Dead Paul example essay topic

email: All Quiet on the Western Front Through the observations of Paul Baumer, a 19-year-old volunteer to the German army during World War I, you can see war in all its horror. Baumer and his classmates charge fresh out of high school into military service, encouraged by his teacher, and other one-track-minded classmates who are unable to foresee or unwilling to consider the hell into which they are about to partake willing in. War soon transforms Paul and his comrades into men and killing machines. Trusted into an open-air of the battle field, images of blood, lit up by colorful fireworks that kill, Paul and his classmates, question if their choice of entering war was right or not. Peace came only when they accepted the fact that this war makes no sense, and has no reason. The same kids who once sung about loving and fighting for their mother country now see what it really takes.

For these soldiers, there is no thrill of victory, only that of one slaughter after another. To look to ahead brings them no comfort, they see no careers, no use for their hard-earned school education, no girls, no life beyond the battlefield. What lies before them is uncertainty. War has totally striped away values these boy-men once thought were important.

Their superior officer Himmel stoss works them to the point of exhaustion and even makes them dive in mud multiple times. He almost tries to break their souls and try to mold them into perfect disciplined soldiers. Even their belief in the value of human life must be questioned every time they kill. This is evident when Paul is forced to stay with the enemy who has jumped into the same shell hole.

He wants the enemy to live and tries to help him. All night long Paul is forced listen to the man suffer and relives he is every bit human as the enemy This war destroys these men, even those who survive the bombings, bullets and bayonets. Some soldiers are annihilated by physical attacks or their mind taken over by the weight of one too many bomb shells, some soldiers manage to maintain there sense. Their hope in a seemingly hopeless situation shows how much these men had to endure. The slight chance that they would return home someday inspires them to think and fight like animals, to continue along carrying friends and leaders until they could reach safety from a barrage. But as the war wears on and the western battlefront soaks up the blood of all Paul's classmates, Paul's hope also dies.

His trip home on leave reminds him of family life, civilian clothes and at the same time tortures him with the knowledge that has to return to the front and once again continue the senseless killing. After the all of his original classmates are dead Paul speaks of being burnt out. One the day of the end of World War I, Paul's own end arrives, the expression on his dead body almost indicates that he has welcomed it.