All Quiet On The Western Front Essay examples

Written by Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front is the tale of a young man by the name of Paul. Paul who is nineteen years old gathers several of his friends from school and together they voluntarily join the army fighting for the Axis alliance. Before they are sent off into actual battle, they are faced with the brutal training camp. Along with this they face the cruelty of the life of a soldier. This made them question the reason for which a soldier fights. They are told that they fight because they must be nationalists and must therefore be patriotic. But they began to understand that these are just clichés and are used to brainwash soldiers. Soon after they graduate they are sent into the fray of war. The premature idea of war being glorious and honourable is destroyed when they step into the gruesome actuality of war. They are forced to live in constant fear for their life. Kemmerich, a friend of Paul, gets injured and contracts gangrene. From this his leg is amputated to stop the infection from spreading. Sadly, the operation was done too late and Kemmerich is declared to be slowly dying. Paul and his friend visit Kemmerich is slowly dying, and Müller, another former classmate, overlooks Kemmerich’s horrible state and says that he wants Kemmerich’s boots for himself. Accustomed to life at war, Paul doesn’t consider Müller insensitive. Paul understands that Muller knows Kemmerich will no longer use his boots

In the incredible book, All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, the reader follows Paul Baumer, a young man who enlisted in the war. The reader goes on a journey and watches Paul and his comrades face the sheer brutality of war. In this novel, the author tries to convey the fact that war should not be glorified. Through bombardment, gunfire, and the gruesome images painted by the author, one can really understand what it would have been like to serve on the front lines in the Great War. The sheer brutality of the war can be portrayed through literary devices such as personification, similes, and metaphors.

In the book All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque illustrates the picture of World War I to the reader. This book is the story of Paul Baumer, who with his classmates recruits in the German Army of World War I. This anti-war novel is an excellent book because through the experiences of Paul Baumer, I am able to actually feel like I'm in the war. It is a very useful piece of literature, which increases the readers' knowledge on how the war affected the people at the time setting. By reading this book, one is drawn into the actual events of the war, and can feel the abyss of death. I believe this piece is very well written. It is entirely simple, lacking any bias

            Baümer has "grown accustomed to it. War is the cause of death like influenza and dysentery.  The deaths are merely more frequent, more varied and terrible."  He has rid himself of all feelings and thoughts.  His emotions lie buried in the earth along with the soldiers who fell prey to them.  His dullness protects him from going mad at the sight of a slaughtered comrade or butchered friend.  He wants to live at all costs so "every expression of his life must serve one purpose and one purpose only, preservation of existence, and he is absolutely focused on that" (page #).  The cost of life is the death of his emotions; his survival depends on it."  Every shell that falls, every shot that fires, a soldier must face the possible certainty of death.  To Baumer, death carries hand grenades, a bayonet and a rifle to take away what he has long protected -- his life.

As a prior soldier in World War I, Remarque himself got a cold wake-up call on what war was really like. In his book, he did not censor nor romanticized a thing about war - as many prior books had done - and let the truth flow out through his book, showing the world what it was really like for the soldiers out on the battlefield. All Quiet on the Western Front tells of the horrendous brutality of war, and Remarque did a fine job in showing it. He dropped the prior, unrealistic idea of war as honorable, patriotic, and glorious, to show that it was actually brutal, meaningless, and an endless nightmare for many. The enemies of the soldiers were not their opposing nations but also their own country leaders and battle leaders, as Remarque presents the idea that war was a meaningless ploy to gain power and glory, sacrificing their own youth and people to do so. In addition, with the new weapon technology, killing is faster and easier than before, such as a weapon that can shoot and kill hundreds of men at a time. It made killing impersonal and instinct. Men on the field were forced physically and psychologically to become savage, animals whose instinct was to kill. They lose their humanity, and

Remarque uses imagery to show the struggles and hardships the soldiers had to go through to help prove that those problems make the war not worth it for him. Remarque first expresses that him and his men are “emancipated and starved”, he is trying to show that they do not have energy left yet because the food “is all bad and mixed up with so much subsitute stuff”, which will make them ill so they can hardly eat anymore(Remarque 280). This adds to the anti war argument a lot by showing that the soldiers are being deprived of food and sleep, while still having to fight for their lives in a war they are clearly losing. This makes the reader understand how truly dangerous all of it becomes when all of these problems add together. The reader is able to imagine trying to do something so strenuous with such little food and sleep. It is terrible to think about someone having to such a thing. Remarque moves on to explain time during battle after which he describes as ¨attack after attack¨, it even follows the men along the “retreating crumbling line”(Remarque 282). This shows that him and his men are losing, and explains that even as they are trying to leave the battlefield they are being attacked and it feels like never-ending attack. At this point, readers can imagine the exhaustion the men are feeling and can see in their mind the few men still left running for their lives and

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, is a classic anti-war novel about the personal struggles and experiences encountered by a group of young German soldiers as they fight to survive the horrors of World War One. Remarque demonstrates, through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier, how the war destroyed an entire generation of men by making them incapable of reintegrating into society because they could no longer relate to older generations, only to fellow soldiers.

Chapter 2 sums up the war in a different fashion, showing the contrast between the uselessness of past knowledge and the “raw and emotional skills necessary” in the trenches (20). The duties imposed on the camp by Corporal Himmelstoss symbolize the hours of work and duties done before enlistment that mean nothing during the war. Being “put through every conceivable refinement of parade ground soldiering” shows how schoolbook tasks were diligently performed only for fear of how society would perceive the boys if they were to do otherwise (26). Himmelstoss himself is the embodiment of previous responsibilities that only make the men “howl with rage” at present (26). The death of Kemmerich goes hand in hand with the death of innocence, Kemmerich’s shiny boots being the small glimpse of hope that keeps the men going. Baumer receives saveloy, hot tea, and rum from Muller for salvaging the boots. In return for giving Muller a sense of hope, Baumer receives a more needed sense of comfort and satisfaction. His hunger, one “greater than comes from the belly alone” (33), is thus satisfied. Chapter 7 directly reinforces this transition from an old life into a new one. Baumer “feels an attraction” to the

folk.” From the start of the war, these young men were robbed of their idealism, and

In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque depicts the effects of power and authority on the characters. Young school-going “men” are given no choice but to support their country by signing up to be on the front line. Pushed into war by the ones they trust most, these soldiers quickly learn the realities of the abysmal trenches and immediately begin to question the older generations that pressured them to enlist. Furthermore, these leaders who speak of patriotism are willing to sacrifice the lives men of lower social classes even when it is evident that the war cannot be won. In the novel, Remarque brings to light how the circumstances of war influence an individual to abuse their role of authority. Additionally, Remarque depicts an individual’s desire for power exposing that their hunger intensifies over time. As a result, the authoritative figures depict that once power is given to an individual, greed and misuse begin to control the person and sway their decisions. Remarque portrays the abuse of power that arises due to the appalling circumstances of the novel, uncovering their inhumane behavior.

Take author Erich Maria Remarque, a world war one vet who wrote the critically acclaimed book “All Quiet on the Western Front”, his experience of war made him write the reality of what war is and what it has done to people's lives. In order to know where Remarque is coming from, you need to know the history of World War 1. World War One was the first real brutal war that involved a lot of countries.

In the words of Otto Von Bismarck, “Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.” Many of the preceding war novels to All Quiet on the Western Front, misrepresented or overlooked the anguish of war, in favor of more resplendent ideals such as glory, honor, or nationalism. The predominant issue of All Quiet on the Western Front is the terrible atrocities of war. The reality that is portrayed in the novel is that there was no glory or honor in this war, only a fierce barbarity that actually transformed the nature of human existence into irreparable, endless affliction, destroying the soldiers long before their deaths.

All Quiet on the Western Front is the story of Paul Baumer’s service as a soldier in the German army during World War I. Paul and his classmates enlist together, share experiences together, grow together, share disillusionment over the loss of their youth, and the friends even experience the horrors of death-- together. Though the book is a novel, it gives the reader

All quiet On the Western Front, a book written by Erich Maria Remarque tells of the harrowing experiences of the First World War as seen through the eyes of a young German soldier. I think that this novel is a classic anti-war novel that provides an extremely realistic portrayal of war. The novel focuses on a group of German soldier and follows their experiences.

attempted many jobs, a journalist, a teacher, a librarian and of course, a writer. All Quiet on the Western Front was published in 1929 and translated into twelve different languages and later made into a movie. The novel was a colossal success. Not only did it give civilians a real account of the dehumanizing effects of the war but it gave a voice to those solider’s that had their own taken from them. During the war, there was little to no way that the families of the men fighting would know what the war was like. There was no way of knowing the sheer horror of what happened to the soldiers. At the time, there was a misconception about the war, a romanticism that formed. From this romanticism, a certain false patriotism rose. Young men were encouraged to leave school and join the war for their country. The idea of “fighting for the fatherland” was used as an incentive to join the fight. After the Nazi’s rose to power, Remarque’s novel was deemed “unpatriotic” and banned by the Nazis. Remarque used his personal experience of fighting in the war to write All Quiet on the Western Front. A novel that was so necessary, so vital that soldiers from around the word identified with the characters.