted in one of the most critically acclaimed anti-war movement novels of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front. The voice of the novel, Paul Baumer, describes his daily life as a soldier during the First World War. Through the characters he creates in the novel, Remarque addresses his own issues with the war. Specifically, Remarque brings to light the idea of the “Iron Youth,” the living conditions in the trenches, and the sense of detachment soldiers feel, among other things. Therefore, All Quiet on the Western Front criticizes the sense of nationalism, which war tends to create among citizens by quickly diminishing any belief regarding it as a glorious and courageous act.

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