What I learned about reading and the horrors of war

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on. - Ulysses S. Grant

A work of literature can be terrifying and leave you wondering how scary a book can really get. Chapter 6 in All Quiet on the Western Front really showed me how petrifying a book can be if the author can describe gore in such fantastic but terrible detail. This chapter was very scary in the way the author described all the detail and gore. Every Adjective he used to tell the way all the chunks of flesh flying and people walking around with their heads off made me wonder how I could get so terrified by a book of all things. Making someone fear something that is just words on a page is a terrifically hard thing to do, but I think the author pulled it off really well with this chapter. This book is mainly about war, but this chapter focuses on describing the horrors of war. The chapter starts with them in a dugout being rained on by French artillery shells. When the bombardment finally ceases, the French begin an attack which is effectively snuffed out by the Germans. The scenes described in this chapter are so unbelievably gory and gruesome that you realize only someone who had suffered through these times could describe it in such terrific detail. A good example of this is, “I see one of them, his face upturned, fall into a wire cradle. His body collapses, his hands remain suspended as though he were praying. Then his body drops clean away and only his hands with the stumps of his arms, shot off, now hang in the wire.” Reading this chapter really gave me a new insight on the terrible hardships the soldiers had to go through and the amount of suffering they went through. This chapter also helped me determine that book can be so powerful and so horrifying by just suing some extra thought and detail. This chapter, aside from being written in a spectacular fashion, showed me many things, not only about myself but about how reading can affect my emotions. I really liked this chapter and am eager to continue reading this book.