Essay on The Effect of War on Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front

Paul and his comrades feel betrayed by their own people as well as they have been deceived by their friends, their families, and their loved ones. Paul realized that the betrayal of the civilians is because of their ignorance. The same ignorance lead the parents to force their sons into the army and therefore onto the path of death. Those soldiers like Joseph Behm who “enlists to avoid ostracization by his peers” (Warner). These civilians, these poor ignorant fools, who lived blissfully in their ignorance, believed they understood but they couldn't. They could not understand the war the same way the experienced soldiers did. Paul comes to acknowledge this when he visits his home and he says that “They understand of course, they agree, they may even feel it so too, but only with words, only with words, yes, that is it” (Remarque110). To make the matter even worse, the older generation didn’t want to hear but lies from soldiers; they only wanted to hear about patriotism and glory. “He [Paul] realizes that the people at home would prefer lies rather than to accept the soldier’s account” (Henningfeld). Also in their ignorance, they did not realize that they

Life for the soldiers in the beginning is a dramatic one as they are ordered up to the frontline to wire fences. The frontline makes Paul feel immediately different as described here. "As if something is inside us, in our blood, has been switched on." The front makes Paul more aware and switched on as if his senses and reactions are sharpened. I think Paul and his friends are

War can destroy a young man mentally and physically. One might say that nothing good comes out of war, but in Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, there is one positive characteristic: comradeship. Paul and his friends give Himmelstoss a beating in which he deserves due to his training tactics. This starts the brotherhood of this tiny group. As explosions and gunfire sound off a young recruit in his first battle is gun-shy and seeks reassurance in Paul's chest and arms, and Paul gently tells him that he will get used to it. The relationship between Paul and Kat is only found during war, in which nothing can break them apart. The comradeship between soldiers at war is what

He states that when he goes home, his family will be shocked to hear this language. Paul treats his lingual freedom as privilege that soldiers have, and shows the benefits of living a soldier’s life. He refers to the front as if it were a paradise, for he can use vulgar language and not worry about manners and decorum. He treats his service as a time for relaxation, recreation, and a little excitement. This attitude becomes short-lived as the realities of war sink in. When Paul volunteers for reconnaissance one night, he becomes stranded in No Man’s Land (the area between opposing trenches) and begins to realize the brutality of war and starts to lose his own humanity. At the beginning of the book, Paul shows care towards his fellow soldiers and treats his service as an adventure by his education of the recruits and his excitement towards the boundaries of his vocabulary.

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.

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.

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.

By telling them this they believed that when they returned from the war they would be glorified from their town as war heroes. Kantorek set off some excitement for the war in all of these young men by doing so. When they reached the front they become conscious that war was no where near how they imagined it would be. Paul then realized that after a war like this he would not return to society and be able to fit in ever again. The war totally changed who he once had been.

Paul’s realizations of the change that happens in the war lead him to develop new views of his situation and he ponders why he is really there. “They are merely honest and call a thing by its name; for there is a very great deal of fraud, injustice, and baseness in the army” (282). Paul sees that the army is like any other aspect in life; it can be brutal and hard. He learns to differentiate the good from the bad and that allows Paul to create his own experience while he’s in the

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 last chapter Paul has had many terrible and horrific wartime experience and he is the last living recruit from his original group. During this time the German people are getting anxious about the ending the war. While out on the field Paul inhales poisonous gas and is given 14 days to go home. However, Paul has a weird feeling about returning home because, he has no future goals for his life. The only thing Paul can think about is the empty shell of people the war has produced. Later in this chapter Paul finally dies on a quiet day. Leaving the last words on the war “All Quiet on the Western Front”. Leaving Paul glad that the thing that destroyed him most ended. The thing that ripped something pure out of him and replaced it with emptiness.

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

Not much for twenty years’–and yet too much for twenty years.” (page 89). The war has forced them to lose their innocence before they should; 20-year-olds are still children (in terms of bqskbsdjv) and shouldn’t have to perform the duties that Paul does. Men that age should be concerned with finding a job, a house, a wife, but because of the war Paul and his friends cannot waste time on things like that; they must focus on keeping themselves alive. Earlier, Paul realized that he might never get that relative luxury. “We had as yet taken no root. The war swept us away. For others, the older men, it is but an interruption. They are able to think beyond it. We, however, have been gripped by it and do not know when the end may be. We only know that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a wasteland. All the same, we are not often sad” (Page 20). Before becoming a soldier, Paul had still not become an adult and started his own life so now he doesn’t really have anything to go back to, unlike older soldiers. His ability to lead a normal life has disappeared thanks to the

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) .”

That aspect of his previous life seems unreal and incomprehensible, perhaps even vague because since he came to the war he feels cut off from his early life. It is as if he has lost the person he used to be. Not only does Paul feel he has lost himself as he used to be, but he also believes that he would not be able to recapture his past, even if given the chance: "…these memories of former times do not awaken desire so much as sorrow…Once we had such desires-but they return not. They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us." (Remarque, pg.106).  From this quote it is clear that Paul feels his childhood is out of reach. He has lost his desire to recapture his memories, perhaps recognising that they may not mean all that much to him now anyway, due to the fact that he feels he has already lost the world those memories originated from. When Paul returns home on leave, he realises that it may not be him losing a previous world of memories, rather the previous world is losing him: "I cannot feel at home amongst these things…There is a distance, a veil between us." (Remarque, Pg.139).  Paul feels out of place when he returns home, reinforcing his fears that the war has changed him irreversibly. As Paul recognises this occurring change throughout the novel, his thoughts and actions become reclusive. After killing an enemy soldier in battle, the effects of the war on his sense of