My Death Would Be Mine By Martha Hanna And All Quiet On...

Imagine you’re lying on the muddy, damp Earth and all around you can hear the screams of people you know dying. Shells explode, bullets race through the air, and poisonous gas seeps around you, all with the intent to harm you in some way. Yet, you willingly put yourself in that position day after day, year after year. The question surrounding this situation is, why? Who would be masochistic enough to choose to put their lives in danger and live in the most perilous environment possible? Two very different books give us insight into the thoughts of the soldiers who continuously put themselves in these environments. Your Death Would Be Mine by Martha Hanna and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque lets us into the minds of Paul Pireaud and Paul Baumer as they try to survive life as a soldier in the Great War. I argue that Pireaud and Baumer had very different reasons for continuing to fight despite having suffered beyond belief. In this paper I will analyze how the va rying degrees of patriotism, brotherhood, family life at home, and age affected how these two men endured the treacherous life on the front of World War I. To begin with, Pireaud and Baumer entered the war for different reasons from the start. Pireaud was conscripted to fight the war, while Baumer proudly enlisted. Not only were these two main characters different in their reasons for entering the war, they also differed in lifestyles – Pireaud being a peasant and Baumer being an educated elite.