I Love the Last Paragraph!

It's kinda funny, but I feel relieved too:

"He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."

This is at the very end of the book, after all of Paul's horrible experiences. He just died...

I feel the same struggle as Paul did in the book through my own experiences with the bipolar disorder. I think back about all the pain I went through or all the things that I thought happened, and it's not very pleasant. However, since it's a really cloudy past anyways, it's easier for me to forget it. I haven't dismissed it completely yet, but I'm happy it's over with. That's how I think about the situation with Paul - he had so many negative experiences and memories over the time at war, and he wanted to dismiss all of it but couldn't. He tried to live with it, but death seemed to be the only way to end the pain. I'm quite lucky that I have been able to let go of my memories, but I also know that they were nowhere as intense as Paul's. That's why I react to the book so much. Some of my neighborhood friend's fathers were in the Vietnam War, and life doesn't look so great for them. This might sound weird, but I'm happy for Paul.