Chapter 8 Metcognition
04/24/2019
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.
Hearing of the slender skeletons of men giving up the little possessions that they have left, just for food was weird to think about. It was just depressing to actually learn specifics of what concentration camps were actually like. Learning of prisoners gathering by the fence to just get a little closer to freedom, giving up their boots for a little bit of food, begging for the ends of cigarettes and it seemed like one would die every day. Paul thought about how he and other Russians actually have some similarities, and how they were killing each other just because they were given the order to do so, but he also wondered if they would be friends if the war was over. It’s weird to think about this sort of thing, and you just wonder about how many lives were wasted during this war.