Dedicated to Lincoln Phayze who always goes with the flow except for the times when he doesn’t.  Both of us are lost…

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/b37bd4f91ab74c2b5be4a419893cfda7/

That was an advice from somebody like me.  The gentleman in question works in the arts (I almost said “arts industry” and I was appalled by the ugliness of the expression).  Correction:  he used to work in the arts, but now he is in as much mess as I am.  He told me that once he was taking the program “The Artist’s Way” and one of the requirements was keeping a diary.  Yes, a diary.  Keeping a diary in order to awaken one’s creativity, reconnect with one’s creativity, and welcome one’s creativity back.  So the rules were simple enough – you wake up and write three pages without letting the pen stop.  The rule to remember is “Don’t get it right, get it written…”

It is a very catchy and encouraging phrase.  But no matter how encouraging a phrase may be, it still took me a while to actually start writing in my diary.  But I did.  I have some “volumes” completed, mostly filled with crap worth only getting rid of (by shredding, this detail is very important! LOL), but it does not matter.  It was not right, it was written.  My web-site contains very little of my private diary entries, it is more polished and edited. Of course.  Which course?  Moving on…

Of course. Which course? Do we know where we go?

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/kallini2002/d09d182bdef53d9a4b384576a47df417/

Am I creative?  We all are supposed to be creative, by the way…

Well, anyway, when I started this web-site, it was nearly impossible to find things to write about, and I stopped almost as soon I started.  Then I came back to it and I was more or less consistent.  There were some large gaps due to my mood swings.  When I am depressed, I feel like drowning, when I am high, I feel as if I am resurfacing…and what does it have to do with water I have no idea…  Maybe because I am a Water Sign?  Sometimes I dream that I fly so high and so skillfully…

In my dreams I fly so much higher

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/9f878a2f026418e54ca53b7917b261e9/

Coming back to the gaps.  There some of them, all due to polarity of my moods, doubts, losing faith, not really knowing what to do.  The last one started early in May when I finally found a part-time job, started dancing more and generally was busy with I don’t even remember what.  But I tried to come back.  There must be something about writing that I either like or need or maybe both.  Self-expression?  Letting out the pain?  Sharing my experience?  Pleasure of typing? LOL – yeah, that must be it, “pleasure of typing” – exercising my fine motor skills.

Exercising fine motor skills

Source: http://vi.sualize.us/view/kallini2002/5dc33cf6576d5f43e0de16fa8bf43253/

But the idea of “not getting it right, but getting it written” is very appealing.  I was reading some of my own posts from January and it turned out to be pleasant enough.  I have already forgotten the pain and the joy and details.  And it was nice to come back and see – my insanity (at one point), my pain, my suffering, and the progress I made.  So the verdict is “YES”, the point may very well be ZERO, but I should keep at it.  My diary, my web-site, “My life, my universe and everything”.  Life goes on and diary is only a reflection.  We all love mirrors, don’t we?

Or yes, we do.  Reflections, reflections, reflections…

By Igor Shchegolev

There are many opinions about the question, “Why don’t people work?”

Aesop’s famous fable clearly illustrates what the result of not working is.  The ant and grasshopper are opposites in that one of them doesn’t want to work.  People of many generations have accepted the moral of Aesop’s fable as the rule.

According t Aesop’s moral, the ant was right, and the grasshopper was not because it did not work during the summer.  It was singing and dancing all the time and didn’t anticipate what would happen in the winter.  That is a simple moral.  It is also too idealistic.  For Aesop, the world is divided into two groups – the ants and the grasshoppers.  However, people in real life are more varied and complex than the ant and the grasshopper.  Maugham tried to depict the world in more realistic colours.  He showed two brothers, one of whom didn’t work but was still rewarded.  It is the way life is.  So, Aesop defined a rule and Maugham showed that people don’t always want to live by the rules.  Why?  Life is more complicated than an Aesop’s fable because there is a big difference between labour and work.

Most people consider labour as a way to exist, to provide themselves with the necessities of life.  They work in order to live – even if they hate their jobs – and they would not work if they could manage not to.  A work ethic and moral rules have been created by society.  Political orientation does not matter; in any case, society will create conditions that require people to work hard.  In “The Work Ethic is Underemployed”, Daniel Yankelovich considers three conceptions of work: first, as labor, as a way to exist; second, as a way to improve one’s level of life; and third, as a moral necessity.  Some people accept these rules.  They work hard and consider this way of living as the only right one.  They believe that their labor will eventually be rewarded.  They are obvious characters of Aesop’s fable.  They are ants.  And they do labour, not work.

There is another reason that people work.  It doesn’t fit into any of Yankelovich’s definitions of work.  There are some people who work not for money, not for the best possible material life, not because of a moral necessity or society’s rules – but because they cannot live without working.  For them, work is a natural necessity that has nothing to do with either morals or money.

There are three good examples of people who illustrate that work is different from labour.  A good example of someone who could not live without working was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the great Viennese musician and composer.  He could not accept life without making music.  To live without creating music was meaningless to him.  Jack London, a great American writer, spent his entire life in an effort to describe people with strong personalities and willpower, people who were trying to realize the truth about life.  Roald Amundsen, the great Norwegian explorer, sacrificed his life for the work of exploration.  He was the first person to reach the South Pole.

The people I have been talking about lived in order to work.  They considered work something very interesting.  It made existence more exciting; it gave meaning to their lives.  Life and work were the same for them.  However, they don’t fit into the characters of Aesop’s ant or Yankelovich’s workers.  The three of them spent long periods of time without working.  These were times of terrible depression, stress, and even the threat of madness.  Mozart was under a depression after his mother’s death.  The last years of his life, he drank heavily and he died in poverty.  Jack London wasn’t more successful: alcoholism and financial problems led him to commit suicide at the age of 40.  Roald Amundsen was killed during the air search for an Italian explorer, Umberto Nobile.  It would be very simple to say that these people didn’t do any real work because they were lazy or because they could not handle problems due to a weak will.  However, like a glowworm, which does nothing at all, they made a beautiful light through their work.  The light they made illuminated whole generations.

I believe that the difference between work and labour can explain a lot of things.  Sometimes it is difficult to recognize the difference between them, but it is important to do so.  Since earliest times humans have created.  Their creativity has brought the greatest advances and inventions into the world.  Uncreative work, or labour, leaves no trace in history.  The majestic pyramids of Egypt, built through the labour of thousands of slaves but the work of only a few architects, still stand today as a monument to creative work.  They are a combination of work and labour.  So, why are we trying to differentiate the two terms?  First, it is important the difference between work and labour.  Second, it is important t work rather than labour in order to create rather than merely produce.

Work cited:

Yankelovich, Daniel.  “The Work Ethic is Underemployed.”  Psychology Today  (May 1982)

This article is taken from the book “Write to be Read. Reading, Reflection, and Writing” by William R. Smaller, page 102 – 103.  It is an essay written by a student from Azerbaijan.

Little white lies: lies about trivial matters, like false excuses to spare a person’s feelings; flattery; “how are you feeling”; “how’s it going”; etc. – these lies must be truly harmless and inconsequential, never intended to be given a second thought.

Placebos: deceptions to make a person feel better (like sugar pills); euphemisms; some self-help gimmickry; false reassurance.

Pufferies: inflation and exaggeration to make something sound better than it is; false praise; false encouragement; false support.

Misdirections: false recommendations; intentional incorrect or incomplete answers.

Bluffs: fake resumes; false credentials.

Protections String-Alongs: lies to protect a colleague; lies t protect a client lies t liars (to teach them a lesson; to give them a taste of their own medicine).

Snow Jobs: lies to enemies.

Terminological Inexactitudes: lies to the boss (this term was first use Winston Churchill!); also knows as “soft-soaps”.

Defensive Lies: lies in a crisis when innocent lives, health, or safety are at risk.  (may be morally justifiable if the lie can pass the “publicity test”.)

The source: that was in my ENGL 225 handout “Ethics and Professional Communications or You Want Me to Write What?”

Protecting from Unnecessary Hurt

By Donald W. McCullogh

Taken from “Write to be Read” (Reading, Reflection, and Writing) by William R. Smalzer

Verna claims that I said her baby was ugly.  I can’t imagine being that insensitive, though it was a long time ago and my memory isn’t exact in these matters.  I do recall Verna holding up her newborn and saying, “Isn’t she cute?”  And I, seeing a splotchy, scrunched little face and being committed to complete honesty, must have said something like “Well, she really is … a baby?”  Or maybe, “It takes an infant a few months before she can really be considered cute.”  Or I suppose there is a small possibility I said, “Strictly speaking, she is kind of ugly at the moment but will undoubtedly become a ravishing beauty.”

Nearly thirty years have passed, but whenever I run into Verna she reminds me that I called her baby ugly.  I don’t know her daughter; for all I know she became Miss Universe or perhaps my words lodged in her tiny subconscious and she has spent the last fifteen years in psychoanalysis working on low self-esteem.  In any event, I now wish I had lied.  It would have saved all of us a lot of grief.

Occasionally, courtesy calls for a lie.  Let me hasten to stress I’m talking about white lies, not black or gray or even off-white lies.  Show-white lies.  But even so, I realize I’ve just launched this chapter into very dangerous waters, with though ethical questions all around us.  We had better navigate through this subject very carefully, wit a firm grip on the tiller…

… How can we speak truthfully about lying?  The ancient philosopher Aristotle may be of help to us.  He said that honesty was more than unloading everything to everyone.  Rather, it is speaking the right truth to the right person at the right time in the right way for the right reason.

Not every truth is mine to tell: a truth shared in confidence and a truth that would needlessly hurt another is not mine to tell.  Not every person has a right to know the truth.  Some willfully distort what they hear; some use facts to cover a larger, more important truth: some have blabbermouths with unrelenting and undiscriminating tongues.  Not every time is appropriate for the truth: some seasons call for tactful silence: they day your friend’s daughter dropped out of school is not the day to tell her about your daughter making the honour roll.  Not every way of communicating honours the truth.  Sometimes the manner in which something is said subverts reality, as when a preacher says all the right words about God’s love but through a tone of voice and a concluding string of “oughts” (therefore we ought to do this and we ought to do that) that makes you feel guiltier than ever.  Not every reason deserves the use of truth: some motives for telling the truth are simply too destructive to deserve the respectability of being clothed in the truth.  Some expressions of “honesty” are really attempts to demean and belittle another person.

When it is the wrong truth or the wrong person or the wrong time or the wrong way or the wrong reason, a white lie may have more integrity than a facile, insensitive “honesty”.  But when does a white lie begin to turn a slight shade of gray?  When does it cross over and become an immoral act of dishonesty?

Perhaps a good test would be to ask, Does this lie protect the other person or does it protect me?  Let’s waste no time in admitting that it’s not easy to tell the difference.  On the surface, a lie may appear t protect another person from unnecessary pain; on closer examination, however, it’s actually an attempt to save me from uncomfortable exposure.  In Graham Greene’s “The Heart of the Matter”, a police officer in a West African colony during the war has an affair, and in an effort to “protect” his wife from the pain of the truth, walks down a road of falsehood that leads to disaster.  Greene’s story may be fiction but it’s a profound truth reenacted everyday.  It’s easy to convince ourselves we’re guarding the feelings of another when we’re only trying to protect ourselves – and this sort of deception often ends in more complication and more lying and more pain than we could have ever imagined.

But just because it’s difficult to tell the difference between and appropriate lie and a morally unacceptable lie does not mean we give up the attempt to make the distinction.  Life, after all, is difficult.  So we press on, doing our best, knowing we’re not God, and counting on the grace of God when we blow it.  Though committed to honesty, we know that sometimes courtesy calls for creative stretching the truth.

Dear Natasha & Jonathan!

Take a deep breath (or better a hot bath followed by a cocktail) for this is going to be a long story…

This gift is to mark the occasion that we’ve missed all of your important occasions so far such as Christmas, the New Year’s Eve, the 10^th anniversary of you being happily not married, Jonathan’s birthday, Natasha’s graduation, and the new arrival of your cats (I do not remember their names, but these days I am not quite sure I remember mine).

So, we are clear with the purpose of this gift (not that every gift needs a purpose, but this one happens to have one).  As for its combination, it was unwittingly left at my discretion as Natasha refused categorically to give me any hints.  So, if you do not like it, you have a choice of being more cooperative next time or being stuck with my taste (questionable no doubt, as all tastes are).  Maybe we will get you a nice “dust collector” next time (you are going to have a place of your own, after all, and those usually have ample space for storing dust collectors.  Paying mortgage must have some rewards!)

Anyway, they say it is not the gift that counts, but the thought.  So mine went this path…

“The gift will help Natasha and Jonathan set the mood for the party of planning their next trip to see us.  They sit on a couch (they do not pick up the phone and are deaf to the requests from their numerous relatives and friends), relax, have a drink, put some music on, look at some pictures in the photo album and think “remember (Natasha, Jonathan) we have some friends who live in Toronto.  It is not all that far.  We will go visit them.  We know that we are not only invited but also welcome, which is not necessarily mutually exclusive.  Maybe we manage to see them before fall … (see the card)”

Some Q&A to follow:

Q: Oh, but they have a baby… A: We know that having a baby may not be a major attraction especially given your recent loss of a water fountain, but when you come visit us, all the damage can only be done to our place (think about it!)

Q: Oh, but they are on a diet…A: We agree that all that dieting might be off-putting to normal people, but it will be over soon.  Nikolai’s ETA at the “Being Supermodel” destination is end of April, and mine is end of May.  And we know that it will take you at least a couple of months to get ready and come to Toronto.

Q: Oh, but Svetlana cannot cook…  A: My marginal cooking skills should not be an excuse either.  After all, who could prepare a decent dinner, if one has to exclude pea soup, boiled eggs, mayonnaise, store-bought dressings, squash and potatoes?  Only Jonathan with his Chef’s degree.  But do not you worry, we can go out or, maybe, stay in and have some nice fresh cauliflower and a couple of grapefruits (Natasha loves those, I know!)

So, now you have to come.  And maybe this time we will win a game of billiard.

There are only a couple thoughts left (you may now refill your glasses).  The bear baby on the gift bag is not a distasteful hint (“where is yours?”), but simply an oversight on my part, I did not notice it as it was hiding in the folding.  You can consider it (the bear on the bag) a little spy we sent to check if you are trying to get ready for the trip to visit us.

And my English is not perfect, never was, never will be, so please excuse all the pronoun shifting, run-ons, bad spelling, and grammar.  The lack of thoughts clarity is however not language related, but you can excuse it, too, now that you are hopefully in the good mood.

So, please come and see us, both of you, we will be looking forward to it.

Svetlana, Nikolai, and Daniel

Thank you for being there for me.  I appreciate both what you said and what you did yesterday.  Despite the fact that I might make you as uncomfortable as everybody else you are the only one in our group who did not run away from me like from a poisonous snake.  You helped me.  How?  You smiled and you laughed and you went to see art, even though at the moment you may needed your cup of tea more.

But the most helpful part of your help was that you made an effort.  You listened, you understood, you did not criticize my “torturing” strangers.  This guy Christian who did not have to, and did not want to, but with some coaching “went with the program”.  He did tell a joke, didn’t he?  I said I had a really bad day and all I asked for was to help.  The trick is how.  Help me my way, the way that I need, because I already know that if you succeed it will work.  It will work for me. I do not give you any instructions. You figure it out to make your way through the maze.  Not only Christian succeeded but also he did an A+ job.  He made me laugh.  But not only.  He could not have possibly known that his joke would turn out to be very relevant to my situation.  The way I see the point of his story is this.  The family guy could not handle being with others because he thought they were the reason that he felt frustrated (stressed, irritated, unhappy, you name it).  But when isolated and left alone he could handle it even less.  The imagery was gross but it made me listen.  It engaged me on a personal level.  I do not like that type of jokes.   So inside I have this sensation …oh, yuck, I do not like the way it is going…this is really disgusting…  But it was me who initiated “the process”, so I stayed and listened.  I did not ask Christian to make me like the joke.  Well, you were there.  What did I learn from that experience?  Nothing that I did not already know, but something I just could not get without it

I am the problem, when I figure out how to help myself; only then I can help others.  Or not help.

And you told me it was better to do it sooner than later.  Yes, you nailed it, girl. Right on the money.  I consider myself to be shrewd and perceptive, yet it took me only fifteen years to finally see the obvious.  Stop trying to find an understanding where it could not be found.  No matter how much I want to and no matter how hard I try I cannot make a blind person see and a deaf person hear.  It always had the choice to help or not to, a choice to sacrifice my needs for the needs of others.  So from now on, when I feel the urge to help others, I will pause and ask the question “Is it something that I really want to do?” So my action plan is stop helping people.  They can manage.  The trained professionals told me to “feel the fear and do it anyway”.  I did. I made a change today. I can not find words to describe the hurt…  But I managed with the help of people like you.  You do not need a diploma in psychology; you already know how to help people.  Can you do it?  You already did.  You succeeded where a “professional” failed. Next time you need a story in order to prove that you can help people, use this one.

I was totally wrong about the class.  Even though Girl # 7 said that she worked as a social worker and she could help people, I did not believe her claim.  Why?  I do know, but she proved me wrong today and I am glad that she did.   I already sensed that the only relationship Girl # 3 has with Gold is that she has a heart of one. And look at her face when she smiles, it radiates light; it is so beautiful, that I cannot take my eyes of.  And yet she struggles and struggles and struggles, and my god she deserves better.  I was wrong about the girls, at least some of them.  But I sensed the other thing right.  Going to school to learn how to help people cannot teach you if you do not have a heart.

Did you like the story about Tolerance?  Do you think that it describes you accurately as a Cancer?  I did not think that I fit the profile.  Not until today.

-          

I am the Scorpio who came first and did not take tolerance because it cannot be used for torture.  That is right.  I do not need tolerance.  Honestly is enough.  Brutal honesty, that is.

Many pairs of words imply each other. Finish implies complete, so completely finsish is redundant. So are many other pairs of words:

1. past memories

2. various differences

3. each individual

4. basic fundamentals

5. true facts

6. important essentials

7. future plans

8. sudden crisis

9. terrible tragedy

10. end result

11. final outcome

12. free gift

13. past history

14. unexpected surprise

Example: Before the travel agent was completely able to finish explaining the various differences between all of the many vacation packages her travel agency was offering, the customer changed his future plans.

Revised: Before the travel agent finished explaining the differences between the vacation packages her travel agency was offering, the customer changed his plans.

Any of you who have been asked to produce a letter of recommendation might find yourselves wondering how to describe your subject’s less-than-sterling qualities.

Here are some phrases you might find useful.

It was given to me by Julian Craft, my instructor for ENGL 225 (Professional Writing) course at DeVry.

For an employee who is so unproductive that the job is better left unfilled:

“I can assure you that no person would be better for the job.”

For an employee with no ambition:

“He could not care less about the number of hours he had to put in.”

“You would indeed be fortunate to get this person to work for you.”

For a stupid employee:

“There is nothing you can teach a man like him.”

“I most enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.”

For a dishonest employee:

“Her true ability was deceiving.”

“He’s an unbelievable worker.”

For a employee who is not worth further consideration as a job candidate:

“I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment.”

“All in all, I cannot say enough good things about this candidate or recommend him too highly.”

For the chronically absent:
”A man like him is hard to find.”

“”It seemed her career was just taking off.”

For the office drunk:

“I feel his real talent is wasted here.”

“We generally found him loaded with work to do.”

“Every hour with him was a happy hour.”

 

What makes it so unique? … the fact that Remarque does not spoon-feed his reader page by page with ready-made attitudes, but leaves him to draw his own conclusions from the book.

from “Die Welt am Montag”

(quoted in Barker and Last, page 38)

Introduction

Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a book about German soldiers at World War I.  When the war broke out, the whole class of schoolboys joined the Army a few months prior to their official draft date.  These young boys are swept away with the patriotic rhetoric and cannot wait to go and fight for their country.  They are so engulfed by war romanticism that all they can dream about is uniform, victories, glory, popularity with the weaker sex and all other nonsense that used to portray the war in the most attractive way.  Although the infatuation with war decreases during their training days in the camp, a bitterest disillusionment is yet to come.  When the boys are sent to the front, they realize that war is nothing but mud, pain and death.  The story is told in the first person by the main character and protagonist, Paul Baumer.  It is important to notice, however, that the narrative is told from “I” as frequently as from “we” to emphasize the collective nature of the war experiences.

Erich Maria Remarque had the first hand experience of the war: he was a young soldier on the Western front.  And he wrote “All Quiet on the Western Front” because “he had […] been suffering from serious bouts of depression, the underlying cause of which remained a mystery…” (Barker and Last, page 33).

It was through these deliberate acts of self-analysis that I found my way back to my war experiences.  I could observe a similar phenomenon in many of my friends and acquaintances.  The shadow of war hung over us, especially when we tried to shut our minds to it.  The very day this thought struck me, I put pen to paper, without much in the way of prior thought.  (Erich Maria Remarque as quoted in Barker and Last, page 33).

The novel begins with such words:

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it.  It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.  (Remarque, page 6).

The major theme of the novel is futility and senselessness of war.  Remarque offers such a graphic portrayal of war horrors that it seems unfathomable why people still engage in such activities.  Why two countries have to send their men to kill each other when all they want is to live in peace.  When Paul seeks forgiveness from the French soldier that he killed, he says: “Forgive me, comrade.  We always see it too late.  Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony – Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?” (Remarque, page 191).

For all the clarity, immediacy, authenticity and convincingness of the major theme of the novel, it is not very simple.  Remarque was blamed for all sins possible: misrepresentation, misconduct, desecration of the war and its heroes, partiality, emotional imbalance and pacifism.  The book was treated as a political manifesto, which it was not, and was banned in Germany in 1930 and was publicly burnt by Nazis in 1933.  (Barker and Last)

The novel was published in 1929 and soon after in 1930 the film “All Quiet on the Western Front” followed, which was a faithful adaptation of the novel.  “The landmark, epic film, made on a large-scale budget of $1.25 million, was a an Academy Award winner for best Picture and Best Director (Lewis Milestone).  […]  It was a critical and financial success, and probably the greatest of pacifist, anti-war films …” (Dirks).

Being a faithful adaptation of the novel, the film manages to convey the major theme very skillfully.  The film seems to be very realistic and authentic.  Of course, the film cannot include all of the details of the book, so there are some modifications of the original that do not distort the main message.  However, the major difference between the novel and the film is that the film does not offer such graphical portrayal of the unspeakable war horrors as the novel.  The only episode where we see such detail is the hands of a French soldier hanging on the wire.  Another difference is that the film tries to compensate the lack of descriptiveness that we see in the novel by adding more action that characters take.  For instance, in the novel, Paul never delivers a “Peace speech”, yet it does not distort Remarque’s themes because Paul’s speech is consistent with his character.

Language and Grammar of Film

In the most dramatic battle scene which helps immensely to convey the meaning of Remarque’s work there are two distinct uses of the camera: both high angle and low angle.  The battleground is being shown from the high angle: we see soldiers from both sides running around like crazy and the impression is unmistakable that they all are helpless and doomed.  They die en masse.  But soldiers are both victims and death instruments, for death is not only inflicted by inanimate objects such as shells, but also by the hands of soldiers themselves.  In order to convey this duality, the director alternates the use of high and low angles when showing individual soldiers.  We see death from the high angle when one soldier stabs another and the next scene the same content (different people) shown from the low angle.

In one of the most significant sequences, when Paul stabbed a French soldier, Gerard Duval, with a bayonet, but failed to kill him to completely, the alternate use of high and low angles is most remarkable.  Unable to escape from the shell-hole and unwilling to finish the dying man, Paul is suffering from the bouts of guilt and self-accusation.  The scene is shot from the low angle, where the French soldier lies elevated above Paul, who pressed himself against Gerard boots and implores for forgiveness.  Given the low angle, the body of Gerard fills most of the screen and he is the mute and unbearable accusation for Paul.  When Gerard finally dies and Paul gets a chance to escape, the angle changes.  Gerard is no longer important, he is just a corpse lying in mud, and for Paul, looking from above, he is small and insignificant and this experience has to be put behind.

Mise en scene

Since one of the major themes of “All Quiet on the Western Front” is comradeship, there is frequent use of circular arrangements of figures on the screen.  The distance between soldiers is shortened in comparison with what we would normally expect the friends to keep between each other.  Soldiers are often in the intimate zone of each other, holding hands, embracing and protecting each other.  In the scene, when Paul Baumer comforts his dying friend Franz Kemmerich, he puts his face against Franz’s with almost motherly tenderness and this scene looks very authentic and heart-rending.

There are also a number of motifs in the film, as well as in the novel itself.  One of them –a butterfly– was used very skillfully.  Paul used to collect butterflies in his childhood and they represented to him peace and beauty of the world that only existed prior to the war.  At the end of the film, as the war is almost over, Paul was sitting in a trench and saw a butterfly.  He reached for it as if it were the personification of coming peace and at this moment a French sniper shot him.

Editing

The director used a chronological order in the film as opposed to the novel, where Remarque used flashbacks.  However, there was moment in the film that provides logical correlation between the beginning and the end.  It was used to connect the scene where the boys went to the front line for the first time and the scene of the epilogue.  “The young men, marching in a column, look back (with a haunting, sad look) at the retreating vehicle that brought them there” (Dirks).  They all turn back one by one clinging to their escaping past and terrified of their nebulous future.  They do not know what awaits them, but we can see on their faces that they are not optimistic.  In the epilogue, the same scene is superimposed with the view of a cemetery covered as far as you could see with simple sepulchral crosses.  This artistic touch makes a very strong emotional impression and very effective conclusion of the film.  There, where the soldiers are going, the only thing they will meet is Death.

Cross-cutting is used in the film very skillfully, especially in the major battle sequence.  The action takes place simultaneously, the French attack, the Germans try to defend their lines, then the situation changes — now the Germans attack, and the French are on the run.  The director used shots separately first to depict one side and then the other to separate visually two major forces in the battle.  Often, cross-cutting is used to separate and at the same time to connect logically the event and the emotional reaction to it which helps add more expressive impact.  “When one of the [French] soldiers is annihilated by a hand grenade upon approaching some barbed wire, only his hands are left, oddly still gripping the wire.  Paul turns away in disgust, recoiling at the unspeakable horror” (Gee).  The remaining hands and Paul’s reaction are shown in separate shots thus focusing audience’s attention equally on both events and connecting them logically together.

Conclusion

The screen version is a true adaptation of the novel, which was done masterfully.  I believe that faithful adherence to Remarque’s novel together with the talent of the director and the star performances of the film cast make the film watchable even today.

However, I believe that the book has a much stronger emotional impact on readers.  So, my recommendation would be to read the book first and then watch the film.  And better yet, read the whole trilogy, comprised of “All Quiet on the Western Front”, “The Road Back”, and “Three Comrades”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“All Quiet on the Western Front.”  June 3, 2002  <http://www.allmovieguide.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=A1579>

Barker, Chirstine R., and R.W. Last.  Erich Maria Remarque.  London: Oswald Wolff, 1979.

Dirks, Tim.  “All Quiet on the Western Front.”  May 27, 2002  <http://www.filmsite.org/allq.html>

Gee, Rick.  “The Great Anti-War Films.  All Quiet on the Western Front.”  May 27, 2002  <http://www.lewrockwell.com/org/gee5.html>

Remarque, Erich M.  “All Quiet on the Western Front.”  Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1987.

At 8:00 PM, on Monday, August 14, 2000, I finally sat to complete my incident report. My original understanding of the assignment was that I had to disengage myself from the events in the class and describe the incident in the parking lot as if I were an eye witness to it. My handwritten report clearly reflects my original intention. However, when I started typing this report, I realized that that scenario was impossible. If I had to engage my imagination then I would have stepped on a slippery road of constructive processing of the event which is inadmissible in writing incident reports. Firstly, it is very unlikely, that if I was somewhere I did not know where I was. Secondly, I am not deaf yet, and if I were a witness of an incident, I would have heard something. Thirdly, although I do not consider myself too observant, I have a tendency of noticing many details in real life or remembering phrases exactly as they were said. However, my ability to pay attention and recollect continuity of flickering TV shots and their contents is far less sharp than my ability to recollect events of real life. I attribute it to the compressed nature of videotapes. If I had to run to the parking lot, it would have taken me longer than a split of a second. Lastly, the total absence of emotion makes this simulation is less real. Apart from my ongoing frustration, I cannot say that I was not in emotional state. Therefore, I think that the incident was a lesson in Professional Writing and the outcome will be a submitted report.

I am going to submit this report to Julian Craft at 9:00 AM on Tuesday,  August 15, 2000.  After that, I will have no further control of the outcome of this incident.