Writing towards the end of the 20th century, German literary scholar Hans Wagener reflected on the deep resonance of war literature, stating : “When we When we think of certain periods of history, we think of historical books that capture the spirit of that era most vividly.” Indeed, the literary expressions of the Great War have played a crucial role in shaping our perception of modern warfare, as evidenced by the great success achieved by Henri Barbusse's Sous le feu (1917) and by the retrospective novel by 'Erich Maria Remark, All Calm on the Western Front (1929). ), two episodic stories which purport to present the reality of the fighting on both sides of the 1914-18 conflict. Both writers seamlessly interweave fiction and autobiography in order to dismantle romanticized ideals of patriotic glory and adventure, with their stories moving from the terribly monotonous to the horribly gruesome aspects of life in the trenches. Additionally, their position as spokespersons – for soldiers who were unwilling or unable to speak for themselves – led both writers to further acquire the status of “moral witnesses,” suggesting that their work may have been motivated by an implacable sense of loyalty and duty to the soldiers they fought alongside. However, it has been argued that the authors' use of fictional accounts alongside authentic accounts undermines their critique of romanticized misconceptions about the war, and that certain aestheticized elements of their texts may even contribute to the mythologizing of the war to which they seem to oppose so vehemently. . Therefore, while these texts have undoubtedly influenced modern conceptions of military conflict, they also raise pertinent questions related to the function and integrity of Great War literature. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay The late 19th and early 20th centuries were a time of growing nationalism across Europe, with every man in France and in Germany being subjected to varying degrees of military training. As such, the idea that waging war was a noble enterprise was widespread, and by 1914 the media and teachers had fostered a strong sense of patriotism among young people by telling militaristic stories of honor, bravery and conquest. The enthusiastic mood of young people at the start of the war is reflected in Rupert Brooke's 1914 sonnet "Peace", which castigates those who do not believe in war as "sick hearts that honor cannot can move” and invokes the powerful imagery of baptism by presenting a vision of young men embarking on a restorative mission of cleansing, “like swimmers leaping clean.” Interestingly, Barbusse begins Under Fire with a similar allusion to pre-war illness, setting his first chapter in a sanatorium in the Alps. He uses dialogue between patients to explore popular beliefs about conflict, namely that the prospect of war offers an opportunity for renewal: “Maybe it's the war to end wars” [5]. Foreshadowing the devastation of France during and after the conflict, Barbusse therefore adopts the motif of an inner wound as a platform to detail the common hopes and expectations surrounding the start of the Great War. However, the text quickly deconstructs these errors of hope and renewal. , as Barbusse recounts the experiences of French soldiers in passionate and violent prose. Written in the form ofserial in 1916, a year that saw an unprecedented number of French soldiers killed on the Somme and at Verdun, Under Fire exposes the folly of the public's misconceptions about the war by detailing the grotesque horrors of combat: "I saw his body get up, stand up. , black, his two arms outstretched and a flame in place of his head! [154]. Far from affirming the romantic ideal of patriotic glory in combat, the text paints a hellish vision of terror and butchery, with Barbusses' narrative continually dwelling on the mutilated bodies of his fallen comrades ("his head was completely flattened, like a pancake") [46] and on the absurdity of the death and destruction caused by war. These gripping scenes of bloodshed and carnage are interspersed with periods of crushing monotony, striking a stark, but undesirable, contrast with the relentless terror of artillery barrages. Passages detailing seemingly endless episodes of inactivity cleverly subvert idealized depictions of the French soldier enthusiastically embarking on daring militaristic escapades: “We are waiting. We get tired of sitting, so we get up. Our joints tense with creaks, like warped wood or old hinges: humidity rusts a man like a gun, more slowly, but more deeply” [18]. Rather than extolling soldiers as representatives of youthful vitality, Barbusse describes how men became old before their time; their “squeaky” joints mean they have been reduced to mere “waiting machines.” This dark sense of uselessness is reinforced by the confusion and lack of direction that permeate the narrative, vividly illustrated by an instance where soldiers mistakenly enter German trenches ("Where are we? God Almighty! Where are we?) [275]. Thus, over the course of the novel, the myths of honor and glory that inspired many to become recruits lose their meaning and are then replaced by Barbusse's harrowing tales of soul-destroying terror. Influenced by Barbusse's war story and no doubt alarmed by the efforts of some to sanitize the Great War during the 1920s, Erich Maria Remarque published his retrospective account of the experience of the common German soldier, Tout calme sur le Western Front, in order to shock the general public into indifference. Indeed, Remarque's manuscript was initially rejected by the publishing house S. Fischer Verlag, which felt that the German public was no longer interested in reading about the war. Using a third-person narrative to imbue the text with a degree of detachment, Stratégie deftly subverts the myth of "noble" military experience through the harrowing impressions of a young German recruit, Paul Bäumer. The incongruity between romantic ideals of patriotism and courage and the harsh reality of life in the trenches is particularly evident through Bäumer's experiences witnessing the aftermath of murderous gas attacks: "I know the sights terrible conditions of the field hospital, the soldiers who were gassed, suffocated for whole days while they vomited little by little from their burned lungs” [48]. Ruthlessly dismantling the belief that German soldiers were stoic and fearless, Remarque describes young men being systematically stripped of their dignity, recounting an occasion in which a young soldier defiled himself ("I understand right away: the dam scared him” ) [44] out of sheer terror during a bombing. Furthermore, the episodes recounted in Remarque's text are out of context; it does not disclose the names, dates or locations of the battles, thus echoing the sentimentomnipresent futility that prevails in Under Fire. . Driven by the desperation to steal the boots of their fallen comrades, the young soldiers' miserable actions poignantly demonstrate how the war transformed men on both sides of the conflict into "human animals", forever alienated from civilian life. A discourse of hostility and fear of the “other,” the anger of Barbusse and Stratégie is almost exclusively reserved for the “home front,” made up of civilians who remained in France and Germany throughout the war. The inanity of the authority figures at home in All Quiet on the Western Front is personified by Paul's schoolmaster, Kantorek, who instills in his students bellicose illusions of honor and patriotic duty: "I can I can still see him, his eyes shining at us through his glasses and his voice shaking with emotion as he asked, "You'll all leave, won't you guys?" » [8]. Kantorek's fiery rhetoric and pompous belief in the infallibility of young soldiers – at one point he refers to them as "young men of iron" [13] – appear absurd and misleading, consequently forcing the reader to re-evaluate their own hypotheses about the nature of war. modern warfare. Likewise, Barbusse's text is scathing toward those who speak authoritatively about war without experiencing it, particularly "trench tourists," who exacerbate romanticized notions that war is an exciting and honorable endeavor. In a darkly humorous passage, the author describes a group of journalists visiting French soldiers in the trenches: “Oh! Oh!" says the first gentleman. "Here are some furry ones... And some real ones too." He approaches our group a little closer, a little cautiously, like at the Jardin d'Acclimatation zoo, and extends his hand to the one closest to him, with a certain awkwardness, as if offering a piece of bread to the elephant “Aha! They drink coffee, he observes. They call it “juice”, says. the man with the magpie [33] Equipped with umbrellas and binoculars, the appearance of the journalists in this infernal desert appears grotesque and inappropriate, and the condescending manner in which they address the soldiers (“Is that what it is). 'is good, my friends?') clearly marks them as figures of contempt Barbusse's text therefore functions as an attack on the ill-informed preconceptions of the sleepy "home front", with his account repeatedly demonstrating how the. Real combat experience in the trenches is a necessary condition to truly understand the realities of war. This exposes an additional dimension to war. the intentions behind these novels, explicitly laid out by Stratégie in the epigraph to All Quiet on the Western Front, where he claims to "account for a generation that was destroyed by war – even those who survived the bombings." As a spokesperson for soldiers destroyed physically or mentally by war, Remarque feels a strong sense of duty to his fallen comrades, which is largely manifested in his determination to prevent the perpetuation of myths surrounding the war. His narrative is concerned with the challenges young soldiers face as they attempt to return to civilian life, with Paul reflecting anxiously: “Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen next? And what can we become? [186]. Paul and his young comrades feel deprived of the experience of growing up in peaceful times, and Stratégie emphasizes the tragedy of their stolen youth through the reiteration of the word "young" throughout the text. Therefore, Remarque's novel speaks for those forever silenced by conflict and, on their behalf, exposes war as a pointless and retrograde enterprise. Likewise ».