Study On Life Tragedy Consciousness In Remarque's Novels

Erich Maria Remarque (German) is one of the important writers in the world. He wrote novels with his whole life and insisted on a great question: how can life win freedom? This question became complicated when it experienced various dilemmas: war, Fascist and exile. Remarque fell into befuddlement, desperation and nihility. The life of Remarque represents the Life Tragedy Consciousness of one generation who fight with dilemmas. Based on the paradigm of"the contradictory conflict between human and living dilemma"and obeying the development of Remarque's tragic ideology, the paper resolves the tragedy consciousness in his novels.The paper is included by three parts: exordium, text, concluding remarks. The text includes three chapters. By researching on the"trilogy"of World War I and the sequel , Chapter 1 analyses the living dilemma influenced by World War I, and gives the understanding of"befuddlement", which is caused by the faith loss. The paper explains the Life Tragedy Consciousness through four characters who fight with different dilemmas in their developing ages. The paper opens out different tragic characters in their developing ideas, and reveals the lost generation through these four characters. Chapter 2 mainly researches on the series novels of World War II of Remarque, which explains the two dilemmas of life: Fascist and Azrael. The Life Tragedy Consciousness develops with the dramatis personae'experiences, and"befuddlement"evolves as"desperation"while"escape"evolves as"face". Remarque's desperation isn't giving up everything but banishing authority and assuming responsibilities of the society after recognizing the truth of the world. The"desperation"makes living individuals face the dilemmas and take actions. However, there is no freedom after the opposing actions, and the tragic Consciousness is marked on. In Chapter 3, Remarque's last novel"Shadows in Heaven"opens out the ending of Remarque's Life Tragedy Consciousness. In series novels of World War I and II, the lost generation evolves as the despairing generation, and the escaping dilemmas evolves as facing. However, can the lives get away from the dilemmas after the experiencing of many dilemmas? The answer of the question is"nihility-eternal cycle of dilemmas, which is the final of Remarque's Life Tragedy Consciousness. Refugees in"Shadows in Heaven"find the heaven is an indifferent dilemma, and feel that the cycle of dilemmas is eternal, the world is absurd, the life is meaningless, the freedom is windy. In face of the eternal cycle of dilemmas, some refugees survive, while most of them collapse and make the choice to end the lives. So, these refugees are the generation of"nihility".