Imagery In All Quiet On The Western Front

“All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Remarque, “In the Field” by Tim O’Brien, and “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen are all war stories that all share a similar theme. They all illustrate the terrible and gruesome imagery of modern war. The authors clearly have no intention of romanticizing the idea of war and only want to write the truth as they have experienced it. Literary devices such as similes and imagery is used throughout all of these works to depict the harrowing and appaling images of war in the reader’s mind. In the book “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Remarque uses imagery to depict just how horrible World War I was for young soldiers. In the beginning of the book, Kemmerich, Paul Baumer’s good friends, is dying of an infection due to a leg injury. He lies in his deathbed, with his “lips fallen away…[and] teeth [sticking] out” (Remarque 28). Kemmerich’s death is one the first and also one of the most gruesome deaths in the novel. Paul Baumer and his comrades rest in one of their dug outs, when the French soldiers start attacking. One of the French military men gets caught into a wire cradle; his “body collapses [and] his hands remain suspended” (Remarque 112). This scene from the book shows just how

He recalls the use of gas particularly to depict the horrors of war. One comrade that the speaker could not help died because of a gas attack. He describes his face “hanging...like a devil’s sick of sin” (Owen). Owen’s comparison to the devil exemplifies how sick and dirty his comrade’s death was and is sickening to even imagine. Unfortunately the soldier’s misery is not over. The tormenting, dying soldier is also “gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs.” (Owen). When a reader was to assume that men died quick deaths in war, this scene said otherwise. Knowing that these soldiers had to go through this multiple times is an even harder concept to