All Quiet on the Western Front

I’m still reading All Quiet on the Western Front, and although I haven’t had much time to read it, I am really enjoying what I have read so far. Baumer, the main character has described some of the setting, and I’m starting to understand the situation. In one of the scenes, one of Baumer’s good friends, Kemmerich is in the hospital, after being shot in the leg. Baumer and his friends Tjuden, Muller, Kropp and Leer go and pay him a visit. When they are there they realize that Kemmerich has had his leg amputated, but he is on so much morphine that he doesn’t realize it. Muller notices Kemmerich’s nice shiny boots under the bed, and is tempted to take them, knowing that Kemmerich will never find a use for them. This situation brings light back onto the fact of how valuable some things can be in times of war. Another situation that stood out to me was when Baumer and his friends were talking about one of their old schoolteachers, Kantorek. Kantorek had talked to the boys about how everyone had their time in war, and for some people it came earlier than for others, and how every mans contribution to the war would be different, but equal. Reading this, my mind immediately flashed back to a scene from The Five People You Meet in Heaven, when the Captain is telling Eddie basically the exact same thing. It’s interesting that there is such a strong parallel, because The Five People You Meet in Heaven is literally the last book I read, and I usually don’t read books about war, so finding something a similarity is odd. I am interested to keep reading and find out what happens to Kemmerich, and what happens to Baumer and his friends.

Outside Reading

So I have yet to find my copy of The Catcher in the Rye, but during my search for the book, I came across another book that seems very interesting. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque caught my eye because of the words BANNED BOOK printed on the binding. I'm not sure how the book found its way into my room, but in all the intrigue I picked it up and read the back. Claimed to be the greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front is the story of a young twenty year old man named Paul Baumer, and his experiences in World War 1. I have only read about ten pages, but I can already tell there will not be a dull moment in this book. It starts off in first person point of view, describing the camp where the soldiers have settled at for the night, filling up on beans and other food. It seems to be a good point in the war for the Germans, because Paul describes the surplus of food and cigarettes in their possession, and how rare this is. He goes on to depict an exchange of chewing tobacco for cigarettes, which reminded me of something my seventh and eighth grade social studies teacher once told us about. I remember her describing the barter systems during the war, and how valuable things like cigarettes were to people for whom they were hard to obtain. It made me realize how much we take some things for granted that are commonplace in our society, (obviously not cigarettes for me personally), and we don’t realize that these are not of abundance in other parts of the world.

Ethics paper annotation

Should there be more laws defending animal rights and addressing animal cruelty or should the government only focus on human rights?


Gruen, Lori. "The Moral Status of Animals." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2003. 7 Dec 2008 .

Lori Gruen is a staff writer for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Her entry in the Encyclopedia is fairly non-biased, because it addresses several different perspectives on the issue of animal rights and the reasons behind them, citing at least 40 sources. The SEP has been around since 1995, and comes from Stanford University, which is a very well known and esteemed institution. It's written for anyone interested in the philosophical views on various subjects. This article is far more in-depth than most of my other sources, and it explains both the absolutist and utilitarian positions, which is unlike most others. Instead of being one-sided, it questions the morality of animal cruelty, and discuss how the utilitarian point of view is not necessarily a vegetarian one.


Cummins, Ronnie. "Let Them Eat Feces." In Motion Magazine 21 OCT 1997 7 Dec 2008 .

Ronnie Cummins is the National Director of The Pure Food Campaign, which is a non-profit organization that focuses on ensuring safe and clean food production and consumption in the country. Her article was published in In Motion Magazine, which is read by many people involved in Human Rights and ethical issues, and contains essays on various popular issues, such as Healthcare, Education Rights, and Affirmative Action. This is a lot more one-sided than the SEP essay. It talks about how in an effort to cut costs, farm animals are being fed their own feces, which ultimately leads to contamination of meat. Farms are aiming to weaken laws against this kind of thing, which means animals will continue to be fed their own feces, something that is completely unethical.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven (SPOILER)

First of all, this has some stuff that is essential to the plot, so if you plan to read The Five People You Meet in Heaven in the future, I would advise against reading this particular blog. You’ll regret it, it’ll ruin the story. But anyhow, this weekend, I was driving back from Georgia, so I had plenty of time to finish The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Overall, I really liked the book, but either I just wasn’t as focused on the second half, or it wasn’t as interesting. The whole last part was somewhat a blur to me, and I didn’t really feel as though the ending was wrapped up. I will almost definitely go back and read it again though, because I think it will get better with more reads.
Going back to where I left of with my last post, after the Blue Man moves on to wherever people go after heaven, Eddie meets The Captain. The Captain was Eddie’s mentor during his time at war, and he had a big impact on Eddie’s life. There is a flashback to the time when Eddie and four other soldiers, including the Captain were held captives by an enemy army. They were forced to work in a coal mine under very poor conditions, and one of the men died. This had a huge impact on Eddie, and it was the catalyst in his and the Captain’s plans to escape. Finally one day, they escaped and set fire to the mine, but just as they were about to leave, Eddie thought he saw a little person in the mine and went back to save it, putting himself in grave danger. Now, the Captain reveals to Eddie that he was the one who shot Eddie in the leg, because he knew that if he didn’t Eddie would run into the fire and die. The Captain’s story teaches Eddie about sacrifice, and how it was better for him to be sent home from the war with an injured leg than to have died in that fire.
The third person Eddie meets is a woman named Ruby, who was actually the person that Ruby’s Pier, the place Eddie had worked most of his life, was named after. Although they had never met, Ruby explains to Eddie that when her husband Emile was dying in the hospital, he had shared a room with Eddie’s father, and learned about their family through him. Ruby talks to Eddie about how he needs to forgive his father for the things he did in his life, and explains to him the reasoning for his father’s actions.
The fourth person Eddie meets is his (ex)wife Marguerite. I think that for Eddie this was the ‘best part’ about heaven, because when people talked about Eddie, the first thing they thought of was how much he loved his wife. His visit with Marguerite is short, but it is clear that she was sent as one of his five people to show Eddie the meaning of love, and how much it can affect a person.
The fifth person that Eddie encounters in heaven is a little girl, who he doesn’t think he has ever met before. I should probably have mentioned in my first post that when Eddie died saving the little girl, as he slipped away into heaven he felt a little girls hands in his, guiding him. Obviously, I didn’t realize how crucial this was to the plot or I would have mentioned it. So anyway, a young oriental girl approaches Eddie and relates to him the story of how their lives are linked to each other. It turns out that the little girl, (who I thought was going to be the girl he saved at Ruby Pier) was actually the girl he thought he saw in the coal mine when it was on fire, and she was the one who had brought him to heaven. This was a very good twist at the end, because I hate really predictable books. Minus the last few pages, I enjoyed the book and I plan to read Tuesdays With Morrie in the near future, because I really like Albom’s style and characterization in particular.