Essay Test

Essay Question: The soldier’s identity has been slowly impacted throughout the war. Has their identity as individuals evolved positively or negatively as an effect of the war? How has this affected the soldiers?

    The soldiers are no longer individuals, but a group, a system. They have been defaced by the war. But while the system is one main contributor to the loss of their identity, the men themselves are the main factor. Paul says “I often sit over against myself as if before a stranger.”(273) Paul doesn’t even recognize himself as a person anymore. A person’s identity is their whole entire being, their name, their religion, who they are as a person, even who they are to other people. To have that taken away from you, well, like Paul said, you become a stranger, even to yourself.
      Before the boys were persuaded to enlist in the army, they were full of life, full of hopes and dreams. They knew where their life was going to go from the second they graduated. The boys knew what they were going to do as an occupation after they had served their term. Yet- amidst the blood and gore, the fallen comrades, and pure terror-they lost all of it. They started to feel “confused and hopeless” (87). They had no idea what they were going to do after the war, because they couldn’t even imagine anything “worth lying in the muck for”(87).  This is the first point in the book where it is evident how hopeless they really have become. Paul says “We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life.”(87)  Each solider is split into two different people, one is standing firm and the other is running away. The traits that they had in “peacetime” are fleeing as a result of the war. Everything they know is ripped out from underneath them, revealing their true identity is not who they used to be, but is who they are when faced with hardships and struggles.
    A main part of a person’s identity is their individuality. In the army, in order to succeed as a nation, soldiers have to act as one, as a whole. Everyone has to be in time with one another, there has to be communication and drill. There has to be a system.  The system is what makes the nation a success, but in this book, it’s ultimately a downfall for the soldiers. “This soldier……has forgotten all else but marching.”(95) The soldiers now don’t even know how to do the things the same way they did before. How could they go back home, sit down at their kitchen table, and carry on as if nothing had changed? All they know now is war. The way they think, act, even speak has been altered by their experiences at the front. Paul starts to think of everything in dark ways, he is surrounded by death and it invades his thoughts. The earth which he used to think of as warm and embracing turns him away. He no longer sees the light at the end of the tunnel, only the never ending darkness. The soldiers personality starts to become diluted; they fade to fit in with the rest of the soldiers. Paul writes, “It is as though formerly we are coins of different provinces; and now we are melted down, and all bear the same stamp.”(272) The soldiers have been made to fit the system. They are no longer individuals.
    The soldiers, though their outward appearance might not have changed, their identity has, and not for the better. They are unsure of themselves now; they don’t know how things could ever be the same. Paul “believe[s]  [they] are lost.”  And they will never be found.