All Is Quiet on the Western Front vs Thin Red Line

War is one characteristic of humanity that will likely never fade away. No matter how advanced technology becomes or how educated and civilized people are, there will always be disparaging ideologies that cause violent conflicts. While war does not change, the literature of war in recent years has taken a dramatic turn. The cause for the change is a more literate lower class (the class mostly involved in the dirty work of war). War literature of the Post-World War I era are mostly concerned with the dark side of war experienced by the common soldier. Pre-World War I novels were mostly written by wealthy thinkers who could afford an education in literature and were, for the most part, not veterans of a war. These books primarily glorified and romanticized war. Two prime examples of anti-war works are The Thin Red Line and All is Quiet on the Western Front. The Thin Red Line and All is Quiet on the Western Front have one main anti-war theme in common; the negative effect of war on an ordinary soldier. These effects occur from a constant presence of death, maturity on the battlefield, and conflict with authority.

The constant presence of death in war makes a negative impact on the common solider. Ever present death confronts the main characters of both the novel and the film and forces each of them to become more callus and to employ their own method of dealing with the horror. In All is Quiet on the Western Front, Paul and his comrades enter the war as brain washed immature teens, and an environment of death confronts them, the likes of which few could prepare for. From the beginning of the novel the brutality of war eats away at the young group of kids beginning with the death of Kemmerich. The reaction to his death surprises Paul because as he is taking his last breathes, Muller asks Kemmerich if he could have his boots. The boys had seen so much death by this point that even at the deathbed of their close friend, they hardly feel anything at all. The war has...