Chapter six literary reflection

“Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.”

-Donald Trump

     True horror can never be forgotten. While reading All Quiet on the Western Front, I experienced complete horror while reading. Reading this chapter made me feel I like I was there and experiencing all the horror they were experiencing. I felt like when a shell was shot into their trenches I was thinking about everything that would be going trough their heads at the time. I could feel the complete horror of after the shell lands and they see not everyone made it. The chapter opens with Paul and his friends in trenches preparing for the shelling to begin. Fast forward a bit and the shelling has begun, slowly the new recruits began to loose their minds, one recruit tried to escape but then boom. “I start after one who escapes and wonder whether to shoot him in the leg—then it shrieks again, I fling myself down and when I stand up the wall of the trench is plastered with smoking splinters, lumps of flesh, and bits of uniform. I scramble back.” At last the bombardment stops, but every soldier knows that doesn’t mean that the fight is over. In the distance they see hundreds of French soldiers running towards their trenches. Then the violence and horror starts back up. This chapter him me like a freight train. Compared to the rest of the chapters this one had so much more action, adrenaline and violence. But even in all of the action it was still easy to find the main theme from this chapter, horror. This chapter really showed me the true horror of war and the thoughts and expressions of an unexperienced and experienced soldier. This chapter really gave me a new perception on war and the horror of it.