A Review of Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars
Blon 1
What is it Good For? As famous English author by the name of H.G. Wells once nicknamed this war the "war to end all wars". The saddening and intense outcome of this war, which left such a negative toll on all the countries involved, led many people to believe that these countries would never fight again. That war was World War I. One of the greatest novels to ever portray the events and the distressful outcomes of World War I, is the novel To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild. This novel written by Hochschild went into many different aspects of World War I that were not often covered by other authors that wrote about this topic. This story was able to dramatically change my views of World War I and the many different aspects involved in the war. Some of the aspects that can be learned from this novel include views of war in general, how war is conducted, and even such characteristics as patriotism, meaning the love of one's country and the willingness to sacrifice for it, and heroism, great bravery and honor. One of the aspects of the war that was learned from this novel by Hochschild was "the spark" that actually pushed all the countries over the edge of pacifism, meaning that all of the countries were not fighting, and started the largest war that the world had ever seen. That spark was the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand in the country of Sarajevo, next to Serbia. Hochschild explains the assassination in his novel. He writes, "It was into this powder keg of jostling empires, just as Franz Ferdinand's open touring car unexpectedly stopped on the street in front of him, that young Gavrilo Princip fired two point-blank pistol shots. One hit the Archduke... in the jugular vein," (Hochschild 81). This quote specifically shows how the Archduke was killed, and who he was killed him. The use of "powder keg of Blon 2 jostling empires" shows that there
What is it Good For? As famous English author by the name of H.G. Wells once nicknamed this war the "war to end all wars". The saddening and intense outcome of this war, which left such a negative toll on all the countries involved, led many people to believe that these countries would never fight again. That war was World War I. One of the greatest novels to ever portray the events and the distressful outcomes of World War I, is the novel To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild. This novel written by Hochschild went into many different aspects of World War I that were not often covered by other authors that wrote about this topic. This story was able to dramatically change my views of World War I and the many different aspects involved in the war. Some of the aspects that can be learned from this novel include views of war in general, how war is conducted, and even such characteristics as patriotism, meaning the love of one's country and the willingness to sacrifice for it, and heroism, great bravery and honor. One of the aspects of the war that was learned from this novel by Hochschild was "the spark" that actually pushed all the countries over the edge of pacifism, meaning that all of the countries were not fighting, and started the largest war that the world had ever seen. That spark was the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand in the country of Sarajevo, next to Serbia. Hochschild explains the assassination in his novel. He writes, "It was into this powder keg of jostling empires, just as Franz Ferdinand's open touring car unexpectedly stopped on the street in front of him, that young Gavrilo Princip fired two point-blank pistol shots. One hit the Archduke... in the jugular vein," (Hochschild 81). This quote specifically shows how the Archduke was killed, and who he was killed him. The use of "powder keg of Blon 2 jostling empires" shows that there