The humanities book claims world War I inspired some of this century's most outstanding fiction. I have to say that after reading the excerpt from All Quiet on the Western Front, I believe that Remarque has created a masterpiece of mentally illustrated fiction.
Somehow his style brings me back to the reading on Pound's Personae. It reminisces to the succession of images to evoke subtle comparisons. It's much longer, but I get the same feeling of an emotional "shape" when I read this and give my mind time to conjure up the feeling and vivid pictures that Remarque has endowed this passage with.
And though it is fiction I think that it is more powerful simply because of the situation and the stark new reality that people were facing about the War that was happening around them. Basically what I mean by that is the massive increase in the efficiency of taking lives makes the descriptions come to life in everyones imagination. Especially as they considered the implications of "limitless" warfare. That, coupled with the technology of photography, brought the war psychologically to the doorstep of the entire world.
All Quiet on the Western Front gives us a different perspective on World War I than our history books might allow. Through this novel we get to hear the thought's of a German soldier in World War I, an enemy of the United States and it's allied forces. We cannot help but sympathize with our "enemy", and consequently cannot help but ask ourselves what is an enemy? Today, wars are fought in many different ways, but we can easily imaging a young soldier like the narrator struggling with issues like identity, patriotism, and mortality.
No comments:
Post a Comment