All Quiet On The Western Front: Poem Analysis

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A soldier at war constantly hears the sound of gunfire. He heroically jumps in front of a bullet to save his brother on the battlefield. He cares about no one more than the people fighting right next to him. Everyone believes in the war of hollywood, not the real world experience that destroys, people believe in the war that births heroes. That it is all about explosions and gunshots, but not many people stop and think about what actually happens out there. No one thinks about his family back home. His wife who is now widowed, or his baby who will grow up fatherless. War did this to him. War has the power to destroy both physically and mentally, as shown in All Quiet on the Western Front, Midnight Clear, and Suicide in the Trenches.

In All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, Remarque tells the is about a 19 year old German soldier, Paul Baumer who is fighting on the German side of World War 1. Throughout the story, Baumer encounters a
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Sassoon writes in the poem, “I knew a simple soldier boy who grinned at life in empty joy”. The soldier was very optimistic. Although he came into the war happy, the soldier was changed by his experiences. As winter rolls by, the soldier becomes hardened and sad. “In winter trenches, cowed and glum” shows that he is different than he was before because of what happened to him in the war. Later in the poem, the arthur writes, “He puts a bullet through his brain”. Because of his experience in the war, he has been mentally damaged to the point where he killed himself. The war destroyed the soldier boy, first mentally, then physically. The soldier in Suicide in the Trenches is similar to Paul from All Quiet on the Western Front by both of them were changed by the war. In both stories, the main character was killed because the war. In both stories, the character was destroyed by the