What Is the War Like? Themes:
             War may seem not at all that hard to some people, you go to army training learn to shoot a gun dress up in your military outfit fly off to some country and shoot guys. What is so hard about that, and if you get hit your dead in a flash, correct? Well actually according to the events mentioned in 'All Quiet on the Western Front', it has much more than just going out and killing people and being done yourself in the end. War just isn't bad physically but also emotionally and you usually concentrate on it so much you miss out on an entire generation of family life. Also you miss out on the many good things of life, for you are trying to get rid of the bad things to make things good when really you are making things worse. Fighting for freedom might result in having freedom but also results in many people maybe being killed, which is wrong also. From 'All Quiet on the Western Front', collected is various descriptions of the war life:
             "The crash of the shells bursts in my ears. If our fellows make a counter-raid I will be saved. I press my head against the earth and listen to the muffled thunder, like the explosions of quarrying-and raise it again to listen for the sounds on top."
             "We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial-I believe we are lost."
             "How long has it been? Weeks-months-years? Only days. We see time pass in the colorless faces of the dying, we cram food into us, we run, we throw, we shoot, we kill, we lie about, we are feeble and spent, and nothing supports us but the knowledge that there are still feebler, still more spent, still more helpless ones there who, with staring eyes, look upon us as gods that escape death many times."
             "My thoughts become confused. This atmosphere of carbolic and gangrene clogs the lungs, it is a thick gruel, it suffocates."
             Those quotes just demonstrate what real war could or can be like. It might even sho...