Character analysis: Paul Bäumer

In Humanities, we are reading a war novel entitled "All Quiet On The Western Front". Paul Bäumer is the main character and protagonist in the story, who gives us an insight into life at the front. From how the author describes life through Paul's eyes before going off to war, we can tell he is just a young boy who has been drafted in to the army, with no experience or real knowledge of the cruelties of war. When he goes into war however, as a reader, we notice the changes in his tone of voice and in his actions. Sometime during the fighting and bombardments, we hear from Paul the friends that he has lost and how his very nature has changed just by directly living under wartime circumstances. He has to suppress all his feelings and inner self just to be able to survive through this war. "Just as we turn into animals when we go up to the line... so we turn into wags and loafers when we are resting... We want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they may be ornamental enough in peacetime, would be out of place here. Kemmerich is dead, Haie Westhus is dying... Martens has no legs anymore, Meyer is..., Beyer is..., Hammerling...... it is a damnable business, but what has it to do with us now — we live." Also, there is a part in the room where he returns back home on leave and tries to sit down and enjoying reading a book. He reads a few lines and cannot push himself to go any further. He found it difficult to extract any pleasure in the spare time he has to simply read, which was a favourite pastime of his before going to war. In the short time of fighting, Paul Bäumer has had to learn to give up his young adolescent childhood to go straight to the full understanding of the horrors and devastation of war, to a point where he almost has to detach himself from the norms of society and inescapably, his own soul.

We All Live In The YELLOW SUBMARINE

Today Mrs. Smith planned another Smash Day for us instead of the usual science class. Out of 10 sheets of scrap paper, 4 little mirrors, tape, and a piece of cardboard, each group of either 2 or 3 was to build a periscope-like device that would allow us to see what a box contained. The box would be placed on the table, while we all had to remain lower than the surface of the table. (Of course she had planned out a little story for us to play out: we were in a submarine to spy into a castle on land to see what was inside without letting the guards around the castle caught sight of us.) Hence, the rule that did not allow us to rise above the surface of the table.

I don't know what would count as modifying, because at first we had no idea what we were going to do with our supplies until we just started piecing them together. As we went through that process and realized that certain structures just wouldn't allow us to get on with the task, we just changed the design of the structure to the best we could. The most common problems that came up during this experiment was that the way the mirrors were angled in the periscope did not work to mirror of the reflection of whatever we were supposed to be looking at. We fixed this, of course, by shifting and playing around with different angles of the mirrors, looking to see which formation would give us a better view of our secret objects in the box. The second problem that came up was that the viewing device that we made wouldn't support itself. It fell when we did not hold certain parts of it up. This was solved by using pieces of cardboard or more paper to stabilize the instrument. We threw out different ideas and experimented with each one when we had the time and chose the best option. In the end, when it came down to the actual "spytime", we gave up on our original design with all the mirrors fixed complexly inside it and clumped it all together so it looked more like a long stick with a mirror at the end of it peering into the box. 

I don't know if there's any advice I would give to someone doing this experiment for the first time, except maybe remind them that it doesn't really have to be a periscope with the mirrors all angled inside the object. It can be anything that allows u to see inside the box. The rest can be figured out through the whole thinking and creating process - that way the information they learn will better stay with them.