Writing towards the end of the 20th century, German literary scholar Hans Wagener reflected on the profound resonance of war literature, stating: “When we think At certain periods in history, epochal books come to mind that most vividly capture the spirit of those times.” Indeed, literary expressions of the Great War have played a crucial role in shaping our perception of modern warfare, as evidenced by the widespread success of Henri Barbusse's Under Fire (1917) and Erich Maria Remarque's retrospective novel, All Quiet on the Western Front (1929). ), two episodic accounts that purport to present the reality of fighting on both sides of the 1914-18 conflict. Both writers seamlessly weave fiction and autobiography to dismantle Romantic ideals of patriotic glory and adventure, with their narratives veering away from the monotonous and gruesome aspects of trench life. Furthermore, their position as spokespersons – for soldiers unwilling or unable to speak for themselves – led both writers to further gain the status of “moral witnesses,” suggesting that their work may have been driven by an inexorable sense of loyalty and duty to the soldiers they fought alongside. However, it has been argued that the writers' use of fictional accounts alongside authentic ones undermines their critique of romanticized misconceptions about the war, and some aestheticised elements of their texts may even contribute to the mythologising of the war which they appear to oppose with so much vehemence. . Thus, while these texts have undoubtedly influenced modern conceptions of military conflict, they raise pertinent questions relating to the function and integrity of the literature of the Great War. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The late 19th and early 20th centuries were a time of growing nationalism across Europe, with every man in France and Germany undergoing various levels of military training. As such, there was a commonly held belief that waging war was a noble undertaking, and by 1914, both the mass media and teachers had fostered a firm feeling of patriotism in young people by telling militaristic stories of honor, courage, and conquest. The enthusiastic mentality of young people at the outbreak of war is reflected in Rupert Brooke's 1914 sonnet, “Peace,” which rebukes those who do not believe in war as “sick hearts that honor cannot move,” and invokes the powerful image of baptism by presenting a vision of young men embarking on a restorative mission of purification, “like swimmers leaping towards cleanliness.” Interestingly, Barbusse begins Under Fire with a similar allusion to a pre-war illness, setting his opening chapter in a sanatorium in the Alps. He uses dialogue between patients to explore popular beliefs about the conflict, that the prospect of war offers an opportunity for renewal: “Perhaps it is war that puts an end to wars” [5]. Foreshadowing the devastation of France during and after the conflict, Barbusse then adopts the motif of the inner wound as a platform to detail the shared hopes and expectations surrounding the start of the Great War. However, the text quickly deconstructs these errors of hope and renewal. , while Barbusse recounts the experiences of French soldiers in passionate and violent prose. Written in installments in 1916, a year that saw French troops killed in unprecedented numbers on the Somme and at Verdun, Under Fire exposes themadness of the public's misconceptions about war by detailing the grotesque horrors of combat: "I saw his body rise up, upright, black, with his arms fully outstretched and a flame for a head!" [154]. Far from affirming the romantic ideal of patriotic glory in battle, the text paints a hellish vision of terror and carnage, with Barbusse's narrative continually lingering over the mutilated bodies of his fallen comrades ("his head was completely flattened, like a pancake ”) [46] and on the senselessness of the death and destruction brought by war. These vivid scenes of bloodshed and carnage are interspersed with periods of crushing monotony, creating a stark, but hardly desirable, contrast to the relentless terror of the artillery barrage. Passages detailing seemingly endless episodes of inactivity cleverly subvert idealized depictions of the French soldier eagerly embarking on daring militaristic adventures: “We are waiting. We get tired of sitting, so we get up. Our joints tense with creaks, like warped wood or old hinges: damp rusts a man like a rifle, more slowly, but more deeply” [18]. Instead of praising the soldiers as representing youthful vitality, Barbusse describes how the men have aged before their time; their “creaky” joints mean that they have been reduced to mere “waiting machines.” This bleak sense of aimlessness is augmented by the confusion and lack of direction that permeates the narrative, clearly illustrated by an example where soldiers mistakenly enter German trenches (“Where are we? God Almighty! Where are we?”) [ 275] . Over the course of the novel, then, the myths of honor and glory that drove many to become recruits lose meaning and are subsequently replaced by Barbusse's harrowing narratives of soul-destroying terror. Influenced by Barbusse's wartime account, and no doubt alarmed by the After the efforts of some to heal the Great War during the 1920s, Erich Maria Remarque published his retrospective account of the experience of the ordinary German soldier, All Quiet on the Western Front, to shock and indifference the vast reading public. Indeed, Remarque's manuscript was initially rejected by the publishing house S. Fischer Verlag, which believed that the German public was no longer interested in reading about the war. Using a third-person narrative to imbue the text with a certain detachment, Remarque cleverly subverts the myth of the “noble” military experience through the harrowing impressions of a young German recruit, Paul Bäumer. The incongruity between the romantic ideals of patriotism and courage and the harsh reality of life in the trenches is made especially clear by Bäumer's experiences of witnessing the aftermath of deadly gas attacks: "I know the terrible scenes of the field hospital, the soldiers who were gassed, suffocating for days on end as they vomited their burned lungs, little by little" [48]. Ruthlessly dismantling the belief that German soldiers were stoic and fearless, Remarque describes young people who are regularly stripped of dignity, recounting an occasion in which a young soldier soils himself ("I understand immediately: the barrage scared him to death") [44] out of sheer terror during a bombardment. Furthermore, the episodes recounted in Remarque's text are devoid of context; reveals the names, dates or locations of battles, thus echoing the pervasive sense of futility prevalent in Under Fire Driven by desperation to steal the boots of their dead comrades, the miserable actions of the young soldiers demonstratetouching how the war transformed men on both sides of the conflict into "human animals", forever alienated from civilian life. Rather than engaging with the dominant Speaking of hostility and fear of the “other,” Barbusse and Remarque's anger is reserved almost exclusively for the “home front,” made up of civilians who remained in France and Germany during the war. The futility of their country's authority figures in All Quiet on the Western Front is embodied in the form of Paul's schoolmaster, Kantorek, who instills in his students warlike illusions of honor and patriotic duty: "I can still see him, his eyes shine to us through his glasses and his voice trembling with emotion as he asked: “You will all go, right guys?”” [8] Kantorek's fiery rhetoric and pompous belief in the infallibility of the young soldiers – at one point yes. refers to them as “young men of iron” [13] – appear absurd and deceptive, consequently forcing the reader to reevaluate their assumptions about the nature of young soldiers in modern warfare of those who speak authoritatively about war without experiencing it, especially “trench tourists,” who exacerbate romantic notions of war as a thrilling and honorable endeavor, the author describes a group of journalists visiting the French soldiers in the trenches:““Oh! OH!" says the first gentleman. "Here are some poilus... And real ones too." He comes a little closer to our group, with a certain caution, like at the zoo of the Jardin d'Acclimation, and holds out his hand to the closest one. close to him, with a certain clumsiness, like offering a piece of bread to the elephant. “Aha! They drink coffee,” he observes. “They call it “juice”,” says the magpie man.” binoculars, the appearance of the journalists in this hellish wasteland appears farcical and inappropriate, and the condescending way in which they address the soldiers (“Are you all right, my friends?”) clearly marks them as figures of contempt. Barbusse's text works thus as an attack on the misinformed preconceptions of the sleepy "home front", with his account repeatedly demonstrating how the actual experience of fighting in the trenches is a requirement for truly understanding the reality of war. This exposes an additional dimension to the intentions of the war basis of these novels, made explicit by Remarque in the epigraph of All Quiet on the Western Front, where he claims to "give an account of a generation that was destroyed by the war – even those who survived the bombing". As a spokesperson for the soldiers who were physically or mentally destroyed by the war, Remarque feels a keen sense of duty towards his fallen comrades, which manifests itself largely in his determination to prevent the perpetuation of the myths surrounding the war. His narrative is concerned with the challenges faced by young soldiers when attempting to return to civilian life, with Paul anxiously reflecting that “our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen next? And what could ever happen to us?" [186]. Paul and his young companions feel robbed of the experience of growing up in peaceful times, and Remarque highlights the tragedy of their stolen youth through the reiteration of the word “youth” throughout the text. As a result, Remarque's novel speaks on behalf of those forever silenced by the conflict and, on their behalf, denounces war as a wasteful and regressive enterprise. Similarly, Barbusse's Under Fire sees the author take on the role of "moral witness," with the text's voice-over narration resonating with the sobering authority of direct experience. Barbusse incorporates military jargon and crude colloquialisms into the novel's dialogue”.