Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front
War. It is something people never fully understand, like the effects it has on the brave souls who partake in it and witnessed the gruesome truth of war. In Erich Maria Remarque’s landmark war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front illustrates how the war was hell on the soldiers in ww1. The protagonist, Paul Baumer, is a fort soldier fighting for the German army; he shares a first-hand account of the war’s atrocities on himself and comrades in arms. In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque the author reveals the innocent yet destructive nature of war between the main characters of the story, Paul and his relationship to the first industrialized world war between
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Paul’s last name is ironic for it means “Tree” in German, some tall and strong. At the very end of the book, there is a small paragraph saying that in October 1918, Paul dies “forlorn yet strangely at peace with his destiny” (Eksteins). It’s the way he dies that is so ironic for when he died he fell straight, face first, to the ground like a tree would. In addition to Paul’s death, when he dies it is on a calm day. Throughout the story, Paul survives some of the worst experiences such as bombardments, gun fights, and seeing fellow soldier die next to you, and he survives through it. Yet, he dies on the calm day with no fighting going on and he dies seemingly from exhaustion. Finally, there’s a moment in the book where the soldiers take cover in a graveyard after suffering losses from bombardment. This is ironic because the soldiers take cover to escape death in a place commonly associated with death. Many of the graves where many graves were overturned and used as cover from shelling and there was a feeling almost “[A]s Death himself lies in it too” (Ware). It’s almost as if those buried moved out of the way to make room for the newly dead people. Through this anti-war novel. Remarque was able to illustrate the horrors of war with his use of literary