All Quiet on the Western Front Literary Devices essay
All Quiet on the western Front
The earth, as in the soil beneath our feet, is taken for granted every single day, but never by a soldier on the front lines. Erich Maria Remarque explains this through his character Paul Bäumer in the excerpt of his novel All Quiet on the Western Front. Paul is explaining the effects that war on the front can leave with a soldier, the hopelessness, instinct of an animal, and appreciation for things as simple as the earth that we walk on. While explaining these effects Remarque uses literary and rhetorical devices. Portraying Paul’s sense of being helpless and trapped as an effect of being on the battle front, Remarque uses various literary devices to describe Paul’s feelings. The narrator Paul states, “To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool” a “vortex sucking me…into itself.” This extended metaphor expresses the hopelessness that the war leaves with soldier. The vortex symbolizes the loss of optimism in the weary soldiers and how it is “irresistibly” and “inescapably” happening. This paragraph of the passage could also be an example of how Remarque uses parallelism to tell of the effects. The front not only causes the soldiers to gain a muffled mind, but to also gain gratitude. While explaining the appreciation they get when fighting to survive at the front, Remarque uses different types of imagery to express their deep feeling towards the ground. “To no man doe the earth mean so much as to a soldier”. He personifies the earth by calling it “her” and creates an image of the earth as a mother figure, protecting and sheltering the soldiers. Then, later in the passage, Remarque writes as if Paul is praising the ground as a God, saying that it has “redeemed them” and “granted the soldiers a new life”. This can be taken as a dose overboard, however, this image the soldiers have devised of the earth in their mind, “she” has saved them, physically and religiously. Concluding the effects that Remarque
The earth, as in the soil beneath our feet, is taken for granted every single day, but never by a soldier on the front lines. Erich Maria Remarque explains this through his character Paul Bäumer in the excerpt of his novel All Quiet on the Western Front. Paul is explaining the effects that war on the front can leave with a soldier, the hopelessness, instinct of an animal, and appreciation for things as simple as the earth that we walk on. While explaining these effects Remarque uses literary and rhetorical devices. Portraying Paul’s sense of being helpless and trapped as an effect of being on the battle front, Remarque uses various literary devices to describe Paul’s feelings. The narrator Paul states, “To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool” a “vortex sucking me…into itself.” This extended metaphor expresses the hopelessness that the war leaves with soldier. The vortex symbolizes the loss of optimism in the weary soldiers and how it is “irresistibly” and “inescapably” happening. This paragraph of the passage could also be an example of how Remarque uses parallelism to tell of the effects. The front not only causes the soldiers to gain a muffled mind, but to also gain gratitude. While explaining the appreciation they get when fighting to survive at the front, Remarque uses different types of imagery to express their deep feeling towards the ground. “To no man doe the earth mean so much as to a soldier”. He personifies the earth by calling it “her” and creates an image of the earth as a mother figure, protecting and sheltering the soldiers. Then, later in the passage, Remarque writes as if Paul is praising the ground as a God, saying that it has “redeemed them” and “granted the soldiers a new life”. This can be taken as a dose overboard, however, this image the soldiers have devised of the earth in their mind, “she” has saved them, physically and religiously. Concluding the effects that Remarque