Characteristics Of War By Erich Maria Remarque

War is not a game. It is not something that should be celebrated. It is not something of which to be proud. World War I affected the lives of everyone who fought in it. New weapons and new tactics were being used for the first time, and every country wanted to play a role in this new type of warfare. Erich Maria Remarque was one of the unfortunate people to be dragged into this war to fight for Germany. After the war was over, he wrote a book about the realities of war from the perspective of the soldiers fighting in it. On the first page, he wrote, “This book is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war,” (Remarque). The men who “escaped the shells” were still affected by the war through shellshock (pre-PTSD), loss of innocence, and the rejection of everything.
Soldiers experienced this after prolonged bombardment. Symptoms include shaking and convolution, crying, mental breakdowns, and nightmares. As Remarque describes it in his book, “The first recruit seems actually to have gone insane. He butts his head against the wall like a goat,” (Remarque 111). The soldier had gone mad from the constant bombardment and started to have a mental breakdown; eventually it gets to the point where they have to strap him down to prevent him from injuring himself or anyone else. Shell shock was a terrible condition to have, especially during the war. Generals would blow it off as cowardness when it was (and is) a very real, horrible mental illness. Back then, there was no cure for it, whereas now we have different medicines and therapies to treat