War The Source of Men Companionship
Heroes and warriors (soldiers) are the first things that associate with war as well as with some popular game. ... The war games are in fact the way in which men get closer together. In fact, war and games are very much alike, because they are both social events where main participants are men. War produces companionship that cannot be expressed; it is displaced on to the battlefield. People who go onto battlefield at first hope that war will bring them glory and make them more masculine, but instead all they get is separation from the real world, the world that they were once part of. In other words, war creates overwhelming alienation. ... In the First World War, men that went to war were quite young, probably around 20, as it can be seen in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet in The Western Front. ... (168/169, Remarque) “They” are the twenty year olds who did not go to war, and they had the opportunity to explore all joys of life, while soldiers had only a bitter experience from inside the trenches. At that age, and in that time people usually start building families, but for the ones in the battlefield that was impossible, because War has stopped time, hence any hope for progress. ... The comradeship between soldiers now becomes so strong that even when they are out of trenches and horror of war, their fellows keep coming back in their thoughts and their dreams. ... Being close to someone means that there will be some emotions rising between people, which is the case in the battlefield, but men are raised in the way that they are unable to show feelings for other men.