All Quiet On The Western Front Modernism Analysis

There’s this tween who is getting tired of all the rules his parents set up. He can’t stand the fact that they are such hypocrites. He starts to reject his parents’ rules in order to express himself and begin his journey of self-discovery. The rejection of his tiny box is his rejection to conformity, which is a simplification of Modernism. Modernism is defined by the original and the rebellious. Victorian culture created a plethora of restrictive social constructs that created an atmosphere of structure in all parts of life. The modernist movement was the acceptance of new realities set forth by the Enlightenment, industrial period, and romantic period. The reformation of cultural ideologies, which were brought by these previous movements, created a radical transformation which caused new ways of viewing oneself and the world around them. It was a new outlook that effected music, art, and even math; it touched every part of western culture. The ideologies of

It created a generation of young men and women that lost hope, trust, and optimism. Author Erich Maria Remarque captures the horror of WWI in his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. It shows that the only truths these young men knew were death and friendship. The brutal technology of the war created a massacre that men willingly participated in, “[they would] reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals (4.56)” There was no God left for these men, because in what world can a God allow the carnage that took place? They could look up to no one, for the authority they once trusted was the same authority that sent them to die. World War one created the “lost” generation. The war made modern beliefs more concrete by shattering innocence and promoting rebelliousness because they lost faith in “the old ways.” They began the war, “still crammed full of vague ideas which gave to life, and to the war also an ideal and almost romantic character