War has touched many throughout history and is still occurring to this day. Through publishing texts, authors have been able to convey their personal experiences to the whole world, and have allowed us to gain an insight and perspective of their representation of war.
"Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad."Sigrid Sassoons poem Survivor, written in 1917, echoes the messages of three post-war texts which focus on the effect of war on the individual soldier. Many authors have conveyed a portrayal of war through the use of themes such as horror and futility. However three post-war texts All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, the movie Saving Private Ryan directed by Steven Spielberg and the poem Disabled written by Wilfred Owen are prime examples of this. All of the authors, through their themes, are highly critical of war, and effectively portray this through the use of techniques.
Remarque, Erich Maria: Im Westen nichts Neues. Rom...
Dustjacket first Dutch edition All Quiet on the We...
Paul StangThe overriding theme of All Quiet on the Western Front and Saving Private Ryan is the horror of war. The soldiers have to undergo a brutal struggle to survive. This is evident in the text All Quiet on the Western Front, where the author, Remarque, sets out to portray the reality of war as it was experienced by the soldiers, replacing the romantic picture of glory and heroism with an unquestionably unromantic vision of fear and butchery. In Chapter 4, Paul's company is assigned to lay barbed wire at the front, an extremely dangerous task. Remarque uses language effectively to convey the horror of war in this scene. The simile "I wiggleâ¦flat as an eel on the ground" and the repetition "I just crawl deeper and deeper for cover" conveys the desperate and savage struggle Paul, and in...