Number of Pages 10

This research paper: This is a 10 page paper discussing the alteration of realities through horror and terror in Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1928), Terrence Des Pres’ “The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps” (1976), and Jung Chang’s “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China” (1991). Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1928), Terrence Des Pres’ “The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps” (1976), and Jung Chang’s “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China” (1991), all tell stories of individuals within societies whose lives and perceptions of reality become altered by experiences of horror, terror and fear from massive events in history. Remarque’s “All Quiet” tells the tale of a young German soldier, Baumer, during World War I and how his concept of life and reality only is considered through death and destruction. Humans for Baumer, become animals in the horror of war and his reality about his emotions is skewed in terms of the value of life. In “The Survivor” Des Pres retells accounts of the Nazi death camps during World War II. The survivors of the death camps are able to recount their tales of survivor and horror in the camps but in many cases their reality is skewed by their experiences in that they cannot fully explain the events in terms of their five senses and linear time. Their lives and terror became “unreal” and not a part of the real world. Similarly, Chang’s “Wild Swans” tells the autobiographical stories of three generations of Chinese women who all experienced different terrors first through the Japanese, then the Russians and then the Chinese Communists. Reality and everyday actions became skewed as people lived in fear and altered their actions and thoughts to conform to those which were inflicted upon them. In all three generations, the women witnessed those who were prosecuted for alternate views and reality existed outside of their own world. Bibliography lists 11 sources.

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