| Term Paper Title | Chimeras Of Life |
| # of Words | 681 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 2.72 |
Chimeras of Life
"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous to lose one!. . . We shall not survive war, but shall, as well as our adversaries, be destroyed by war." -Agatha Christie, The Second War
The war described in All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, destroyed those who fought in it. It tells the story of Paul, a young German soldier. As Paul fights on the bloody front, he is numbed to the pain of those around him. War kills the dreams and spirits of the young men fighting in it by making them inured to death.
When death no longer holds any significance, man reverts back to living for the present. Paul accepts the grisly battles in stride with the brief respites a few miles away. He says: "We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important to us." (21) Morals have no place on the battlefield. Only a sense of now and here is necessary, and physical needs. Food is a crucial need of the men's-one which they go to great lengths to acquire. (Quote)
One of the most heartbreaking lessons learned was that death is the complete purpose of one's life. Paul and his classmates learn this when they see their first deaths on the front lines. Paul describes this reality: "While they taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger... we were all at once terribly alone..." (13). Here, Paul discovers that death is the strongest force in his life; it is inescapable. The men learn that, ultimately, a man will protect his life over his duty. Where once they pictured war as noble and victorious, this chimera was shattered on the battlefield. The men have accepted the fact that fear of death is the driving force in one's life. They resort to bloody measures to p...Read entire document
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