All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque Essay

On the field of battle, countless soldiers are murdered and injured every day. The injured ones usually end up dying anyways from lack of care or fatal wounds. Paul sees these fatalities and watches as his friends are slowly picked off as time passes. A quote in this book states: “While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying.

Unexpectedly, Paul laughs and giggles uncontrollably while recounting the details of his death and twice it is revealed that he is truly “scared to death.” Through the unsettling and unexpected reaction of laughter in response to tragedy, the reader experiences the fragility of Paul’s emotional state and a sense of urgency for resolution to his internal turmoil develops within the reader. Unfortunately, the author’s purpose in the last line of the story indicates Paul’s physical and emotional quest to conquer his fear will continue and the terror of war will not be erased.

Paul explains his view of the constant attacks in the war and the overall negative atmosphere of the war. He feels as if the atmosphere itself “clogs the lungs,” and “suffocates” (Remarque 29) because of the loss that Paul has endured. Paul feels that the constant warfare and atmosphere surrounding him is slowly killing him. He is used to the constant loss and death around him so much so he does not know what living a normal life is anymore either. When Paul returns home he does not feel like he can live a normal life anymore.

He found that he had to change so he didn’t need to feel the pain that war brought among the soldiers. He cannot be present in a normal setting. When he finally returns home, which seems to be every soldiers dream, he cannot find emotion to feel happy about it. It doesn’t feel the same as before he went to war. He feels “strangeness” which demonstrates he doesn’t feel comfortable there as he once did. The only place Pauls feels a belonging now is in war where he fits in with all the other desensitized soldiers. Paul and his friends feel hopeless about the idea of leaving war because of what they have experienced has ruined them. They are not the same people as they were before the

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.

Later that night, they trade food with the women for sex. On their way to the girls’ house, the soldiers “are glowing and full of a lust for adventure” (Remarque 146). Paul does not speak the same language as these girls or even know their names, yet he uses them as a channel for his sexual frustrations. Shortly after this event, Paul receives a leave of absence. Nevertheless, he cannot get away from the war fully. When he is home he tries to remember moments of his youth: “Images float through my mind, but they do not grip me, they are mere shadows and memories” (Remarque 172). No matter how hard he tries, he cannot reconnect to his childhood memories. Because of this encounter with the women, Paul is a dynamic character who regresses due to the fact the war and this specific memory wipes away his childhood and fundamentally, his

During the novel, Paul progresses a great deal emotionally. In the beginning of the book, Paul is “crammed with vague ideas which gave to life, and to the war also, an ideal and almost romantic character” (Remarque 10). This shows that he is happy and almost looking forward to the war. Later in the book, Paul says “We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces” (Remarque 39). Paul has realized what war is, and is not satisfied with his situation in life, which can be attributed to the things he has seen. Towards the end of the story, Paul says “I know nothing of life but despair, death,

For example, high-class young men like Paul fight side by side with dirt-poor peasant farmers. We see how Paul compares and contrasts his friends back home and at war when he says, “They are different men here, I cannot properly understand who I envy and despise. I must think of Kat, Albert, Mueller, and Tjaden (Remark 169). This quote shows how Paul is having unstable emotions reflecting on his time on leave, but thinking about his comrades whom he is so physically different from, yet so mentally similar brings him a sense of regulation. We see another example of the solidarity and peace being with one's comrade brings while Paul and Kat are cooking a goose for their friends after a hard time at war.

Erich Maria Remarque’s literary breakthrough, All Quiet on the Western Front, describes two stories. It meticulously chronicles the thoughts of a soldier in World War I while simultaneously detailing the horrors of all wars; each tale is not only a separate experience for the soldier, but is also a new representation of the fighting. The war is seen through the eyes of Paul Baumer whose mindset is far better developed in comparison to his comrades’. His true purpose in the novel is not to serve as a representation of the common soldier, but to take on a godly and omniscient role so that he may serve as the connection between WWI and all past and future melees of the kind. Baumer becomes the

Paul’s attitude began to change soon after going home on leave when he realized that he no longer had any connections with his old community except for his school mates who also enlisted and eventually died in the army. Even the conditions at home were hopeless as illustrated in the moldy food, his father’s futile efforts to change the situation, and his mother’s illness. The hopelessness of war is obvious to the reader and to Paul when Tjaden and Paul are severely injured while attempting to protect a town. They resist medical treatment due to the number of fatalities that result from amputation. They realized that death was almost inescapable if they allowed themselves to be treated in just any hospital. At the end of the novel, one of Paul’s closest friends, Katczinsky has recently died due to a small splinter to the head as Paul was attempting to carry him to safety on one of the last days of battle. At this moment it is evident to the reader that because of the war this young man has lost everything that he once held including all of the members of his class and the ability to connect with the rest of the world. In October 1918, Paul even lost his most precious commodity - his life to a stray bullet on what the army pronounced to be still and quiet day on the entire front. It is ironic that the army considers only a few deaths to be a peaceful and quiet day. Death has become such apart of reality that only

  Erich Maria Remarque's classic war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, deals with the many ways in which World War I affected people's lives, both the lives of soldiers on the front lines and the lives of people on the homefront. One of the most profound effects the war had was the way it made the soldiers see human life. Constant killing and death became a part of a soldier's daily life, and soldiers fighting on all sides of the war became accustomed to it. The atrocities and frequent deaths that the soldiers dealt with desensitized them to the reality of the vast quantities of people dying daily. The title character of the novel, Paul

In the book, Paul talks about how the war has affected him and changed him over time. Also, he talks about how comradery has helped him, he says, “We did not break down but we adapted ourselves...But by far the most important result...arose out of the war comradeship.”(26-7). This means Paul and the other comrades did not let the war and death of his friends break them down, they adapted to what was going on around and this was because of comradeship. This applies to Paul’s fear of death because one of Paul’s very close friends, Kantorek was on his deathbed and later died which scared Paul. Paul used his fellow comrades to help him through these tough times and he adapted to the fact that death was going to be prevalent in his life and he could lose some of his best friends. This helped him face his fear of death in the end because he was able to adapt to each conflict that arose throughout the book with the help of his fellow comrades. During a battle Paul is separated from his friends and fellow comrades and finds himself hiding from shelling by himself. Later on, Paul hears familiar voices and feels comforted when he realizes it is his fellow comrades, he says, “They are more to me than life, these voices...they are the voices of my comrades...I belong to them and they belong to me; we all share the same fear.”(212). This means Paul values the voices of his fellow comrades and they

Lost generation is the idea of an unfulfilled generation coming to maturity during a period of instability (New Oxford American Dictionary). The idea of lost generation first started with writers such as Ernest Hemmingway after having served time in the war felt a disconnection to his prewar self. In the book, All Quiet on the Western Front, the author Erich Maria Remarque wrote about war and included details that were often kept as a secret. A very prevalent theme in Remarque’s novel is the loss of innocence, which ultimately leads a generation of soldiers to become known as the lost generation. World War One caused a sense of instability and uncertainty in its young men, ultimately leading the soldiers to lose their innocence and questions their sense of self.

     “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

"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.