The Virus In John Steinbeck's All Quiet On The Western Front

The first quote explains who Paul is to the war. „We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers - we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals.” P. 56. This quote explains that Paul and his group, are soldiers who are trying to reach the zone, complete their mission and to survive. Paul sheds his soft, gentle, listening self and adopts a killing, shouting, aggressive demeanor which he continually links to that of a hungry or wounded animal. The second quote shows how soldier’s mission looks like. “There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that there was only

This is what all young men of his generation have experienced, men on both sides of the war. During Paul's stay in the hospital, he has a lot of time to reflect on not only how he has lost his youth on the battlefield, but also on how life might be when the war is

Even if they had joined the army voluntarily, they fast realize that there is no honor on the front. There is an unspoken mutual understanding of this mentality between all soldiers, even from opposing sides. This is displayed in All Quiet on the Western Front when Paul takes cover in a shell-hole during a bombardment. A Frenchman jumps into the same home, and Paul mindlessly stabs him to near death. When he realizes exactly what he had done, he says to the dying soldier “Comrade, I did not want to kill you. . . . But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response […] now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship […] Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?” (Remarque 223). Paul now understands that the man whose life he took was a real human being. He was not a faceless killing machine to be picked off like a fly and forgotten; he was Gérard Duval, a husband, father and printer. As soldiers become familiar with the reality of war, they quickly lose all desire to kill their enemies but continue to do so because they have to. This aversion to killing only becomes more grossly apparent in the face of death. Despite hailing from different countries, soldiers are all the same. They just want to go

This particular incident, shown first hand through Paul's narration, is a significant reflection of how many soldiers behaved and reacted to similar situations. This demonstrates the consequences of war is the loss of the soldiers compassion, empathy, and humanity to one another. Ultimately resulting in further death that affects the soldiers and kills them, creating a vicious circle. Through war, the soldiers are unable to retain their humanity, shown through the events described above. As conveyed throughout this paper, the impacts of war completely stripped the men of their humanity.

The final chapters of All Quiet on the Western Front are full of bitter irony. Even the battle-hardened soldiers are reaching the point of collapse. Their prewar lives have ceased to mean anything since they can no longer imagine a peacetime existence. Paul’s comparison of the war to disease reflects an attack on the romantic ideals of warfare. Until now, he and his friends have avoided allowing the disease of war to infect them. At this point, however, the sickness is creeping into their minds and souls because it is becoming their only existence. They have ceased to think of themselves as anything other than soldiers fighting a hopeless conflict. They share an intense bond with one another, but it has now taken on the character of a bond between fellow convicts sentenced to death. The war has become a mental prison, as their country refuses to end the hostilities in the face of obvious evidence that it is losing the war badly.

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.

Usually, a war is won when one side surrenders, but those outcomes do not make everything better. Paul realizes war sets, people against one another” and men have to innocently slay [each] other” (Remarque 262). Men slaying each other happens to be a dark horror of the brutality of war which cannot be avoided because they are forced to do so. The front line consists of the troops closest to the enemy and carries out the most horrific brutalities of the war. Bäumer and his squad are on the front line and experience things most human beings should never have to see. In the summer of 1918, most men know they are losing the war and cannot win. Paul has lost many comrades and the true horror of war makes everything much worse. The German forces are being driven back and the soldiers are fatigued. All over the place are “yellow pools with red spiral streams of blood” which the “dead, wounded, and survivors” slowly sink into (Remarque 286). These settings have made this part of the war a true monstrosity for the soldiers. They cannot keep on fighting as this darkness rules over any hope of fighting back. The horrors of war are never experienced by most human beings but will be by soldiers who are usually not prepared for them. Losing fellow comrades, experiencing the brutality of combat, and the horrific nature of war are true horrors which most soldiers will

Though these young men were raised on the idea of war as honorable and righteous, their experiences during World War I lead them to see war as a tragedy. As Paul sees his friends die one by one, he realizes that they had “...begun to love life and the world; and...had to shoot it to pieces.” (Remarque). War has essentially taken everything away from these young men who had so many opportunities and potential. This influences how they see the world outside of the fighting and blood. Home no longer means the same thing to these men and they realize that “there is a distance, a veil between…” (Remarque) them and the rest of the world. Though Paul and his friends do not survive through the rest of the book, their lives after the war wouldn’t have contained much happiness. Their story from that point on would have been about “...a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.”

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

Lying dead on the ground was one of Paul’s friends, within the first few blasts of the war beginning. Not only Paul’s friends died, but as soon as the first bullet was shot on the frontline, a soldier was already killed in a blink of an eye. The feeling of the first few deaths were already stronger than anything Kantorek had said. Unfortunately, the war was only beginning, and Paul would have to deal with many more sorrows in the years ahead.

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) .”

The first quote “War means tears to thousands of mothers eyes when their sons go off to fight and lose their lives” (“War”) shows that war brings destruction, unsettlement and sadness not only to the soldiers themselves that die or get injured, but also to their close friends and family, especially their mothers. It shows that there is not only bloodshed in war on the battlefields, but also that their houses become battlefields in which there is no bloodshed, but rather tearshed. This quote reminds one of All Quiet on the Western Front, wherein Kemmerich dies because of an infection from his amputation. When Paul goes on his leave, he has the task of telling Kemmerich’s mother about his

Through out this book the author shows that war is not about heroism and fighting nobly for your country, war is a terrible thing. Paul and his friends are on the frontline in the shelters for days and the pressure gets to the men as Paul says here. "The recruit who had the fit earlier is raving again and two more have joined in. One breaks away and runs for it." This shows that the frontline, added by lack of food, has driven the young recruits mad and so much so that one recruit runs away out into the battle field with inevitable consequence of death. Paul describes the front line in many ways to show the reader and give the reader a good picture of what the frontline is like for a soldier, as Paul expresses here." The front is a cage and you have to wait nervously in it for whatever happens to you", and Paul also says. "I can be squashed flat in a bomb-proof dugout, and I can survive ten hours in the pen under heavy barrage without a scratch." This shows the reader that it is very unpredictable on the frontline and that a soldier owes his life only to lucky chances that they have not yet been killed.

Similar to the convergence of physical issues, the soldiers had a similar emotional trauma experienced. The mass death that was a consequence of the physical carnage of the war could easily lead to emotional distress due to the nature of death. Consider in All Quiet on the Western Front when the soldiers had to seek protection in a graveyard when “heavy fire” overtook them, what Paul thought about the event described the messed up mental side of the soldiers regarding death (Remarque 65). Primarily, when trying to escape the bombs and gas, and Paul had to hide in a coffin, he realized that the coffin “shall protect [Paul], thought death himself lies in it,” (Remarque 67). This whole statement can be analyzed as Paul coming to the understanding that the only way to

For the soldiers who were in WWI, they have to experience the horror and brutality of war everyday by fighting innocent men from the other side. They never knew when they would be able to go home. Not knowing if you would die or survive day by day would be so hard. Back then, the weapons they had wasn’t the most dependable, but they never could get close enough to do hand to hand combat. The one time there was hand to hand combat, was when Paul was stuck in a hole with a man from the opposite side. He thought the man was going to kill him, so he went and decided to stab the man in the heart. It turns out he wasn’t going to attack Paul, and Paul tried saving the man’s life. “The man gurgles. It sounds to me as though he bellows, every gasping breath is like a cry, a thunder, but it is not only my heart pounding. I want to stop his mouth, stuff it with earth, stab him again, he must be quiet, he is betraying me. Now at last I regain control of myself, but have suddenly become so feeble that I cannot anymore lift my hand against him.” (pg 217) Bellows of the horses were unbearable. Sitting there watching them