Imagery In All Quiet On The Western Front By Remarque

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

     “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

Iron - In the book we hear the term "The Iron Youth" used to describe Paul 's generation. "The Iron Youth" is an ideal of a strong Fatherland-lovin ' group of young soldiers who enlist and fight in the war as a way of showing pride for Germany and its history. The author and characters in the book tear this ideal apart, feeling it to be useless and empty when compared with the realities of war. These young soldiers are not made of "iron," but of flesh and blood. The term "iron" would suggest they are protected emotionally and physically against all weapons of war, but this book proves to us that that is completely false. Lives melt away in the arms of this violent war.

In chapter 5 of All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, the war ruined the futures of the soldiers: “We had to fly from ourselves. From our life. We...had begun to love life; and we had to shoot it to pieces” (87-88). Paul knows that their lives were just starting, they could have done anything. This dream was extinguished when they became involved with the war. Everyone had told them this was courageous and would complete their lives with the fulfillment of serving their country. Only, all it had done was destroy their futures.

Imagery is often used to allow the reader to develop a fuller understanding of the plot, characters, and setting. In Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, he uses imagery to help the reader understand the experience of war. Imagery allows the reader to comprehend Paul’s thoughts and to relate with the other characters. It makes the war realistic and provides a deeper understanding of the war because it affects all of the senses. Remarque uses imagery to emphasize the themes of war and to demonstrate the contrasts of war during battles and in the meantime.

In All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque uses metaphors to help the reader better understand the mindset and hardships of a soldier. Earlier in the book, Remarque talks of the soldier’s unexplainable longing to be a part of the war. He compares the front to “a mysterious whirlpool” and himself to the still water just outside of it (Remarque 55). Although he is far from the center, he is still “slowly, irresistibly, inescapably” sucked into combat. Remarque also illustrates the horrors of war and the mental obstacles a soldier must go through. The soldiers are “little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls”, meaning the war has made their minds fragile and prone to many dangers. Their tragic experiences makes their flame “flicker and sometimes

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

The novel All Quiet on the Western Front uses imagery that fills the reader with shock and truly disturbed thoughts of World War I. In an early scene in the book, one of Paul’s comrades from school and the Second Company named Kemmerich, contracts gangrene and has his leg amputated. Kemmerich is in much pain and does not receive morphine. As he is dying, Paul watches helplessly as his friend cries until his death. The reader gains a new knowledge of the emotions felt by Paul, the doctors and residents at the hospital, and Kemmerich himself. The war created such fear and awareness of the emanate death the soldiers faced. Paul knew he would witness more deaths of close friends and had to live with the grief and the thought

In All Quiet On The Western Front and “For You” demonstrate that when soldiers step on the front line they quickly realize how brutal war is. No One knows how bad war is until they are on the front lines. In All Quiet On The Western Front the book says The book says “The thunder of the guns swells to a single heavy roar (Remarque-pg.35. In the song For You it's says “All i saw was smoke and fire” (Urban). These Quotes represents some examples of Horrors Of War because It makes them depressed, afraid of dying. In “All Quiet on the western front” It says “They'll slip you a waterproof sheet to your old corpse”. In the poem “For You” he says “If it came down to it, could I take the bullet. These quotes represents Horrors of war

Erich Maria Remarque did a phenomenal job of evoking imagery in his novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front.” His alluring use of adjectives and adverbs made his words jump off the page. The sweeping images of the dead and wounded, linger in my mind. However, sight is not the only sense that his writing induces. Whilst reading the passages that describe the death, destruction, and fighting, one can almost feel, and smell, as if they lived the very moment. The fact that Remarque describes how the soldiers slowly become disillusioned with the war, makes these images more impactful for me. He explains that the soldiers know that the war was not their fault, and the men they are killing are not actually the real enemy; they are just ordinary

Imagery is any piece of language that provokes the readers mind to form a mental picture or image.

Imagery is a strong element that helps portray a lot of internal feelings for the audience to fathom with, thus creating an experience that the audience can enjoy. Imagery is the language represented by sense experience and a literary device that helps create a mental picture for the reader to understand what the writer is trying to say to the audience (Johnson, Arp 779). The following is the poem by Langston Hughes: “The calm,/Cool face of the river/Asked me for a kiss.” (Hughes 1-3) When examining the poem, “Suicide’s Note”, it is full of imagery with only three lines present. The

The German novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a novel written by the German Author Erich Maria Remarque. The novel centers on the German soldiers and what they went through during the First World War. Remarque was a German veteran soldier who was affected by the war like losing his friends and never felt the same after the war because he couldn’t find peace in his heart until he died. That is why he wrote this novel to express his feelings of the war through the characters and the plot of the story.The story begins with the narrator and the main character of the story who is Paul Baumer who was forced from his school to join the army of Germany weeks after the beginning of world war one. When the German soldiers arrived in the

Setting is a significant literary feature because it is the root of a work. It depicts the overall meaning and purpose of the novel. The setting determines the way a certain character think, act, or feel. Without a setting, characters in a novel have no reason to act or care which defeats the whole purpose of a novel. In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front the setting is set during World War II, on the western front. Although it is set in a real place and period of time, the characters in the novel does not exist. Throughout the whole novel, readers witness many gruesome and sickening scenes, “We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run with their two feet cut off, they stagger on their splintered stumps