Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front: Horrors of War
War. War never changes. It’s an act that will always be committed until the end of Man and the people who suffer the consequences are, most commonly, the soldiers who fight and die for ideals they may not even agree with. Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front conveys not only the atrocities of war, but also the mental, physical, and emotional toll it takes on the soldiers fighting it.
To get a real understanding of how war affects the soldier it must first understand what exactly happens to a soldier during war. When a soldier experiences war he is subjected to horrors the average citizen couldn’t even think of, things such as the constant sound of artillery and fear of death will make any man go mad so it’s no wonder that many soldiers experience some form of PTSD or Shellshock. This experience is magnified in World War 1 because of the fact that a war was never fought on this scale and with these tactics before. In the first year of the war British and French trenches were of atrocious quality which would cause disease and Trenchfoot. Soldiers at the frontlines always received their ration last and it was usually cold by the time they got it, if they even got them at all. The fact that when offensives took place they would be able to take a little bit of ground at the cost of many lives and then soldiers would have to retreat to their previous position and be back where they started. This tactic was used for the entirety of the war and it was very demoralizing for
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It had led to the beginning of PTSD psychiatric treatment as well as help us to understand just how war really affects our soldiers. And Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” gave us a taste of what these soldiers were really subjected to and how it affected