Beauty through Tragedy

           A sense of beauty can be portrayed even through the horrors of gruesome war. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the author evokes this sort of beauty through detailed diction that takes the mindset off of war to forget about the tragedy it brings. The main character begins to describe the land as "the grasses sway their tall spears; The white butterflies flutter around and float on the soft warm wind of the late summer" (9). One would never expect the terrain of a battlefield to appear this way. Although this is probably not what the land had looked like, the soldiers could imagine it to be true; if you begin to tell yourself something is true and believe deeply in it, it can become real. Here the boys were so traumatized by the war that they needed a surreal getaway where everything could be let go and forgotten. What better way to do so than by experiencing the beauty of nature. Nature is sacred and organic; it cleanses the body and soul. There is a sense of innocence with nature; a sense of youth and fantasy. This is all anyone begs for during a time of hardship, especially something as daunting as war.