“Arc of Triumph is the Best Story about Significant Roles of the Past.”
Nowadays many book lists that a person should read during his life are constantly created. This list usually consists of books that left a mark in the minds of people and suggest ideas to rethink familiar things. Such a book, for me, is the Arc of Triumph written by a German writer, Erich Maria Remarque. This writer is considered to be one of the most successful and widely read German writers of the twentieth century. I have only read this one book by this author. I have chosen the Arc of Triumph from other books as I was hooked with the description. I surely can claim that it is worth reading.
The novel’s protagonist is a German surgeon that has changed many names during his life. In the book, he appears with the name of Ravick. He has passed the First World War and was forced to flee from Germany to France, like other refugees who had been seeking a safe shelter for a long time. This hero had to perform the work of inept surgeons that had not encouraged his work. It didn’t bother Ravick, however, as he particularly had no choice. Such work gives him some money to live in hotels, but he must constantly change them to avoid the possibility of his arrest by the police. One day, his fate is intertwined with the fate of the heroine in the book, Joan Madou from Italian. These characters fall in love and create their own strange world where they argue and swear for eternal love at the same time. It seems that you hear every breath and perfectly know what feelings are in every heart.
The characters tell many revelations that sometimes may seem absurd, however, for the time being.
Nothing lasts forever, as Ravick pursued his long-standing goal and carried it to at the Gestapo Haacke and this changed his life forever. The relationships between the main characters are complicated, and finally end with a tragic death. All the action takes place between 1938 and 1939, when Germany immediately declared the war. Ravick abandoned the possibility of escape and obediently surrendered to the police.
This heavy story is about the burdensome role of the past and its consequences in the present. The story creates a special atmosphere of the saving of Paris, although harmful.