All Quiet on the Western Front :: essays research papers fc

Compare ‘Gallipoli’ and ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ in terms of the:  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Boys’ attitude to war  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Reasons for enlistment  ·Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Experiences on the front How do these change their attitude to war? What does this tell you about the similarities and differences the Australian’s and German’s experiences? Analysis of Major Characters Paul Bà ¤umer As the novel’s narrator and protagonist, Paul is the central figure in All Quiet on the Western Front and serves as the mouthpiece for Remarque’s meditations about war. Throughout the novel, Paul’s inner personality is contrasted with the way the war forces him to act and feel. His memories of the time before the war show that he was once a very different man from the despairing soldier who now narrates the novel. Paul is a compassionate and sensitive young man; before the war, he loved his family and wrote poetry. Because of the horror of the war and the anxiety it induces, Paul, like other soldiers, learns to disconnect his mind from his feelings, keeping his emotions at bay in order to preserve his sanity and survive. As a result, the compassionate young man becomes unable to mourn his dead comrades, unable to feel at home among his family, unable to express his feelings about the war or even talk about his experiences, unable to remember the past fully, and unable to conceive of a future without war. He also becomes a â€Å"human animal,† capable of relying on animal instinct to kill and survive in battle. But because Paul is extremely sensitive, he is somewhat less able than many of the other soldiers to detach himself completely from his feelings, and there are several moments in the book (Kemmerich’s death, Kat’s death, the time that he spends with his ill mother) when he feels himself pulled down by emotion. These surging feelings indicate the extent to which war has programmed Paul to cut himself off from feeling, as when he says, with devastating understatement, â€Å"Parting from my friend Albert Kropp was very hard. But a man gets used to that sort of thing in the ar my.† Paul’s experience is intended to represent the experience of a whole generation of men, the so-called lost generation—men who went straight from childhood to fighting in World War I, often as adolescents. Paul frequently considers the past and the future from the perspective of his entire generation, noting that, when the war ends, he and his friends will not know what to do, as they have learned to be adults only while fighting the war.