All Quiet on the Western Front

How would you feel if you relied on luck to keep you alive? I think in WWI that the worst thing that happened was the shellings and not knowing were to go or what to do when one was shot off, also seeing some of your closest and best friends killed really destroyed people me tally and ruined them as people knowing that it could've been u instead of them or could be you at any moment. In All Quiet on the Western Front Paul basically says that they believe in luck and that the only chance they have to stay alive in WWI is by luck, and it was very frequent that they’re luck runs out. In WWI the conditions were awful, men were always being brutally killed and the food that the soldiers were provided with frequently gave them different diseases and were often eaten by rats. The men and the dead bodies spread around many diseases, trench foot was especially common among diseases that were caused by standing in muddy and water filled trenches. Paul is the main character in All Quiet on the Western Front. Him and his friends all enlisted in the army when they were 19. When they got to the trenches they met a man named Kat who was much older then them and who quickly became close friends with Paul. Even thought some soldiers survived the shellings and gas, they were still destroyed by the war. Many men were destroyed by the war mentally. The Soldiers that survived the war and came home almost all had PTSD and were mentally ill from what they had seen or experienced. (Chapter 5, pg.87) "The war has ruined us for everything” This quote means that what they have seen and done in the war has transformed them into only being able to think of and understand the life of war. War becomes what they live and breath and cannot comprehend with other jobs that do not relate to war and the horrifying killing that they were trained to do. Paul was destroyed by the war when he was in a shelling whole and an enemy jumped into it with him and Paul stabbed