Monday, March 9, 2009
All Quiet on The Western Front
As Mr. Bennett so eloquently put it, "The death of one man is a tragedy and the death of one million men is a statistic." As paradoxical as it may sound it is the truth. One man is a face, a personality, a friend, a brother, a human being. However there is no emotion attached to one million men because no one knew each person individually. One million is simply a number. Just 1 followed by six zeroes. As we begin to separate them and examine each person's life closely, we feel the tragedy attached to their deaths. For example as we read a history textbook the number of deaths from World War I is convincing enough to refrain from the next world war but we cannot sympathize with the millions killed in the wake of the war. One million deaths in my textbook is nothing more than ink on a page evoking a distant memory. However All Quiet On The Western Front examines the lives of Paul, Kat, Albert, Muller, Kemmerick, and Behn in detail. We can sympathize with them because they are humans and individuals with horrific deaths. My eyes hurt when Behn was blinded in 'no man's land' and my legs hurt when we saw Kemmerick and Albert lying in bed with phanton pain from amputations. Seeing a graph of deaths from World War I elicts aboslutely no sympathy from me.
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Thanks for the compliment, though it was Stalin who said it first. Years ago, I taught the Holocaust every year and it struck me that we were focusing on the six million and missing the one. I had an idea that I was going to ask a Jewish student to volunteer to be the voice of the Holocaust. I thought that I would interview her, asking about her family, her friends, things she liked to do etc. And after each answer, I thought that I would say, "And now, we are going to kill you because you are Jewish." or something like that. You can probably imagine why I never acted it out. But, I thought it might have been useful for us to personalize the tragedy, in the way you describe in your post. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant comments as always Danny. I agree with your comments on the singular soldier and how that personalizes and makes the war a real experience for people to understand. I was actually told by Mr. Bennett to use this in my commentary on Schindler's List and he was right on the money there as well. Six million is nothing but a name and a face can truly show what war is. (By the way, brilliant use of wordplay saying that one million is like one, just with six zeros after it. You never cease to amaze me.
ReplyDeleteShort and sweet, Danny boy! I could not have put it better myself. It really is a shame how we can never appreciate a mass slaughter like WWI. AS always, you have a very practical view on the world, I anticipate more of your philosophical musings in the two marking periods to come.
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