War causes a loss of innocence and brings a soldier further away from their home life that they once loved as a child. In the book “All Quiet on the Western Front” the author Erich Remarque uses symbols to prove that this is how soldiers lives change after they return from war. Remarque uses the symbols of potato pancakes, horses and the earth to exhibit that war takes away the feeling of comfort that was once associated with home, while bringing on new responsibilities and a loss of innocence.
The idea of potato pancakes makes Paul think about his childhood which he now feels like he never truly lived. When Paul comes home he is reminded of his childhood when he mom makes “[his] favourite dish, potato-cakes, and even whortleberries to go with them too”. One may think that Paul would be excited to hear that his family has not forgotten about him during his time in the war, however, this is not the case. Paul is reminded of his childhood and the affection he was once given and feels as though this has been completely lost throughout his time in the war. The potato pancakes have made the memories of his childhood come back to haunt him and make him have “an uneasy conscience when [he] looks at them, and yet without any good reason. Before [they] turn in [he] brings out the rest of the potato-cakes and jam so that they can have some too”. Paul gets an uneasy feeling from the potato pancakes because they remind him of when he was just an innocent child who knew nothing about
This passage is a wonderful example of an opening description of setting. It fits into the structure of the novel by giving the audience a first look at the setting, using imagery and descriptive language to create a picture in the reader’s mind. The author begins using a comparison between hygienic modern bathrooms and the soldiers’ open view. He later uses personification when he writes, “The wind plays with our hair; it plays with our words and thoughts,” (Remarque 9). His calm and carefree diction adds to the peaceful mood.
The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.
War is a hellish battleground where many lives are taken. In war there is constantly images and events that happen which can change a soldier’s life forever. In the book All Quiet on the Western Front Remarque uses the symbols of boots, butterflies and horses to advance the main theme in the novel, that war takes young men’s innocence away.
Throughout the story All Quiet On The Western Front several different types of literary devices are used to add meaning. Symbolism takes place in countless parts of the story, “just you think, boys, a real feather-bed with a spring mattress…” as the guys can only think that if they had that bed they would love to stay in the war further more to fight longer(Remarque 78). During the war, numerous soldiers didn’t get nice as well as luxurious items, consequently, as for these soldiers they are sure-enough thankful to have the items they have.
Remarque is successfully creating an anti-war argument in the book, All Quiet on the Western Front.
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 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.
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.”
War is always the worst tragedy of mankind in the world. We, as human beings, were experienced two most dolorous wars that were ever happened in our history: World War I and World War II. A young generation actually does not know how much hardship the predecessors, who joined and passed through the wars, undergo. We were taught about just how many people died in the wars, how much damage two participations in the wars suffered or just the general information about the wars. We absolutely do not know about the details, and that’s why we also do not know what the grief-stricken feeling of people joining in the wars really is. But we can somewhat understand that feeling through war novels, which describe the truthfulness of the soldiers’ lives, thoughts, feelings and experiences. All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, which takes World War I as background, is the great war novel which talks about the German soldiers ' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the hopeless of these soldiers about the “future” – the time the war would have ended.
In Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front the protagonist, Paul Bäumer, along with five other German soldiers, tell their story of World War One and the physical, mental, and spiritual anguish that it caused them. Paul is a German soldier, fighting in the trenches, who is a nice, caring, and sympathetic man. However, the brutality of the war forces him to become emotionally detached, and as the story progresses, his outlook on life becomes grim and bleak. Through the use of Kenmerich's boots, nature, and women in the novel, it is seen that the author uses symbols to help the reader understand different aspects of war, as seen through the eyes of the characters.
In All Quiet on the Western Front Paul witness all the horrors of war. He sees death crawling towards the wounded soldiers in the wood, hospital, and on the front. When a soldier was wounded it killed them, they lost a limb or they got sent back to the front. Another awful part of war is soldiers would get shot and stranded out in the woods. They would yell for help, but were never found. Mental wounds were another injury of war. Paul would see people go insane on the front and some soldiers got shellshock. The worst part of the war for Paul was watching all of his comrades die, and his connection with the ones he loved at home fade away. The horrors of war is clearly represented in both Battle Scars and All Quiet on the Western Front with physical wounds, mental wounds, and loss of loved ones.
on, Paul becomes incapable to deal with the death of his comrades. In addition, he is unable to have the same sensations and feeling with his family back home. He cannot express himself about the experiences and through what he went during war. On top of that Paul says that he does not see a peacfully futur and that he has memory troubles, to remember everything in the last years. However, Paul’s sensitivity makes him not being able to separate his feelings with himself entirely. In the novel there are specific moments where we observe the emotions of Paul coming up, for instance when he is with his sick mom spending some time together, but also his comrades death, Kat and Kemmerich. Another time in the novel Paul states, “Parting from my friend
War is caused by the tension between countries that results in the inevitable loss of human compassion. In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the instances when the environment and glorifications of war becomes a mere background, compassion returns to those who mutually suffer. Unless human interaction is uninfluenced by the idealisms of war, soldiers will be stripped of their essence as human beings, void of any emotional capacity and hope being unable to see others as anything more than an enemy. The glorified notion of war and the idea of a heroic soldier prevents Paul from separating himself from the horrors and trauma of war, therefore the Frenchwoman fails to connect with Paul on a more organic and emotional level.
The novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque explores and demonstrates the themes of war and its devastating effects on the soldiers who participate in it. Set during the First World War, All Quiet on the Western Front follows a man named Paul Baumer and his classmates who enlist for the war effort. A theme repeatedly expressed in the novel is the disdain for leadership such as Kantorek, Corporal Himmelstoss, and the Kaiser.
Erich Paul Remark (most commonly known as Erich Maria Remarque) was born on June 22nd, 1998 in Onsabruck, Westphalia; a town in Germany. He was the son of his mother Anna Maria Stallnecht Remark and his father, Peter Franz Remark, who was a master machinist and a bookbinder. As a young boy growing up in a lower-working class family, he moved houses eleven times between 1898 and 1912 and was called Schmieren, or “Smudge” by his fellow students. He began to write when he was aged sixteen in which he developed a passion for creating stories. Erich eventually attended the University of Münster in 1913 to pursue a career as an elementary school teacher. In 1915, him and other students created a brotherhood focusing on literature. Through this, he created a short story titled “The Lady with the Golden Eyes”, an essay called “From the Time of Youth”, and a poem which is titled “I and You”. All of these were published in the Onsabruck newspaper and sparked Remarque’s popularity in the literary culture of the time. After he won an essay contest in 1916, he was spontaneously drafted into the German army as a musketeer. Sadly, his mother died right after he completed basic training in Onsabruck on September 9, 1917. In July of that year, Remarque’s fleet advances to Flanders, where the some of the bloodiest fighting was happening in World War I. The effects of trench Warfare took a toll on him and he never truly recovered from when he carried his friend Troske out of enemy fire before he shortly after died of shrapnel wounds on the way to a medic. During a period of five months, the German and the Allied armies fought away eventually creating up to 770,000 casualties. Remarque eventually becoming sprayed with grenade splinters in neck, wrist, and knee, he left the battlefield on July 31. He suffered from PTSD after the war and it took him a year to recover to a decent state, but he was still concealing it through his wit. During this year he wrote an abundance of poems, essays, and sketches and started to get jobs at local posts. From 1920 to 1922, he juggled being an aspiring pianist, a worker in a post, and being an avid writer for his own