Forgotten Soldier Warped by War: Book Review

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Sajer, however, cannot reconcile these feelings of tenderness with the violence of his world: "I thought of Ernst, of all the tears of this war, and all the anguish…My happiness was mixed with too much suffering. I couldn't simply accept it and forget all the rest" (Sajer, p. 150). Instead of filling him with giddiness and hope like most teenagers in love, Sajer's short affair only serves to darken his worldview more, and his parting from Paula is as wrenching to him as any of the horrors of battle. Though he promises to return to her, the war "prevented [him] from keeping his word, and the peace made it lose all its value" (Sajer, p. 154).

The final and most irrevocable moment in Sajer's path from youthful innocence to bitter disillusionment and despair comes towards the end of his tenure in the German ranks, when he and a comrade are surrounded by Russians without any apparent means of escape. By now, Sajer is in a position of command, and finds himself unable to act. He is so completely devoid of hope that he loses even the basic instinct for self-preservation and begs his comrade to kill him. His comrade is in a similar state of despair and makes the same request of Sajer, trapping them in a "grotesque dilemma" (Sajer, p. 410). Neither ends up granting the wish of the other, and Sajer must remain alive to ponder the desperation of his situation and his utter inability to act as a leader: "I was no longer trying to see where our danger might be coming from, but was turned inward, on myself.

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I found nothing but despair" (Sajer, p. 411). By this point in the narrative, Sajer barely qualifies as a human being, and has certainly lost any semblance of youth. His cavalier attitude towards ending his life and his lack of any sense of self besides failure show him to be only a shell of a man, and the reader wonders whether any redemption or return to human nature is possible.

The most poignant statement of the extent to which the war robbed from Sajer any sense of human conscience or identity comes in the epilogue. After a short stint in the French forces, he is able to reestablish a somewhat stifled relationship with his family and with society in general. While he is haunted by the faces of those who died, he commits himself to one final act of despair: "There is another man, whom I must forget. His name is Guy Sajer." This need to completely wipe away his own identity confirms the depravity to which Sajer has fallen.

However, there is one indication that all humanity was not lost in Sajer, and that is the memoir itself. It stands as a testament to Sajer's self-recognition, despite his promise to forget himself. It may even stand as evidence of a small bit of hope left in Sajer's spirit -- hope that future generations would learn from him the utter and dehumanizing destructiveness of war.

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