Sympathy, And It’s Role In War

“The soldier above all other prays for peace, for it is the solider who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” - Douglas MacArthur

     Sympathy is taking the extra mile to use what you have to help someone else. In Chapter 8, the book, All Quiet On The Western Front, by Erich Maria and Arthur Weasley, Paul shows sympathy to the Russian prisoners at the training camp. Paul is sent to training camp, and feels for the Russian prisoners of war. They get what’s left of the already unsanitary food the Germans are eating. Paul provides them with tobacco and some food that his sick mother made for him. Paul feels for the young Russians who are dying a slowly and painfully death. Paul realizes how hard War was for him, and for many other people. When he was at training camp, he saw the pain that the Russian soldiers faced. He noticed that they would get all the disgusting leftovers, and how more and more would die each day. Paul gave some of them cigarettes not because he needed to, but because he wanted to. Martin Luther King wants said that, “True sympathy is the personal concern which demand the giving of one’s soul.” When his Dad and his eldest sister gave him his potato cakes, he gave most of them to the Russian soldiers. His sick mother made them for him, but he still used his tools to help out the Russian soldiers. Paul realizes that the Russian soldiers are more similar to him than some of his fellow soldiers, so he feels the sympathy in his heart to help these soldiers in need.

“I know nothing of them except that they are prisoners; and that is exactly what troubles me. Their life is obscure and guiltless;—if I could know more of them, what their names are, how they live, what they are waiting for, what their burdens are, then my emotion would have an object and might become sympathy. But as it is I perceive behind them only the suffering of the creature, the awful melancholy of life and the pitilessness of men.” - Chapter 8, of All Quiet on the Western Front.

It didn’t matter that they were there enemies, or that within a command the soldiers would willingly fire upon each other. Sympathy in war is essential; otherwise, the horrors of war will haunt there life. “A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.” The soldiers have more in common then they don’t; however, paul will attempt to shut his feelings away towards the end of the war. Pauls sympathetic feelings are keeping him alive, while he must hide them from himself  ;otherwise, he would lose himself in war, and his life. Sympathy in Paul is a Singh of him surviving and his mind surviving or trying to in the Western front. Throughout All Quiet on the Western Front Sympathy is scarce, it is hidden behind the trenches, the gas masks, and orders commanding the war. Sympathy is hidden, yet kept between each soldier's heart if they lose that sense of connection they lose their mind, and there life swiftly following.