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All Quiet On The Western Front Psychological Analysis

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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. …show more content…

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

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Esteban Gonzalez Professor Voth Humanities Oct 7, 2014 All Quiet on the Western Front Paper This story wastes no time getting into the hardships and devastation that war has on a young soul. Our protagonist Paul, a young man who has voluntarily joined the war out of amongst many of his friends and classmates have undergone 10 weeks of mentally and physically exhausting both in training and on the front lines.

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Erich Maria Remarque showed disillusionment in very many different ways in his book that he wrote ¨All Quiet On The Western Front. ¨ The theme of ¨All Quiet On The Western Front¨ is to never let your emotions get to you when you need to power through things and need to be strong at the moment. Paul never let his emotions get to him throughout the story. Besides at one point when he went home and saw his mother so sick she was stuck in bed, and she left all the good food that they had for when Paul came back even though Paul knew his mother and sister needed the food more than him.

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I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another” (263). As the war comes to a gruesome end, Paul realizes how the war aged him. And how he went into the war a young man with a hopeful life ahead of him and ended the war as an exposed, aged

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On their way to the front, Paul and his comrades hear the distinct sound of a mortar firing towards them, but the “animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected” (56). Unknowingly, the second company dodge all the shrapnel and escape with their lives. When one’s life is in danger, the primitive instincts are able to make split-second decisions that can save one’s life. While reflecting on his time in the front line, Paul realizes that all the soldiers “turn into animals when we go up to the line, because that is the only thing which brings us through safely” (139). Instead of reflecting on the happier times before the war, Paul can only think about the front line.

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All Quiet on the Western Front is a powerful anti-war novel written by Erich Remarque. Remarque was a young German solider that fought in World War One. Through his experiences, this novel embodies all the hard hitting, raw aspects of the war, from the physical and psychological horrors to who is the real enemy. Remarque has created a universal portrait of men at war. One of the aspects of war that Remarque highlighted was the physical horror’s that the soldiers had to go through.

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In addition, the entire situation that Paul goes through when his father “drags [him] along to a table with a lot of others. ”(p. 166) He sees that they don’t understand what war is like at all, as when “a head-master shakes hands with [him] and says: ‘So you come from the front? What is the spirit like out there? Excellent, eh?

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Throughout the story Paul shows that he cares about his comrades by protecting them from the dangers of war, and he also displays that he will guide them in war. Paul uses his skills of intelligence to guide his team in the trenches and at the front, and he passes on his knowledge and tricks of war to the new recruits. Not many soldiers have all of these qualities, which makes Paul stand out more than his comrades. Even today some men don't express the passion and leadership Paul shows in All Quiet on the Western Front, which brings up the fact that the war needs more men like Paul. To sum up, Paul is an honest and true man who will always be there for his comrades when needed, and he is a man the troops are proud to say is a patriotic

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Remarque displays in All Quiet on the Western Front the toll this takes on the youthful soldiers that have partaken in the war. For since the beginning of time, war has always revolved around killing and destroying. The illustrious novel All Quiet on the Western Front exposes the drastic effects it has on the soldiers. War forces civil good men into doing acts they would never even imagine in their wildest dreams. At one point, Remarque artfully depicts a scene in which Paul is forced to kill another soldier in hand to hand combat.

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For many more reasons it is seen as a unifying experience, but for reasons it is also an alienating experience. For example, Paul and his classmates left home at a young age to fight in the war and they also left school, this did not allow them the same opportunities that women that age would have received or even other men who did not join the war. It also alienated him from his family; he spent many months away from his family, in which his mother became ill and constantly thought of her son fighting for his life on the frontline. It became apparent in the book that he became so distant from the life he once lived when he returned home after he had been on the front. Paul’s relationship with his family was no longer present he mostly had thoughts of the war, which kept his mind preoccupied.

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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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Paul knows that when it comes to the enemy and him, he kills the enemy. There is no time to hesitate or rethink what he is doing. Bottom line is, it's either you or him. However, soldiers on the front don't necessarily think about that. Not knowing when anything is going to happen Paul says, "We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty.

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In 1939, World War II began in Europe between the Allied powers and the Axis powers. The Second World War started as a result of residual anger and frustration from the Germans left over from the Great War. The Great War was the first time advanced technology such as the airplane, machine gun, tank, and submarine, was seen or even used in warfare. From the end of the Great War to the end of World War II, technology had progressed at an extraordinary rate. (ontextualization statement).

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Throughout the ages, wars have wreaked havoc and caused great destruction that lead to the loss of millions of lives. However, wars also have an immensely destructive effect on the individual soldier. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, one is able to see exactly to what extent soldiers suffered during World War 1 as well as the effect that war had on them. In this essay I will explain the effect that war has on young soldiers by referring to the loss of innocence of young soldiers, the disillusionment of the soldiers and the debasement of soldiers to animalistic men. Many soldiers entered World War 1 as innocent young boys, but as they experienced the full effect of the war they consequently lost their innocence.

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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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The war novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque depicts one protagonist, Paul, as he undergoes a psychological transformation. Paul plays a role as a soldier fighting in World War I. His experiences during the war are not episodes the average person would simply experience. Alternatively, his experiences allow him to develop into a more sophisticated individual. Remarque illustrates these metamorphic experiences to expose his theme of the loss of not only people’s lives but also innocence and tranquility that occurs in war.

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