All Quiet On the Western Front

Mr. Stuck began the class by shooting rubber bands at all of us.

All Quiet On the Western Front:

Paul: main character,  girly, whines a lot.

Author is very obvious about the message of antiwar. The class decided the author could’ve written the book much better.

Hemmerichs boots- boots of death, valuable, boots were always needed, distracted for the soldiers (it gave them something else to have besides war.) – This led to a discussion on death and how everyone experiences it.

Conflict:

Man vs Himself  (Paul vs. Paul) – to young to understand what he is getting himself into, the teacher convinced the men by elaborating on war, he said that it was their duty to serve their country. Military convinces young kids to show how cool war is to forward the political views even today in our society. (Example: We have military men at our lunch to help convince kids to go into the military.)  Pressure was given from many people. Government put pressure on Teacher, Teacher put pressure on students.

Comparing and Contrasting Wars:

American’s vs. Iraqi’s: American went to Iraq trying to put in a democracy system. It didn’t work.

World War 1:

Franz Ferdinand was killed. – Started the war.

3 mile strip between France and Germany where they moved back and fourth depending on who was winning at the time. World War 1 was especially deadly because it was trench warfare and the sent out gas, new guns and technology.

After the War: Germany had fines to pay, (reparations?) out of control;  this later led to World War 2.

End of Book: Paul kills the man in the trench, few believed that he would actually have the guts to kill him. Most important strategy in war – survival, believed in book that people resort back to animal senses.  (Compared to survival of little girl who was kidnapped 18 years ago in recent news.)