All Quiet On The Western Front: A Thematic Analysis

Today, there are 48% of people that are in between the age of 22 to 30 who are in the US active duty forces, which means that they are involved in warfare; the average age of these young soldiers is 29 ("Demographics of Active Duty"). Although today there are many films and books that expose the carnage of war, there are still many adolescents who enlist without knowing the negative experiences and outcomes of war itself. All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, provides a large amount of themes. These themes include the detrimental results of WWI, such as the savagery of the bloodbath, the psychological drain of fighting, automata, dehumanization, and estrangement. The text is able to reveal these topics and many more through

After days in the trenches waiting for the continuous bombing to end, Paul and his comrades seize the opportunity to attack and “become wild beasts”(Remarque 113). Although soldiers enlist in the war to fight for their country, or for the honor of experiencing the massacre of the battlefield, they no longer fight for an idea, but for their lives which makes them fight more viciously and with more vigor. For instance, Paul describes how “if your own father came over with them [the French enemy troops] you would not hesitate to fling a bomb at him”(114). The soldiers are driven by their will to live and therefore are not hesitant to kill even if it were their family on the other side. Furthermore, as Paul hides in a shell-hole, a body falls into the hole and his fear-induced robot-like state of mind leads him to murder by his own hand: “I do not think at all, I make no decision - I strike madly at home, and feel only how the body suddenly convulses, then becomes limp, and collapses. When I recover myself, my hand is sticky and wet”(216). He does not question whether he should or he should not kill the Frenchman; his natural instinct to survive disables him from having any conscious thought. As a consequence of the war, the soldiers develop a natural reflex to assassinate without prior

While Paul guards Russian prisoners, he makes many observations and finally comes to realization that, “It is strange to see these enemies of ours so close up. They have faces that makes one think - honest peasant faces, broad foreheads, broad noses, broad mouths, broad hands, and thick hair... They look as kindly as our own peasants in Friesland”(190). Having a closer look at the prisoners, he notices that they look just like the peasants; he cannot think of them as his enemies due to the fact that, like others, they are feeble and weak- they are human. A similar situation, is the moment in which Paul stabs the Frenchman in the shell-hole and afterwards questions himself, “Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us... Forgive me comrade; how could you be my enemy?”(223). Beforehand, he thought of it as self defense, but, as he spends more time alone with the dying Frenchman, Gérard Duval, he becomes increasingly aware that if they “threw away these rifles and this uniform” he “could be [his] brother just like Kat and Albert”; as he learns more about him, he regards him as a human being like himself (223). In other words, the soldiers are so blinded by their discipline and mentality that it ultimately dehumanizes them to the extent that only intimate moments like this makes them understand that the opposing soldiers are people like