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

Many movies like the 300 depict war as awesome and glorious that even though it ends in tragedy it still is more glorious than it actually is. Now take a book like All Quiet on the Western Front end in tragedy like the 300, but the difference is through the entire book never once does the author make war sound outstanding and awesome. “All that meets me, all that floods over me are but feelings- greed of life, love of home, yearning for the blood, intoxication of deliverance. But no aims.” (Paul 294) He continues on to say that no one will understand what they went through and no one will understand their pain. He continues saying that no one will understand what they saw and that feeling of having no home and not being able to feel welcome in your own house. This quote shows that a soldier never is okay after a war because of how traumatic their experience is.

"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.

     “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

4. Men of Paul 's age group fear the end of the war because the war has taken up so much of their lives and personalities that they wouldn 't know how to function in a world without the war. They were conditioned to violence and battle. Moreover, they spent quite a few of their formative years in the war, and essentially grew up in combat. Older men in the war have jobs and families to which they can return; Paul and his friends have nothing of the sort. They often joke about becoming postmen like Himmelstoss, solely because they want to best him in his own field. In reality, though, they have no idea how they will operate in the world, even if they escape the war alive.

Paul’s books symbolize the shadow of war through the horrid violence limiting his connections to humanity. Paul’s book illustrate how the impacts by war stole his innocence and removed all his feelings to life when he tries to reconnect to the books to give sentimental meaning and revival. For instance, Paul enters his room filled with books of his childhood where he lived before the war. He turns to his books for rebirth to to once again “ feel the same

Along with personal feelings, the same goes for everyone Paul witnessing his best friend’s death have impacted their group so that they cannot feel or care for each other. After a battle that left many injured. While Paul rests he thinks of how everyone is left on their own, claiming, "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 and to kill" (Remarque, 116). During another day in the trenches Paul sees many bodies everywhere, soldiers being killed in front of him. Losing everyone that was close to him has caused him to lose himself mentally making him unstable. He carries the pressure of telling the families which furthermore carriers his depression. He carries a comrade’s boots as they are passed down from soldiers after each owner dies, Paul carries these boots to represent unimportance of human life. In addition to young soldiers have to follow and look up to older generation and higher rank officers which lead to betrayal. Propaganda played a huge role in World War 1 giving everyone biased opinions and bad judgements of others. These opinions gave Paul a false perspective of older generations.

“He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to a single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front” (Remarque 296). Paul Baumer, the narrator of All Quiet on the Western Front, enlisted into the German army at a young age of nineteen with a group of friends from school. Kantorek, Paul’s teacher, “gave us long lectures until the whole of our class went, under his shepherding, to the District Commandant and volunteered” (Remarque 11). After Paul and his friends underwent the ten weeks of horrific training, under the control of brutal Corporal Himmelstoss, they found out that everything Kantorek had told them about the war being illustrious was inaccurate. Paul and his fellow combatants experienced the war to be an alienating event that led the young men to feel alone because of the relationships between the young men at the front, the problems Paul faced when returning home, and the prewar and wartime civilian society.

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

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 the opening chapter, Paul Baumer, the narrator, recalls how schoolteachers, such as his own, persuaded their bright-eyed students to put on the German colors. Paul’s teacher, Kantorek, taught his students the importance of the war as he instilled in them the values of nationalism and patriotism. Everyday, he sprouted war propaganda at them in “long lectures” (Remarque 11). He glamorized the war telling his students that they were “the Iron Youth” (Remarque 18) and that “duty to one’s country is the greatest thing” (Remarque 13). Consequently, his students left class enlisted in the war one by one “until the whole of the class went” (Remarque 11). When the students left the comforts of home to volunteer for the war, they valued their country above all else and were prepared to face their own death as doing so lined up with what they believed in.

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

Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the greatest war novels of all time. It is a story, not of Germans, but of men, who even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war. The entire purpose of this novel is to illustrate the vivid horror and raw nature of war and to change the popular belief that war has an idealistic and romantic character.  The story centers on Paul Baümer, who enlists in the German army with glowing enthusiasm.  In the course of war, though, he is consumed by it and in the end is "weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope"  (Remarque page #).

During a violent encounter with the French, Paul realized the soldiers around him, and himself have “become wild beasts”, who “defend [themselves] against annihilation” (Remarque, 113). The introspective soldier

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

While the disconnection allows the soldier to adapt to the brutal war environment, it inhibits them from re-entering society. When he takes his leave, he is unable to feel comfortable at home. Even if Paul had survived the war physically, he most likely would not have integrated back into society suitably. The emotional disconnection inhibits soldiers from mourning their fallen friends and comrades. However, Paul was somewhat less than able to completely detach himself from his feelings, and there are several moments in the when he feels himself pulled down by emotion. These rush of feelings indicate the magnitude to which war has automated Paul to cut himself off from feeling, as when he says, with unbridled understatement, “Parting from my friend Albert Kropp was very hard. But a man gets used to that sort of thing in the army (p. 269) .”