Erich Maria Remarque used Paul Bäumer to narrate his work All Quiet on the Western Front. A young man of 19 fights for the German army on the French front in World War I. Paul and several of his school friends voluntarily joined the army after listening to the stirring patriotic speeches of their teacher, Kantorek. As all of Paul's friends die on the French front, Paul realized to survive the agony of the war; one must disconnect oneself from emotions like grief, sympathy, and fear. Then in October of 1918, Paul dies alone on the battlefield; with a calm composure of being relieved, the end has come at last. In All Quiet on the Western Front, there is a passage about the soldier's relationship with the earth as the soldiers receive bombardment from the French. Here the soldiers realized that they have been lucky until now and the earth is the only thing that offers them protection from the shells. Remarque used literary tools to invoke emotions of fear, pain and respect from the reader.
             Fling, which is to move in a brusque or headlong manner, describes how the soldiers on the front were jumping into the crevices of the earth for protection. This movement paints a picture of urgency, fear, and shows that the soldiers were not concerned with where they landed, as long as they got down on the ground as quickly as possible.
             As fling, annihilation was another great choice of words for the passage because when the reader reads this word, they tend to think of total extermination. Annihilation is a more invoking word because it seems to instill a more destructive emotion. This example describes how the soldiers felt as the shells flew towards them and exploded as it landed upon them. Armies obliterating a country until nothing stood upon the earth are visuals that come to mind when annihilation is used. This picture in turn makes the feeling of insecurity powerful in that there is nothing living bec...