Approximately 20% of all war veterans suffer from a mental disorder called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD for short. This continues to affect many soldiers, just like it did in the past. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is a first person narrative set during World War I about a young boy and his friends’ journey to war. An anti war propaganda, Remarque’s novel debates the corruption of WWI.
The book cover of, All Quiet on The Western Front, quotes to be ‘’the greatest war novel of all time’’. The author, Erich Remarque, experiencing war himself; uses the protagonist, Paul Baumer, to express his own background and horrors of World War One. With this, it alternates between his vividly dying memories of the times before the war and the nightmares of trench warfare; although a first person narrative. Erich served in combat during WW1 in Germany and was wounded five times. The last injury was very severe and kept him out of the war.
Imagine a world where trees are lying everywhere; there are craters in the earth as larges as busses and corpses of men lying everywhere. This is a world the past generation experienced. This is World War I. Remarque portrays the technological and military innovations in All Quiet on the Western Front as horrific, in the ways of creating mass casualties, causing psychological problems in the soldiers, and destroying nature. The technological and military innovations that remarque portrays creates mass casualties.
Ashley Dumas Ms. Christine Gmitro Sophomores Honors English 16 May 2018 The Mental State of Paul Baumer In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the narrator Paul Baumer is left a broken and destroyed human being after his time in the senseless absurdity of war. The war takes a huge toll on all who witnessed or were apart of it.
1. Erich Remarque’s purpose for writing All Quiet on the Western Front was to show the devastating effects of war on soldiers and to protest against the war. He does this by depicting the experiences of a group of young German soldiers who are fighting in World War I. One example of how Remarque fulfills this purpose is when the protagonist, Paul Baumer, reflects on the futility of war and the sacrifices soldiers are forced to make. On page 49, Paul says, "We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial - I believe we are lost."
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields”, Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel, and Lewis Milestone’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” present different accounts of World War I. McCrae displays the sorrow of losing comrades while exhorting the public to continue to fight in memory of those who died. Junger writes a gripping account of his experience as a fearless young man in the war. “All Quiet on the Western Front” combines both the sorrow of McCrae’s poem with Junger’s fearless attitude to deliver a war story reminiscent of the personalities of the soldiers. All three works manipulate the use of syntax to evoke a sense of remorse as their audiences recognize the reality of death that manifests in war. McCrae employs syntax to display remorse through his stylization and organization
Like the concept of survival of the fittest, it is essential for the soldiers to have an animal instinct to survive on the battlefield. Many moments are shown in which the soldiers become two faced, changing from good-mannered and soft soldier to animal - like characteristics. Paul informs us that they only way to survive in battle, is to block away all your emotions, if not, it would drive you insane. Another aspect as to the book’s anti-war sentiment, is how Remarque describes the consequences of war, the loss of the young life. Paul's generation was known as the "Iron Youth", which was a group of young boys who enlisted and fought in the war as a way of showing gratitude for their country, Germany, but his age group is lost because
After bravely enlisting into the marines in the latter end of World War I, Krebs comes back home as a late lost hero called “Harold” by his family, but as the war would have it he is just another soldier whose mind stayed in the war. The Methodist Oklahoman, Harold Krebs, in the Ernest Hemingway short story, “Soldier’s Home” is survived by a poolhall, the growing young women, his mother’s prayers, and his family ties. The marine Krebs, who served for two years in various locations in France and Germany, is trapped in the man who returns too tardy for a heroic praise. He is equipped with a uniform too small to fit his ever-growing mental deterioration of falling out of his ambition, God, and his family. From Kansan fraternity brothers with
All Quiet on the Western Front is a World War I novel written by Eric Maria Remarque. Some believe it has become known as the greatest war novel of all time. Remarque himself fought in World War I, so it is based off of events that he experienced first-hand. He endured five injuries during this war, and never forgot about his experiences. The reader is taken on a journey through the war experience of nineteen-year-old Paul Bäumer.
All Quiet on the Western Front Essay World War I is one of the most influential and bloody wars in history. Soldiers did not always receive fair treatment, and often encountered harsh conditions, especially those men who were fighting on the front line. World War I took place between 1914-1919 (pbs), during which millions of lives were lost, and nearly everyone’s life was touched by the war in some way.
The choice Erich Maria Remarque made to use first person point of view was more effective than using third person point of view because the reader is closer to the story and Paul. Throughout the novel, the readers can feel the pain and suffering Paul is going through in the war. This is more effective than third person because if it were third person it would be narrated, they wouldn't be part of the action, and wouldn't feel what Paul feels. For example, on page 16 Paul says, “I become faint, all at once I cannot do any more. I won't revile any more, it is senseless, I could drop down and never rise up again.
When they feel lost and deal with the traumas that come with fighting in the war, he quickly engages himself with their troubles and conducts a free therapy session by lending an ear, and checking in on them regularly while fighting in the war at the same time. For example, when Tim killed the young Vietnamese soldier during the war, he started to contemplate about the life that the fallen soldier could have had if it wasn’t for Tim taking his life. While the other soldiers carried on with their lives, Kiowa was the only one who stayed back and said to Tim, “It wasn’t you man. It wasn’t you.” (O’ Brien 145).
Hardships faced in World War 1 War can be compared to an everlasting fever with tremendous side effects, no one, in particular, wants it, but, all at once there it is. Combat before World War 1 had the usage of inefficient had to hand weapons like knives and regular bayonets. Killing mass numbers of people was not as effective as during World War 1 as technology developed to kill more efficiently. Knives and bayonets turned into machine guns, slow marching troops were transported by tanks and submarines, poison gas and barbed wires replaced shields. The novel, ’All Quiet on the Western Front’, written by Erich Maria Remarque, who served in the German army during the war.
Is there ever a pretty side to war? Well, the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque, shows the life of war from Paul Baumer’s point of view. Paul is a young German soldier fighting during World War One, he often uses nature in the midst of war as a source of comfort. Remarque uses quotes throughout the book to show that nature is beautiful but ugly all at the same time, and it holds a source of comfort for the soldiers fighting. Nature holds many moods that Remarque is able to demonstrate in every chapter of this novel.
Erich Maria Remarque, a World War I veteran, took his own personal war experience to paper, which resulted in one of the most critically acclaimed anti-war movement novels of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front. The voice of the novel, Paul Baumer, describes his daily life as a soldier during the First World War. Through the characters he creates in the novel, Remarque addresses his own issues with the war. Specifically, Remarque brings to light the idea of the “Iron Youth,” the living conditions in the trenches, and the sense of detachment soldiers feel, among other things. Therefore, All Quiet on the Western Front criticizes the sense of nationalism, which war tends to create among citizens by quickly diminishing any belief regarding it as a glorious and courageous act.
