My Views as a Reader

“All Quiet on the Western Front,” by Erich Maria Remarque and excerpts from Herbert, Chevalier, Barthas, and West have been a remarkably insightful, detailed insight into the life and struggles of any normal veteran from World War I. Not only was their heartbreaking depiction of the grotesque daily lives of soldiers deliberately accounted with added information most of my fellow classmates and I have never read of before, but this book and these excerpts also give new meaning to our upcoming Remembrance Day assembly. Of course, with no doubt in my mind, we have all known some of the terrible struggles veterans went through for several years now, including being taught the outcome and beginning of the war in history class. However, us as a class I believe we have not fully understood what took place at such battles and or fronts as the Western Front in France/Belgium. Although “All Quiet on the Western Front,” is a realistic fiction autobiography with the main storyline being fully adapted from real-life events, the book still gives new insights into how soldiers fought and not how old pro-war effort ideas want people to believe they did. This new unit really did help me better understand what it was like to live the life of a soldier, even if it is through a small glimpse created by a book into how terrifying life was at the time.

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