Otto Dix's Impact On The Great War

The Ironic Impact of Birth and Death from The Great War The Great War is one of the most influential manifestations that impacted the modern world. A period of black and red, symbolisms for death and blood respectively, paints the canvas of the soldiers who fought in the war. Furthermore, soldiers on both sides of the Western Front conveyed their pain and sorrow through expressions like paintings and poems. Memorials such as WWI cemeteries also express the bravery of the soldiers that died on the battlefront. These expressions possess profound messages for the world and future generations. Specifically, the messages represent the diabolical nature of war, but they also assert an ironic and strong impact of World War I (WWI) that birth correlates

Dix was a German soldier during The Great War, and he made sure that his audience felt the war’s malevolent nature. Dix painted Mealtime in the Trenches as if the painting was a self-portrait of Death himself because Dix’s theme embodied every diabolic feature of warfare in the facial expression of just one soldier in a trench (Mealtime in the Trenches, Dix). Dix’s further paintings are black as night and filled with strong emotions of evil and hate. In Wounded Soldier, the audience can sense that the deadly nature of The Great War wounded the soldier before any physical harm from enemy fire met him (Wounded Soldier, Dix). Moreover, expressions similar to Remarque’s novel or Dix’s paintings detail the gruesome mortality of The Great War, but they also supplement the deeper meaning of the war’s

Future generations would witness the rise of new countries that were no longer under aristocratic rule. Shi supplements the argument when he asserts that The Great War had “destroyed old Europe – [and] many of its cities, people, economies, and four grand empires” (Shi, 1025). Shi states The Great War would ultimately “topple monarchs, destroy empires, [and] create new nations” (Shi, 988), in which would influence the freedom of many individuals in society.

In the poem, “In Flanders Field”, WWI veteran Lt. Col. John McCrea supports Shi as he describes the words of a dead soldier who rests in Flanders Field. McCrea remarks, “We are the Dead. Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, [and] now we lie” (6-8). McCrea explains that the soldiers who lie at Flanders Field died due to the war. McCrea’s statement strongly resembles that initially aristocracy still saw the light of day as empires ruled nations globally. However, The Great War initiated the end of aristocracy as global empires also laid to rest with the soldiers in Flanders