Introduction
Very many civilians are of the opinion that soldiers live extremely secretive lives. They believe that the soldiers are always in battle with enemies or they are constantly getting bombed and mortared. The civilians therefore believe that danger is a constant thing in the soldier’s life. On the soldier’s part, most of them view the civilian life as bland and boring. They perceive that most of the civilians have unimportant jobs that contribute to the boring nature of their lives. The major difference between the military and civilian lives is that soldiers are expected to lead disciplined and strict lifestyles that their civilian counterparts who generally enjoy and possess more freedom. However, there several other differences that be drawn between these two lifestyles.
A lot of these differences can be seen in the book All Quiet in the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and its subsequent movie adaption. The book is a detailed description of the extreme mental and physical stress that German soldiers went through the war. It also describes the civilian life detachment that most of the soldiers returning home experience.
The book’s main protagonist is Paul Baumer, a young German soldier who is a member of the German troops during the First World War. Paul joined the army after a request by a school teacher. With his schoolmates and friends, Paul goes to the Western Front where they meet an older and more experienced soldier nick named Kat. Kat later becomes Paul’s mentor. Paul and his friends experience all the things that come along with welfare including frequent battles, dangerous and dirty conditions (Remarque 56). From the book, very clear differences between civilian and military life are displayed.
A soldier is bound by various curfews that are base mandated. This is unlike civilians whose lives activities are not bound by any sort of curfews. A soldier also lives in a specific base while the civilian can virtually live anywhere he or she likes.
A soldier is granted house allowances. This is because his salary is considerably less than that of a civilian job that is equivalent (Holmes 25). However, unlike civilian jobs where most are paid hourly, the soldiers receive a fixed salary. A disadvantage on the soldier’s part is that he can be called out for duty at any time of the night unlike the civilian who is only on duty for a particular time and cannot be called out at any other time. An exception to this includes professions such a medicine or law enforcement.
Both the civilian and soldiers lifestyles are filled with a lot of uncertainties involving various issues, however, the life of a soldier differs in that he has constant job security unlike his civilian counterparts. This is because a service contract binds the soldier. In a normal civilian job, one has the right to quit or resign at any given time. A soldier on the other hand cannot do such a thing.
In the book All Quiet in the Western Front, the major differences between the civilian life and the soldier life are displayed or exhibited at the war front. Here the soldiers live in completely deplorable conditions while the civilians enjoy the comfort of their big homes. The soldiers are forced to readjust their lifestyles that they were leading before they joined the army (Remarque 47). For example, Paul went straight form school into the military. It is relatively safe to say that he must have witnessed or undergone culture shock and an overwhelming feeling when he first set foot into the military camp and realized that this was a lifestyle that was totally different from what he was used to before.
Another difference about the civilian life and the military lifestyle is the war itself. Like Paul Baumer, war is responsible for the most of the enlisting in the military service by most people. The families of the soldiers are left behind hoping that their loved ones will come back although this does not always happen .Although some civilians have military people in-service, the perspective of war is very different from a military and a civilian view. As stated earlier, soldiers are exposed to very gruesome conditions at the war front, just like Paul and his friends who had to engage in frequent enemy battles and live in dirty conditions. There, they witness gruesome things like the deaths of fellow soldiers. Unlike the civilians who in their normal; lifestyles receive such news through the media, the soldiers experience this one on one. Although the civilian’s perception of a soldier’s lifestyle is not very positive as explained in the introduction section, the full gravity of the situation is not really appreciated by this perception (Holmes 79). The soldier’s lifestyle is way much moiré complex than the normal civilian would perceive.
In fact, this is one of the reasons why civilians do not understand why military men normally detach themselves from the society once they return home from war. The novel All Quiet in the Western Front tries to show some of the behaviors that these soldiers, for example Paul and his friends exhibit on their return from war. These behaviors including detachment from society members and depression are attributed to the gruesome lifestyle that these soldiers experience at the war front which is quite different from that of the civilians.
Works Cited
Remarque, E. M (1929). All quiet on the western front. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.Holmes, R. (2007). Acts of war: The behavior of men in battle. New York: Free Press.
