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All Quiet On The Western Front By Erich Maria Remarque

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“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is the old lie of glory told to sacrifices of war. Erich Maria Remarque, author of the historical fiction All Quiet on the Western Front, tells the tale of Paul Baumer, a German soldier fighting on the western front in World War I. Baumer struggles to realize the purpose he is fighting for, and the justice behind it. Remarque demonstrates how the promised glory presented to soldiers is not worth the sufferings of war in All Quiet on the Western Front.
Soldiers face countless horrors on and away from the battlefield. Corpse rats and rats that feasted on human flesh plagued the trenches and “attacked 2 large cats and a dog, bit them to death and devoured them” (Remarque 103). The starved voracious rats were particularly hungry as they scrambled to devour any scraps of food. This was a constant problem for soldiers, they starved as rats gorged themselves on rations. Soldiers also had to deal with curl decisions on the battlefield, as Kat, a soldier, contemplates whether to “take a revolver and put an end to it” as he observes another crippled soldier (Remarque 72). Kat …show more content…

As Paul returns home he is,”Afraid they [topic of war] might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them” (Remarque 165). Paul feels no pride from his time in war, he instead fears that they may consume him He is afraid of war, he doesn’t want to hear it or be a part of it. Paul questions,”what is there that is sacred to me” as he loses hope in what he once believed. He lost the respect he had for his role models as they failed to fulfill the empty promise of glory and stole away the youth and childish dreams he once had. Paul loses much more than he gains, leaving a hole in him that will always remain empty. Paul and the soldiers lose everything as battle after battle start to whittle them away to shards of their past selves, devoid of joy nor any speck of

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For so long prior to the war, Paul and his friends from school were told that they are the Iron Youth. They were young and innocent with splendid memories. All to be crushed by the war. ‘’Our early life is cut off the moment we came here. ’’[5]

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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.

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“There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.” (C.S. Lewis) In Enrich Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front, a story is told through the eyes of a young soldier named Paul Baumer.

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The author of this anti-war novel set out to portray war as a meaningless and brutal way of life that ruined the life of many of the soldiers. Paul observes the gory and butchered bodies scattered everywhere around the battlefield and “cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round” (Remarque 263). The war has completely altered Baumer’s conception of military conflict with its disastrous extent of violence and slaughter. His description of the dead men who even Paul is left an utterly broken and destroyed man after the war. Furthermore, the horror of war and the animalistic nature it brings out in people is thoroughly addressed in Baumer’s description of the impoverished Russian soldiers, who like them were forced to “unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another” (Remarque 263).

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Because how Paul and his comrades were so young. They started to see the world differently after joining the war to the point, they start to feel saddened in living their life. “We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world, and we had to shoot it to pieces. ”,(pg 87). During the war, Paul loses so much, even control of himself that all he felt in the war was mostly

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“breeding, education are changing…hardly recognizable any longer”(121)this shows how the norm for paul has become the war. Paul has been in the war for so long that when he returns home he feels out of place and later goes on to talk about he his new home is the front line. Towards the end of the book paul goes into great detail about how the war has drastically changed them all and that for those who have survived the war things will never be the same “few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit and most will be bewildered”(131). This depicts how paul and his generation will never fully recover from the war things will never be the same few will be able start over but most were scared and lost at war. Paul and his generation are considered the lost generation because they will never be able to fully recover from the war they will forever live in the war mentality because of PTSD or other mental health

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After the traumatic experiences he suffered through, Paul made mental growth in the human aspect. He figured out that “there are still human faces” even in his enemies. Further in this realization he sympathizes with the rest of the wounded soldiers stuck in similar hospitals all over the enemy lines. This identification attaches Paul to the enemy, positively affecting his mental condition. He recognizes that he is not as drastically different as he thought which ultimately changes his outlook on the war.

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In his experiences, Paul quickly learns that the patriotism and pride surrounding the war are due to general oblivion

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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.

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The ruthless killing brings a toll on the people who will remember that the enemies are men just like them, as Paul does when he instantly regrets his actions, saying that he would not kill him if he could redo the situation. Thus Paul sees value in being a coward, as he thinks it would be more courageous not to kill him than to go by the standards he learns. The German soldiers train as if they were animals acting upon their instincts to do so, which bears similarity to the human nature of war. Paul is at the stage where he lacks any hope for the war and does not see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is in the winter and at the time when Paul is so accustomed to the war that it is just another day for him.

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Erich Maria Remarque was a man who had lived through the terrors of war, serving since he was eighteen. His first-hand experience shines through the text in his famous war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, which tells the life of young Paul Bäumer as he serves during World War 1. The book was, and still is, praised to be universal. The blatant show of brutality, and the characters’ questioning of politics and their own self often reaches into the hearts of the readers, regardless of who or where they are. Brutality and images of war are abundant in this book, giving the story a feeling of reality.

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I was a soldier, and now I am nothing but an agony for myself, for my mother, for everything that is so comfortless and without end. I ought never to have come on leave. " Paul cannot connect with his mother, father, or any of his personal possessions because he realizes that he is not the same person. He has to live in fear of the dangers of war, not of the superficial worries of his past. He has formed a new family, and eventually as all his friends die, he becomes satisfied with his own impending death because he knows that although his entire time has been filled with struggles, he will no longer have to fight and will be at peace.

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Paul tries to associate with his family, but he has lost his innocence through his emotions. War causes soldiers to lose hope and complicates their return to everyday

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Moreover, commonly, soldiers are exhilarated to finally go home after long periods of time at the front, and the men dread when they have to return to battle. However, in Paul’s case, he desires to return to the front, rather than staying in his home town and seeing his mother in pain, he yearns to feel numb again. Therefore, Paul is in “agony” because before going on leave, he was hopeless and had no will to live, thus making him a better soldier. Although, after visiting his mother and sister, he has rediscovered a reason to survive, making it harder to go back. Moreover, the word, “comfortless,” illustrates how Paul feels isolated even at home, he feels little comfort where he grew up.

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Paul learns that war obtains the capability to demolish society. War destroys so many innocent people’s lives, whether it kills innocent human beings or shatters the innocence of those who fight in

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