In my opinion I think that when you go through such rigorous training. Which in the right eyes can be viewed as tortured or brain wash. You loose all thought you had before. All you can think about now is what you where trained to do. For Paul and his comrades this all comes down to the basic instinct of wild animals. Protect yourself and hunt for food, in their case wait till dinner. When they wake up they train, and at night they eat, day in and day out. And when they get to the front line they are only prepared and focused on what they trained for, to kill. Like animals, if you give them a task that they know how to do and were trained to do they can do it. But if you give an animal a task that they are not used to they will become confused. For the boys an example I can think of is death of comrades. They can’t train for death. So when it happens they become confused. They become confused until it happens so many times that it is natural to them. Like an animal instinct. As we progress in the book I predict that to stay alive in war their animal side will try to force out all other emotions other then what they trained for. The boys will become mindless animals.
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I agree with what you said, how military training sets us up like the soldiers will live like animals. Survival is very important in the military, but Paul portrays the military as making human animals! This is true, because it develops the instinct. Humans don't want to feel that they live completely off of instinct. If we did, that would mean that we would be doing everything without thinking it over and we would be like robots! This shows how military actions out on the field are being completely controlled in the same way that animals defend against danger. Paul doesn't want to force themselves into danger and instinct.
I agree with what you said. The military breaks people down so that they can mold them into a proper fighting machine. They tear down civilian etiquette and every polite nicety you've learned till you can obey orders and fight. People are brought back to their animal instincts so that they can think quicker and fight quicker. This is why when people come back from wars they have hard times readjusting to civilian lifestyle. What is different is how the military breaks people down. Some armies are much more robotic than others based on their government. For instance the US army retains more individuality than the PLA or the North Koreans. In this case the German army was run as a very disciplined fighting force yet under the pressure of trench warfare it fell apart and became every man for himself.
Wow andy your paper is really good go andy
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