Lesson Overview 

No Man's Land - An Essay on Home for All Quiet on the Western Front.  A very early essay in my career - in fact, it was modeled on the one I had to do for my college class (where All Quiet was assigned).  In addition to the prompt (see below), I give the students some tips and additional instructions.  There is also an extra credit essay on comparing the book to the 1930 movie of the novel.  The reasons for there not being more essays is quite simple:  The movie questions started becoming more and more like mini-essays and the students were already doing a lot of writing on the book.  2) There was also an Illuminated Text Project (first) and a General Creative Response Project (second) that took up a lot of the students time and gave them a chance to respond to All Quiet on the Western Front.

Here is the main prompt (also found below in the handout).

The importance and location of home is continually discussed in E.M. Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. The "idea" of just where and what home is, changes as the novel's central character, Paul, becomes more and more battle weary. You are to write a 2-4 page essay which describes Paul's view of home (how it changes, how it is significant) throughout the novel. Don't be afraid to include the other soldiers' views of home as well.

Thoughts on the Lesson 

I really found the Movie Questions started to supplant the longer essays that I used to assign.  If designed well - the students can really get a lot of practice with movie questions in synthesizing and articulating all the text that they've been working in on for a unit.