War destroys everything. It destroys countries, states, families, and the soldiers fighting. In his German novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque explores the psychological effects the war had on soldiers. Due to his experiences in World War 1, Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier, suffers mentally and emotionally by becoming unable to connect society, conditioned to death, and dehumanized. Being in the war caused Paul to be unable to connect to society. This emotional disconnection has a destructive impact on a soldier's humanity. Paul, for instance, becomes unable to imagine a future without the war and unable to remember how he felt in the past. Paul demonstrates this when he says, “They talk too much for me. They have worries, aims, desires, that I cannot …show more content…
He shows this when he says, “I would like to be here too and forget about war; but it also repels me, it is so narrow, how can that fill a man’s life” (Remarque 169) When Paul says this, he wishes he could relate to other people. He envies the men that he sees talking, but he also despises them because he does not understand how those little things like having a job can fill a man's life. Paul also says “They are different men here, men I cannot properly understand, whom I envy and despise’’ (Remarque 169). Paul's father, unlike his mother, keeps asking him numerous questions. We see this when Paul says, ‘My mother is the only one who asks no questions. Not so my father. He wants me to tell him about the front; he is curious in a way that I find stupid and distressing’’ (Remarque 165) Paul and his father are not in emotional sync. His father asks numerous questions about the war that is painful for him to answer. Paul finds the war to be a painful experience. He thinks that his father’s patriotism is misguided and that his questions are insensitive. Paul talks to his father, giving him information that will not trigger an emotional