Searching for Meaning In Life
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This study will examine three works' treatment of the common theme of searching for meaning in life under harrowing circumstances. The three works are Erich Maria Remarque's anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Charles Dickens's Hard Times, and Jurek Becker's Jacob the Liar. The novels deal with various aspects of European history which portray the rise of forces of dehumanization which occurred in the 19th and 20th century (through World War II). Remarque deals with world war and its impact on individual human beings. Dickens' novel deals with social and economic forces which lead to the dehumanization of workers and children. Becker's novel deals with the dehumanization of victims of a second world war, and specifically with a victim of the Nazi concentration camps which were a central horror in that war. Each of the books also deals with the search of victims of these forces of European history, a search for meaning in a life which appears at times to be without meaning due to those aforementioned forces of oppression. A reader 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). Nevertheless, Remarque, beginning with protagonist Paul Baumer, does show individuals to be fundamentally good, although, of course, they are all vulnerable to corruption by the aggressive impulses of political and military lea
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ole and nature of power in England in the first half of the nineteenth century in England. In this world, the economic basis of power prevails, just as the military basis of power prevails in the world of Remarque's book. Just as Remarque critiques war and its impact on the individual, Dickens critiques the socioeconomic structure and its impact on the individual. Focusing on issues such as education, labor, and capitalistic economics, Dickens makes clear that it is the rich capitalists who have the power in society, just as Remarque pits the distant rulers of the military as the powers-that-be, with individuals on the front line left to live or die or go mad or reach some point of acceptance and serenity as does Paul just before his death.
To Dickens, the poor and the working class might be said to be the equivalent of Remarque's soldiers on the front line of war. The workers of Coketown have little alternative in their dire circumstances but to dream of a better future in which they have the power, or at least a share of it. In addition, the workers in Coketown find some measure of meaning in their strife-ridden life from protesting against the system whose power abuses them. Such protest is beyond the realm of possibility for
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Approximate Word count = 1677
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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