All Quiet On The Western Front Psychological Analysis

Paul Baumer, in the midst of war realized the unimaginable; only soldiers experience the truth of war. All Quiet on The Western Front continues to bear educational relevance for readers today because of Remarque’s ability to convey the dichotomy of a soldier’s reality: the war front which brings the horror of mankind and the home front which brings the never-ending propaganda. If we see war in a simplified form, such as soldiers coming home and their lives improving, then mankind has done a great injustice.
To start off, Paul and the soldiers undergo a major psychological transformation while entering the front. When Paul and his comrades make themselves most vulnerable while lying out barbed wire, they encounter a brutal awakening of reality.

By the animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected. . .we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals”(Remarque 56). The soldiers must transfer the logical parts of their minds; used for school and work, and rely on their animal instinct instead. During this time, Paul begins to describe the soldiers who have been trudging along and immediately flinging themselves onto the ground, like fish out of water, to avoid the shells from killing them. Paul calls this instinct a “second sight”(56), and realizes that this is the only thing that allows a soldiers to pull through in battle. Paul implies that battles are animalistic and even insensitive.
Remarque concludes that a large aspect of the devastation of the war destroys a soldier’s humanity. Furthermore, the war has not only become apart of Pauls life, but is Pauls’s life. When
Paul is on leave from the horrors of the front, he feels isolated from society. “…I find I do not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world”(168). Paul’s further involvement in war separates him from the life which he cherished so greatly before. When Paul returns to the front once