Analysis Of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

The Courage and Strength in All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

In All Quiet on the Western Front, the author paints a realistic and gruesome tale of war. Many people believe that war is a glorious event. The author succeeds to show how gruesome and devastating war actually is. In many books, movies, and TV shows, war is described as glorious and good. War is not glorious or good from the beginning of time people have been at war and from that people have died. War is shown as the thing that gets the girl or the thing that makes people see you as a king and that people come back untouched. That is the false way the Hollywood and others have butchered the reality of war.

     “I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another (263).” Powerful changes result from horrifying experiences. Paul Baumer, the protagonists of Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front utters these words signifying the loss of his humanity and the reduction to a numbed creature, devoid of emotion. Paul’s character originates in the novel as a young adult, out for an adventure, and eager to serve his country. He never realizes the terrible pressures that war

He uses death, tragedies, and brutal events to show the reader the stomach-turning way of life in war. Remarque makes Paul very ostentatious so to speak. He uses all these graphic images to get a point across. Paul explains during a bombardment, horses are hit as well as the men. “Those are the wounded horses. But not all of them. Some gallop away in the distance, fall down, and then run farther. The belly of one is ripped open, the guts trail out. He becomes tangled in them and falls, then he stands up again” (28). The screams of the horses become implanted in the men’s heads, even though they cannot see them. Another gruesome image is that the soldiers go to take cover in a nearby cemetery. Paul illustrates the scene, “With a crash something bears down on us. It lands close beside us; a coffin thrown up” (31). Even the dead are being disturbed by the war. Paul wants it to seem as if the once dead are coming back to life. The last major imagery scene would be in the hospitals. The hospitals are a symbol of war. “It must be all lies and o no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is” (117). War is about killing another living thing. Once you are hit, you go to these “torture-chambers”. You go there

Erich Maria Remarque utilizes many symbols in chapter 6 of All Quiet on the Western Front to help emphasize the importance and meaning of certain aspects in the book. Within the abundance of symbols used, two that exceedingly stood out were the broken down schoolhouse and the butterflies in the battlefield. At the beginning of this chapter, the soldiers describe “a shelled school-house.” (99). The destroyed schoolhouse signifies how useless their prior education is in their current situation. As they walk past the building, there is a constant reminder that their knowledge of the outside world and how it works cannot help them on the front lines, and many of the soldiers will not make it home in order to even have any hope of receiving an education

In war, both violence and fear revokes a soldier’s humanity. These elements of war cause a person to shut down their emotional instincts, which causes the soldiers to mature rapidly by taking innocence along with joy and happiness in life. Through the experiences that the soldiers encounter, their humanity is compromised. Thus, as war strips soldiers of their innocence, they start to become disconnected from themselves and others. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque illustrates the negative effects war has on a soldier’s humanity, through his use of Paul’s books and the potato pancakes by revealing the soldiers loss of emotion that causes them to become detached from society. Through these symbols they deepen the theme by visually depicting war’s impact on Paul. Paul’s books helps the theme by depicting how the war locked his heart to old values by taking his innocence. Likewise the potato pancakes reveal Paul’s emotional state damaged by the war with his lack of happiness and gratitude.

Throughout history, there has always been war, in which survival has been one of the most important aspects. For an individual soldier fighting for a cause, the need for survival is vastly heightened. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front camaraderie plays a huge role in helping the soldier survive for several reasons; sanity, sense of understanding, and to be at ease. This seemingly small aspect of a soldier's life can be very important and as Lake Bell puts it “The finest lesson I've learned with age is that all I need is a small team of comrades who inspire me, try not to judge me, and remind me when I'm judging myself.”

Remarque uses imagery to foreshadow the coming of massive death and also the death of Paul. On the way to the front the soldiers see “at least a hundred” coffins, which the soldiers know are for them, not the enemies. The readers are able to picture the “yellow, unpolished, brand-new coffins” leaning against the school through the visual imagery. Remarque uses this imagery to foreshadow the coming attack and the death of many soldiers. Remarque also uses the pre-ready coffins to show the expendability of the soldiers; the german leaders were already planning on the soldiers dying. The “brand-new coffins” were used to foreshadow the new recruits in particular dying, because they were not ready to be sent out to the front. The main foreshadowing

Remarque's metaphors are powerful and thought provoking, for they help the readers see war through items that are seen in their everyday life, such as robots, clay, and beast. Remarque calls the soldiers beast and he Paul thinks the same thing in the novel he says,“We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down--now, for the first time in three days we can see his face, now for the first time in three days we can oppose him; we feel a mad anger. No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves, to save ourselves and to be revenged. We crouch behind every corner, behind every barrier of barbed wire, and hurl heaps of explosives at the feet of the advancing enemy before we run. The blast of the hand-grenades impinges powerfully on our arms and legs; crouching like cats we run on, overwhelmed by this wave that bears us along, that fills us with ferocity, turns us into thugs, into murderers, into God only knows what devils; this wave that multiplies our strength with fear and madness and greed of life, seeking and fighting for nothing but our deliverance. If your own father came over with them you would not hesitate to fling a bomb at him” (113). All

The French soldier dies an agonizingly painful and prolonged death; his gurgling and whimpering haunting Paul, but when the soldier finally dies, the resulting silence is even more haunting and debilitating. “Paul describes the trenches, the shelling, the screams of wounded horses and men, the poison gas attack, and the rain that drenches everything. [He] describes the tension and the horror of a major battle, with the confusion, the noise, and death turning the soldiers into numbed, unthinking machines.” (All). Paul recognizes how war forces people to think and act in ways that differ from their values and beliefs, as they are desperate to survive. Remarque uses imagery and sensory details to skillfully formulate a raw and grisly atmosphere that leaves no aspect hidden. Towards the end of the novel, many of Paul’s comrades have died, and he is the only person left in his class who is alive. He expresses the desolation and misery he feels, “I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear.” (Remarque 295). Paul has nothing left to lose at this point, so he faces his enemies free of fear and obligation to return back to his friends and his home. His sorrowful tone conveys his indifference towards death and his desire

World War I caused suffering, pain, and devastation throughout the world. World War I was from 1914 to 1918. This war had many causes and results which Remarque used to help write his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. Although many think the causes and results of World War I could never justify any problem, Remarque uses those events to justify the events that happen throughout his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Using defense mechanisms to cope with the gratuitous struggle of war was definitely insufficient, especially when the bloodbath of the young soldiers’ loved ones overpowers a simple device like daydreaming. Sometimes, all they needed was a breath of fresh air and different scenery to ease into; “These are wonderfully care-free hours. Over us is the blue sky. On the horizon float the bright, yellow, sunlit observation-balloons, and the many little white clouds of the anti-aircraft shells… We hear the muffled rumble of the front only as very distant thunder; bumblebees droning by quite drown it. Around us stretches the flowery meadow. The grasses sway their tall spears; the white butterflies flutter around and float on the soft warm wind of the late summer.”; (Remarque 9). Generally, the creative imagery and the depictions of nature were spread largely throughout the war novel, and specifically from this moment in time, it was clearly illustrated. Paul and his fellow comrades found themselves in a seemingly protected paradise and were able to ease in with the tranquility of the “wonderfully care-free hours.” They were detached from both the physically inhumane and mentally deteriorating workings of war. After all the bloodshed and brutality, there was no doubt in mind that the soldiers would not presentably steal the opportunity in being able to be surrounded once again with such thriving life.

Through the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, novelist Erich Maria Remarque provides a commentary on the dehumanizing tendencies of warfare. Remarque continuously references the soldiers at war losing all sense of humanity. The soldiers enter the war levelheaded, but upon reaching the front, their mentality changes drastically: “[they] march up, moody or good tempered soldiers – [they] reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals” (Remarque 56). This animal instinct is essential to their survival. When in warfare, the soldiers’ minds must adapt to the environment and begin to think of the enemy as objects rather than human beings. It is this defensive mechanism that allows the soldiers to save

In chapter seven of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, the protagonist Paul Baumer is granted a 17-day leave, in which he returns home. The previous occasion in which Paul had been in his town was when he first left for war. Throughout Paul’s “vacation”, he experiences ever-growing anxieties and is far from the level of contentment he had once held whilst in the same town. One can assume that his town—besides the lack of Paul and other boys who went to war—has not drastically changed. Paul however, has experienced the unimaginable violence of the Great War, which has caused him to gain an entire new perception of life.

Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front is a classic coming of age narrative set in a treacherous environment. While Remarque may have intended for his novel to be a frank depiction of the effects of war upon young men, what he achieves is a young man’s transition into maturity, exacerbated by the dangerous setting. Throughout the work, Paul Baumer and his young friends find themselves in situations they would have encountered regardless of the presence of war. These include --but are not limited to-- exploring the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and the quintessential departing from home.