Comparison of Conflicts

During war, soldiers became physically stronger (I'm guessing, as long as they weren't shot) and mentally weaker. During slavery, Frederick Douglass because mentally stronger, but physically weaker due to whippings and beatings of all variety and harshness. Kantorek persuades his students to enroll in the military, and in the same way, slaveholders coerce their slaves into believing slavery was an unmistaken truth straight from God himself. An assortment of conflicts make themselves present in both All Quiet on the Western Front and Narrative of Frederick Douglass.

The war in which Paul, the protagonist in All Quiet on the Western Front, and his friends are battling is survived physically but destroyed mentally. Of course it is a battle with bloodshed and death, and this story is indeed a tragic one; so yes, people do die. But there are more minds deteriorating and dropping dead than there are men. It's as if they "have become a waste land." This is a man versus himself conflict because even though there are outside factors, the man is in direct charge of whether death becomes him. For example, Paul used to write poetry and was somewhat of a "softie." Though now, after he's experienced warfare, those things really don't matter. He feels no regard or humanity for much of anything anymore. The men's psyches are being shot down and destroyed by the fact that death is surrounding them. It is as if the battle field is their graveyard and they are just waiting to die. In the Narrative of Frederick Douglass, the conflict is learning how to read and write. Knowledge is the pathway to freedom and once Douglass could emerge as a literate human being, he would be that much closer to achieving freedom. To become free, one must learn, and he did such. After Mrs. Auld, his first teacher, left him, he "was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of [his] kind mistress" but was "gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, [he] had gained from [his] master." The instruction he is alluding to is knowledge. He overheard Mr. Auld saying that if he became literate, he would become a danger to the white community, thus provoking him to imbibe the knowledge of reading.

Patriotism is defines as love and devotion to one's country, usually out of self devotion. Nationalism is an adulterated version of patriotism where aspirations for national independence in a country under foreign domination is forced upon the people by society, or an authoritative figure. This ideal of nationalism appears in Remarque's novel, and would be considered a man versus society conflict. Kantorek twisted things around so that it seemed that if one of his students didn't enlist, he was letting the entire country down. They needed to prove their patriotism so that they could fill their duty as a citizen. Their first loyalty was their country --- not their