AQWF Writing Response 1- Childhood vs. Adulthood Motifs

         When we are young, we live in a world where we feel like we are unstoppable; able to conquer anything that comes towards us because we don’t have reasons to think otherwise. There are no reasons to believe that we will get burned by the hot stove as we inch our 5 year old fingers towards the red glow, or we never expect the outcome of just having our first drink at that party. But when we know the punishments, the scalding of the skin or the probation from basketball, we realize we will never make that decision again. In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, a group of young soldiers enter the war with a childlike, mind set of being unstoppable. But when they see what the war is really about they, “ distinguish the false from true, and suddenly learned to see” (6). Adulthood is not a time when you turn the famous 18 years, but is when you grow up; grow up from the view of innocence and protectiveness, because just like the war, life doesn’t a have a forgiving, childlike setting.