Prompt 3 Question 2

“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). 

This quote is basically a short summarization of what a war did to a young soldier. This quote meant that war has basically ruined their youth life and their life in the future. It begins with "we are not youth any longer" meaning that they don't have a youth anymore it has been destroyed by war. As soon as they began  doing what they love to do and searching for what matters to them they were forced to "shoot it to pieces" to join war. This quote relates back to one of the themes as showing that war has been destroying people youth life and future. As you can see at the end of the quote where it says "We believe in such things no longer, We believe in the war" this sentence has summarized on the theme. They used to have belief that they can be a specific thing they want to be in life but now due to war it has been vanished and now their life is war. When he says "We believe in the war" it means that depending on the outcome of the war will be their path to the future. You could probably see some new things in the characters thinking about what war has done to them and might do to them. Since all these characters has experienced the horrific of far their thought on war is different then joining the war. Before joining the war they believed that war is not as bad as it sounds like and they would be doing it for a good reason but not they wish that the war never started. This theme saying that war is not as glorified or heroic as it sounds, this could kind of relate to this quote by how they believed the war being heroic but instead it ruined their life.