Last week I finished my first book of the year, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich M. Remarque, and I just needed some time to fully digest it. As books are a work of art, we all see different aspects and feel different ways, and these perspectives are based on our experiences in life.
The MC’s transition to civilian life on leave struck me, the distance he felt from the other people free from the confines of the front. But the hardest for me was the end, >!where the rest of his squad mates die in action, leaving him left. and especially after the death of Kat, where upon he just loses the rest of his will to live!<.
My perspectives on this story are altered by the fact that I was in the military, and did some years in there. Now, I never saw combat unlike the characters in the book, but I could feel the terror and fear they felt. My question for the community for those who’ve read it, how did you take the story depending on your perspectives, whether serving or not? I’m just curious how big an impact the emotional coaster this book carries on those who have never been through anything near it.
And I guess I’ll add, am I missing anything major from a true civilians perspective, because I read this after, and not before I served.
by Pope_Asimov_III
2 Comments
You should also read his “sequel” to it The Road Back.
It’s been years since I read it, but it affected me so deeply. I’ve never been anywhere near being in the military myself, but two of my great-uncles died in World War I and it affected my grandfather his whole life. Reading the book I of course was thinking about them and what they went through, imagining the terror and fear – I read it hoping that it wasn’t like that for them, but knowing that it was.