All Quiet On The Western Front Worksheet Comparison

War is often glorified and the horrors at the front are often overlooked. However, in writings based off war, a new perspective is seen. It is the harsh reality of war and how it destroys not only the men in war, but also the relationships between men and their loved ones. “Vergissmeinnicht” by Keith Douglas shows the perspective of a soldier seeing a deceased enemy soldier and a picture of the enemy’s love interest. The use of German on the girl’s photo indicates that the fallen soldier is German, and that the narrator is most likely British. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque shows the perspective of a German soldier, Paul Baumer. Though the two works show the perspective of enemies, the two narrators are not so different.

The narrator is seemingly guiding the reader, such as when they go through the dead soldier’s spoil: “Look. Here is the gunpit spoil”. The first word of the first line of stanza three is immediately followed by a period to put emphasis on looking upon the spoil. The third stanza shows that with the deceased soldier is the picture of a girl, with the word “vergissmeinnicht” which means “forget me not.” Along with showing the soldier’s spoil, the soldier is also “… mocked at by his own equipment/that’s hard and good when he’s decayed.” In stanza five, the narrator sounds matter-of-fact while describing the soldier’s dead and decaying body, but also seemingly lacks pity as the narrator mocks the dead soldier. The narrator notes that the soldier’s girlfriend “…would weep to see to-day/ how on his skin the swart flies move;” and though another casualty in war is saddening, it is simply another casualty and nothing more. Douglas’ simple and unsentimental language emphasizes that war cannot be sugar-coated, it is bloody and

It gives the poem an uneven feeling, as if the lines were incomplete, much like how the soldiers may not feel whole anymore after an over-exposure to the brutality of war. The last word in each line of stanza five: “to-day … move; … eye” and “cave” do not rhyme, showing how a dead man decaying in the open is unusual. This stanza differs from the others since this stanza is the only one to have no rhyming pattern at all. Though the lack of rhyming structure in the fifth stanza would most likely be overlooked, the lack of rhyming happens at the stanza about the soldier’s decaying body. The shift from semi-regular to irregular rhyming exemplifies how the sudden change from normality is meant to create the feeling