Deteriorated Lives

Deteriorated Lives

No one realizes the emotional impact a war can have on a man. 'All is Quiet on the Western Front' does fantastic jobs in making people realize that war sucks. Is uses every gruesome, heart wrenching detail to show you how the youth of the men has been stolen from them. A reoccurring theme throughout the book is how the men have been stripped of love and innocence. It is interesting to think that men, straight out of puberty are put in a situation that makes them watch their lives leave right before their eyes. In the text is explains how the men have succumb to the idea and morals of war and cut off their youthful lives, “We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts.  We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.” (87-8) We start to see that the fact that them men have been pushed into witnessing the horrors of the war before they have properly lived begins to bother them more and more throughout the text. This idea of lost innocence first is seen when a conversation goes on about how the young men have nothing at home, while the elders have a family and children. This will be a progressing theme throughout the book as it connects to the idea that war is a place that causes men’s hearts to burst. Most of the soldiers in the war have witnessed more in a day than any one person would witness in their lifetime, through hard training they men start to being in the war. No soldier knows his fate, so they are forced to leave what they thought would be happy, educational and strong lives to shooting down the world. It is depressing to think that men just 2 years older than I have to go through not knowing their potential of life. They grow into cold blooded men who often never come out of the horrors they witnessed in the war. The theme of lost innocence will continue to reoccur throughout the book and is extremely important.