Two Literary Essays
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Erich Maria Remarque, in his anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front, presents a far more optimistic portrait of human nature than does the largely deterministic psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in the latter's Character and Culture. However, the two works do not stand in utterly stark contrast to one another. Certainly one could come away from Remarque's novel in a state of despair with respect to the future of the human race and its ability to survive its own destructive impulses: "I am so alone, and so without hope" (295). And despite Freud's basically deterministic view that irrational and aggressive forces drive that same human race and make war inevitable, it is also possible to find in Freud some sign of hope for the race: "A little more truthfulness and upright dealing on all sides, both in the personal relations of men to one another and between them and those who govern them, should . . . do something towards smoothing the way for this transformation" to a world beyond war (Freud 121). Nevertheless, despite these ambivalences, it is fair to say that Remarque shows individuals to be fundamentally good (as personified by his protagonist Paul Baumer) but subject to corruption by the aggressive impulses of political and military leaders: Freud, on the other hand, sees man as fundamentally controlled by those aggressive impulses. Remarque is not saying that human beings are thoroughly good inside and out, lest the war about which he writes would have not have ever
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urning is over, it will be found that our high opinion of the riches of civilization has lost nothing from our discovery of our fragility. We shall build up again all that war has destroyed (Freud 151).
On the other hand, Remarque's generally more positive view of human nature leads him to see war as far more destructive to the individual than Freud believes it to be for civilization overall. Remarque has his protagonist leave us with words that clearly come from a broken man, despite his obscure claim that his life will continue to "seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me" (Remarque 295). In any case, the final lines punctuate Remarque's gloomy conclusion, with Paul killed on a day that was "all quiet on the Western Front" (Remarque 296). The individual in Remarque is shattered by war, while the civilization in Freud survives. The question may be, which is the most important---the individual or civilization?
Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. Character and Culture. New York: Collier, 1963.
Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1982.
Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart on at least three levels deals with the confrontation of an outsider with an established
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2098
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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