Thursday, March 10, 2011

Third Post

All Quiet on the Western Front is a book filled with drama, sadness, and death. Inside the pages of this book I experienced an adventure unlike anything I have ever seen before. I originally thought that All Quiet on the Western Front would have much more action, I was sorry to find out that it has much more dramatic parts than action scenes. It's not that the story doesn't have any action, its based on one of the most dangerous places to fight during WWI. It's just that the author, Erich Maria Remarque, writes the book so that it doesn't have as much action as it could have. For example, at one point in the story Paul finds a trench full of dead new recruits who forgot to put on their gas masks or took them off too early. This could have a lot of action, but instead the author describes it as if Paul was writing a diary the night after, so its more sad and less in the moment. He sort of hints to you what is going to happen next. It isn't what I expected but it is turning out to be a great style of writing.

If you don't know that much about WWI, then you should really check out this link, http://www.greatwar.co.uk/places/ww1-western-front.htm. It is a little information about the Western Front, which is where Paul and the rest of the second company is fighting. This website will give you a little idea of the setting of the book plus a little more knowledge of WWI. In the "French Flanders" picture, you can see a trench. Looking at this will give you a better idea of what the trenches are. It is crucial to know what a trench is because WWI was still trench warfare and the whole book is fighting in trenches. So if you don't know what a trench is then you wouldn't understand all of the fighting parts.

If you still don't understand what trench warfare means, this short clip from the 1979 version of All Quiet on the Western Front shows trench warfare perfectly. If you just imagine the three guys are Paul, Katczinsky and Müller, that is how they would be fighting the French (guys with flamethrower). This video also gives you the tone of the book, the action parts are kind of slow, and many people get hurt.

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1 comment:

  1. Jwax999March 10, 2011 at 6:43 PM

    Before I watched the video, I had no idea what trench warfare meant, but the video gave me a great understanding. I think that trench warfare would be a very efficient style of warfare, even today. I think it would be intelligent to use trench warfare because it doesn't require a lot of physical energy because the soldiers just stand up and put their guns on the ground and aim at the enemy. Also, if the enemy is shooting at you, all you have to do is crouch down into the trench because there's no way a bullet will hit you if you are below ground level.
    Another thing that I liked about this post was the link about World War I. I didn't really know anything about WWI either. It's kind of weird that I don't know much about it because it is kind of the only period of time that I haven't ever learned about. This year, we learned about from the 1300s to the 1800s, and last year we learned from the 1800s to the 1900s. In addition to all of that, we have also learned about WWII multiple times because it was a very significant time in history. The map of Western Europe is very informative and is a good visual aid for World War I. Also, the link gives you a synopsis of each battle in WWI.
    I think that might read this novel in the future because I want to learn about WWI more.

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