Analysis: All Quiet On The Western Front

1272 Words6 Pages
Synthesis in the Works(Umh great title) Attitudes about war vary among different individuals, all depending on different dispositions about the act itself. While some view war as a noble and honorable course of action to participate in, others proclaim that war and any aspect of righteousness exist in a mutually exclusive relationship; however, the reality in the actuality of war persists, regardless of individual opinion. As such, the rationalizations given for war originate from the synthesis of several different individual perspectives. Furthermore, through their works All Quiet on the Western Front, War, and Investigation of War, Erich Maria Remarque, Luigi Pirandello and Joseph Tighe (This arrangement feels awkward, maybe something…show more content…
Based on the notion that experience provides the only means to acquire personal opinions about an event, the authors ultimately argue that an individual’s link to war exposes the truth within the conflict that dominates previous rationalizations With a common acceptance that experience creates the actual personal belief of war, Remarque, Pirandello and Tighe concurrently give examples of how truth-provoking experiences of war ultimately create opinions thereof. Throughout Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, readers hear the perils of World War I from the perspective of the character Paul. Along with his previous classmates, Paul enlists in the war due to the influencing rational persuasions of his teacher, Kantorek. Upon experiencing the war, including discussed horrors ranging from bombing raids to gas canister attacks, the young soldier and his allies grimly remark, “Kantorek sends his best wishes… I wish he was here,” (Remarque 10), later expressing their modified mentalities through joking about the realized falsity behind their teacher’s propaganda after their exposure to the promoted war. Furthermore, Pirandello highlights the experience of death within a family, resulting from war, in order to expose the difference between consolable reasoning and inconsolable certainties. In his short story War, the character of “the fat man” states that he lost his son to the grasps of war, yet feels no pain due to the fact that his son “died inflamed and happy… without having the ugly sides of life,” (Pirandello 3). In response to a simple question about the state of his son, the man “broke into harrowing, heart-rending, uncontrollable sobs,” (Pirandello 4), exposing the resulting emotion from an experience of the actions of war. Finally,
Open Document