AP English Application, Prompt. Options

[*Azarel*]

It's not so much homework, but I need help on choosing a passage. Here's the prompt.

"Pick a passage from a book or poem that has changed the way you view the world intellectually. Describe the passage or quote the poem. Take a few lines to explain teh passage, and then explain how it has changed the way you view the world."

Posts some excerpts from a novel or some poems, will you?

[largosama]

"Comrade, I did not want to kill you. . . . But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. . . . I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?"

- Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front

Passage enphasizes the sameness among ourselves despite the abstract ideas of "nationalism" and "patriotism".. I think it falls in nicely with the whole war scenario going on right now. It made me realize that soldiers are only enemies under the abstraction of the term "enemy" and that our enemies on the battlefied and war are human too... only seperation is the artificial divisions set by the country and the leader.

I'm not in AP English though, not a junior yet. So my insights are errrr not useful