Journal

This week my group was able to focus more on the conflicts of the wars in "All Quiet On The Western Front". Honor, faith, land, oil... Wars are fought for any number of reasons, but on the battlefield, every soldier has to hold their own. In our book we can see that the war starts off by seeming like a great game that the soldiers have been chosen to play, but as the book progresses, they learn that things can go terribly wrong. A huge part in this would be experiencing the death of their friends and brothers in arms, which no one in the world can prepare you for. In war, the theory of death is something to be questioned, naturally as humans, we have two forms of thinking; either you're going to kill someone because they are simply your enemy, or you die, because you're someones enemy. "Comrade, I did not want to kill you. . . . But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. . . . I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?" (pg 187). This shows that killing the opposing force in conflict was simply a thought for the soldiers until they finally realized what exactly they were doing, and it had a great emotional effect on them. Another form of conflict is that the generals of this war seem like the most hardcore, war torn, willing to fight people on the planet, but in reality, they didn't even want to fight this war. But because the leaders of the countries had a disagreement, everyone else is forced to fight. This reminds me of a line from a song: "When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die." (Hands Held High - Linkin Park). This shows us that the leaders of our countires, the ones who are supposed to have our best intrests at heart, can cause anything to happen in a matter of seconds, and like Macbeth, occasionally get power hungry. Finally, theres the conflict amongst the soldiers as they dispute because they don't think they'll fit back into modern society again, after what they've seen and done in war. The best way to sum this up, would be in the words of Ernest Hemingway "There is no hunting like the hunting of a man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter."