... lists lengthened and reality set in. What had been projected as a brief war became a four year struggle. When the guns finally did fall silent, the German, Austrian, Russian empires collapsed, and the greater part of a generation of young men lay dead. At the beginning of the war, most poets wrote about how it was patriotic to fight or even die for your ... soldier doesn't get his helmet on in time and now he is surrounded by green gas. The last two lines of this stanza describes the soldier dying, "Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, as under a green sea, I saw him drown...

• Word Count: 983
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... - the latter held book burnings of All Quiet on the Western Front after exiling Remarque to Switzerland. Before it is possible to delve into the aforementioned themes of the futile agonies of war and the perils of Nationalism, it is necessary to understand the political and social climate in which Remarque was writing. ... Hungarian throne, may have lit the fuse of The Great War, but the domino effect that would follow had been in place for some time prior. As early as the 1870s, disruptions to the carefully calculated balance of power in Europe began to shift, with much of Europe embarki...

• Word Count: 1278
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate