Theme Of War In All Quiet On The Western Front

War creates tremendous amount of trauma and destruction to the human race from explosions to mass massacres. At the front-line a soldier is a brave man who sacrifices his life to fight for the freedom of his country and if he is not killed by the war he is scared by the psychological effects of war that will live on for the rest of his life. Within the novel All Quiet on the Western Front and film Born on the 4th of July the author Erich Maria Remarque and director Oliver Stone both set a strong example and express the true gruesome and terror of war. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front and film Born on the Fourth of July, Paul Baumer and Ron Kovic are characters that both share similarities and differences through their experiences

First, Paul shows a firm disconnect with his parents. For instance, During Paul’s leave he returns home to his mother who is fighting a battle against cancer. When Paul's mother asks him “Was it very bad out there”(161) he lies to her and explains that she “would not understand”(161) nor “realize it”(161). Also, when Paul is having a conversation with his father he describes that he has “no real contact”(165) with his father, he becomes frustrated, gets up and leaves. Meanwhile when Paul is out in the city streets he is startled by societies main source of transportation “tram cars”(165) “which resembles the shriek of a shell coming straight for one”. At the end of the day in his room he tries to look back at his past but simply he cannot connect or find his way back to his youth. This shows that Paul no longer

However, they both experience this guilt at different stages. In the film Born on the fourth of July Ron Kovic begins to experience nightmares that begin to haunt him about a horrifying event. In this event Ron is with his battalion in Vietnam on patrol and while they are on patrol they kill a massive amount of Vietnamese civilians accidentally within a village. This event ends up with Kovic mistakenly killing one of his fellow soldiers due to the shock and trauma that Kovic must have been going through at that very moment. While Ron is in the hospital he begins to have nightmares and flashbacks that haunt him of these events. Also, Ron struggles with a great deal of remorse years after killing one of his fellow soldiers mistakenly. For instance, years later when Ron visits Billy's family to confess that he is the one who killed their son we could see that Ron was still struggling emotionally at that very moment. On the other hand, when Paul volunteers to crawl into no man's land in order to gather information about the enemies defense he is faced with an event that involves hands on combat. In this event Paul comes close contact with French soldier which he quickly stabbs. Immediately after this event Paul experiences a sense of regret and grief which he then bandages the soldiers wounds, gives him water, explains that he did not want to kill