Literary Analysis

Of the effect of concentration camps

The art of war is simple. Find your enemy. Get at him as soon as possible. Strike him as hard as you can. And keep moving—Ulysses S. Grant

     In dark times, the punishment of war can be brutal to the human spirit.

My thoughts on Chapter 8

In a metacognition

The art of war is simple enough. Find where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can. And keep moving—Ulysses S. Grant

When I began reading Chapter 8, of All Quiet on the Western Front, I thought that it would just be a boring chapter of Paul just re-training to make himself ready to go back out onto the front; however, this chapter was full of sad scenes and descriptions of the brutal conditions of concentration camps.

Learning the Importance of Friends

Talking about my experience with friends

Having something to do with a friend can mean the world to someone.

Chapter Seven

My thoughts on the chapter

In this chapter, there are many points that were made about Paul’s personal life and how it may never be the same again after all the death he has experienced out on the front. Paul, in this chapter, has plenty of time off from direct combat, so he tries to re-humanize himself. He tries to hook up with French girls, he tries to go home to see his family and childhood friends, yet when he talks with all of these people all they want to talk with him about is the war; in particular, his father and his friends were talking in a way that made Paul, his knowledge of warfare and his position in the army seem utterly useless. When the talk of the war never seems to end, Paul feels as if he can’t separate himself from war at all and that nothing is, or will never be the same. He finds himself to be very impatient in talking with people and very explosive with some people. Throughout this chapter we see Paul look back at his former lifestyle and then truly believe that he can’t go back to that ever again. Going forward in the book, I will be looking at how he deals with talking to people and his overall morale.

Chapter Six

My reflection on such a chapter

Victourious warriors win first then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and seek to win— Sun Tzu 

Over these past few days, I have experienced more disgust and horror than ever before.

Chapter Four

In a literary analysis

Temper us in fire, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive ― Cassandra Clare

Only the lucky survive.

My Ideas for Chapter Three

Preparation for a class discussion

While reading chapter 3 in the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, I thought there were some moments in the reading that I thought would be worth discussing. In the end of my last literary analysis, I said that it would be a good idea for the author to continue to build up characters (especially those in the background). I’m also starting to see a theme in this book, if the author has to build up a character’s personality or meaning, he will do so in the past tense. This meaning he build the character through memories of other characters. This is what the author did with Franz, and it’s what he’s doing now with Kat. Franz was the lifelong friend of our main character and Kat is the god tier survival expert. Another thing that happened in the chapter that’s worth discussing is this quote:

We once spent the finest day of our army-life together—the day before we left for the front.

This quote means a lot towards the morale of the soldiers and it eludes to the point that these people don’t want to be here. When you have a goal as hard as defeating a whole country or countries, you cannot be dragged down by the feeling that you don’t want to be there. That will make the job ten times harder, and you could have a higher chance of losing the war because of it. These things are a bit out of the box, but are things to look at when studying a book.

The Power of Loss

A literary analysis

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. — Norman Cousins

Nothing hurts more than a great loss.