All Quiet On The Wester Front Quotes About War

The war also changed Paul by hampering his ability to communicate with the people on the home front. Paul learns that it is hard to communicate with them when he visits his hometown. He realizes that people have no clue how bad war really is especially his own mother. "Suddenly my mother seizes hold of my hand and asks falteringly: Was it very bad out there, Paul?(143)" He did not know what to say so he lied to her and said that it was not so bad. Paul could not believe said that. Of course the war was bad, anything is bad when people are dying. He sees that the gap between him and society is getting bigger especially with his mother. Also Paul has no way to describe his experiences, he can not put them into words because the experiences were so horrible

"A wounded soldier? I shout to him-no answer- must be dead." The dead body has fallen out the coffin and the coffin has been unearthed because of the shelling. Even the dead and buried cannot rest in peace during this war. This just adds to the horror of the situation Paul is in.

Guilt plays an interesting role in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, as it is only truly found in a handful of scenes, and each one of them seems to line up rather nicely with Freud’s definition of guilt, found in his Civilization and its Discontents. In All Quiet on the Western Front the character do not often exhibit a sense of guilt or remorse for what they do, they just do it but there are a few scenes in which guilt seems evident. Out of those few, guilty scenes, three in particular seem to stand out the most.

A majority of war novels talks about two sides fighting in a war, rather than

Paul is given seventeen days of leave in which he visits his family. When he returns home, he feels out of place and is not comfortable sharing his awful combat experiences with others. His mother is sick and dying of cancer as his father is struggling to pay for her care. Paul also finds out that Kantorek, his teacher from school, was forced to become a German soldier. This pleases Paul because Kantorek now has to actually experience the tragic events of the war firsthand like the

In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich M. Remarque, his tone is rather depressing. He uses Paul to explain his thoughts and opinions of war. Using Paul as the storyteller helps to trouble the reader, yet still makes Paul portray as calm. In addition to his sincere tone, Remarque uses imagery to make it feel as if the reader were one of the soldiers in war. Both of these key elements for a novel come together quite well and make for an interesting war story.

‘‘Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction I killed. But now, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand grenades, of your bayonet of you rifle: now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, Comrade. Why do we always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying agony- Forgive me comrade how could you be my enemy?”’ In this quote Paul Baumer, the protagonist realizes

“We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control ourselves when our hunted glance lights on the form of some other man. We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run” (Remarque 115). This quote shows the thoughts that run through Paul Baumer’s mind during a long battle. The quote demonstrates the stripped sense of humanity and self-control the soldiers have, and the animalistic nature the soldiers have developed. Throughout the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Baumer and the Second Company become isolated from their humanity, their childhood, and other humans.

In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque, the central symbol is the earth. Earth represents life, death and perverse nature. It ties to other symbols such as dirt, ground, trenches, and plants. Earth represents life because it provided protection and shelter to keep the soldiers alive.. Basically, when the soldiers cling on to earth, they are basically clinging on to life because earth provides them with the necessary essentials to be sustain life such as food which gives them life.

While on leave, Paul also visits his father and some of his father's friends, but does not wish to speak to them about the war. The men are "curious [about the war] in a way that [Paul finds] stupid and distressing." They try to imagine what war is like but they have never experienced it for themselves, so they cannot see the reality of it. When Paul tries to state his opinion, the men argue that "[he] sees only [his] general sector so [he is] not able to judge." These men believe they know more about the war and this makes Paul feel lost. He realizes that "they are different men here, men [he] can not understand..." and Paul wants to be back with those he can relate to, his fellow soldiers. Paul wishes he had never gone on leave because out there "[he] was a soldier, but [at home] he is nothing but an agony to himself." When Paul returns to the battlefield, he is excited to be with his comrades. When he sees his company, "[Paul] jumps up, pushes in amongst them, [his] eyes searching," until he finds his friends. It is then

In All Quiet On the Western Front the main character Paul’s squad, is lead by a cunning and strong leader named Katczinsky. Throughout the book Katczinsky proves he is a natural born leader, is extremely intelligent, and is a great role model for the younger men in tough times. At the beginning of the book Katczinsky's squad has arrived back from the front and are preparing to eat. The cook is arguing with the men when Katczinsky stands up for them and says “‘You might be generous for once. You haven’t drawn food for eighty men. You’ve drawn it for the second company’”(Remarque 5). They had lost a lot of men and the cook did not want to serve them because he cooked too much food, but Katczinsky stood up for his troops to make sure they got

Yet another example of the brutalization and dehumanization of the soldiers caused by the war occurs during Paul’s leave. On leave, Paul decides to visit his hometown. While there, he finds it difficult to discuss the war and his experiences with anyone. Furthermore, Paul struggles to fit in at home: “I breathe deeply and say over to myself:– ‘You are at home, you are at home.’ But a sense of strangeness will not leave me; I cannot feel at home amongst these things. There is my mother, there is my sister, there my case of butterflies, and there the mahogany piano – but I am not myself there. There is a distance, a

returning to the front was hard for him. The days were getting cold and one by one he watched his friends die. The hardest loss was that of Kat. After Kat had been shot, Paul had to carry Kat to the nearest first-aid station a few miles away. Kat was the last of Paul's friends to die in the war. Then, in October of 1918, Paul is killed on a quiet day shortly before the armistice ends the war.

In All Quiet on the Western Front, the hero is simply victim of their own fate which eventually leads to their death. Paul's fate was basically sealed after all of his classmates that he enrolled into the army with died on the front line. Paul was going through some very hard times, and after being in the war for some time, one could only assume it has taken a toll on him for the worst emotionally, and physically. When people enlist in the war, as much as they wouldn’t like to, they probably have the mentality that they could lose their life at any moment. This is why Paul was a victim of his own fate, because, there isn’t really much he could have done to give himself a better chance of surviving the war.

Many of the images from the novel linger in my mind. Portraying war just by words in order to allow a person to have the slightest sense of what it feels like in an actual war is extremely challenging. The novel All Quiet on the Western Front does a great job at portraying the war. I always think of the scene after Paul takes the life of an innocent soldier from the opposing side and he sits in the trench with the body trying to make what he had done better. This scene turns very upsetting once Paul realizes what he did. Paul tries saving the man by getting him water. Once the man dies Paul rummages through his wallet and sees a picture of the man’s family and that he worked as a printer. Paul talks of when he gets home saying he will be a