All Quiet On The Western Front Quotes

According to Erich Maria Remarque, “...will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.” Remarque was a soldier in the German army during the events of WW1, enlisted at the age of 18 Remarque’s first hand experience of the war reinforces this quote. This quote is uncovered in All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, a novel in which the life of a soldier named Paul Baumer and his friends who are also soldiers lives are followed as they fight for Germany in WW1. After enlisting in the war at the age of 19, Paul becomes exposed to the harsh realities of the war; causing him to focus on trying to survive. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich

Paul and his friends enlisted at the age of 19, even if they were to survive the war: they wouldn't have anything to come home to. Not only is their past a mystery to them, but now their future has just fallen into an abyss. This saddening reality has taken hold of Paul as he comes to realize that, “The war swept us away. For the others, the older men, it is but an interruption. They are able to think beyond it. We, however, have been gripped by it and do not know what the end may be,” (160). In addition to the trauma these young soldiers hold, they also don't have a plan down the road if they do make it out of the horrors of war because of being pressured to enlist at such a young age for the sake of patriotism. Many philosophies are sprung from the minds of Paul and his friends. As they are discussing the war and what they've been through Paul concludes, “We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces,” (89). The promising lives of young boys were shattered by their enlistment of the war. The experiences that they've been through have seemed to age them many years because of how harsh they are, especially for kids as young as them. They were destroyed and can't escape or stop the

Although memories of home before the war seem as if they would be comforting for the soldiers, they contrast reality and cause the soldiers to lose hope. At an evening benediction Paul is swarmed with his thoughts, “Their stillness is the reason why these memories of former times do not awaken desire so much as the sorrow – a strange, inapprehensible melancholy. Once we had such desires – but they return not. They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us,” (Remarque 120). Paul emphasizes on past memories being gone. The war has destroyed their old life and they must grasp onto the reality that as much as they fight and push, they will never have what they had nor who they truly were before the war. After Paul is the only 1 of the 7 people in his class remaining alive he is granted 14 days of rest due to swallowing a small quantity of gas. While Paul is outside being attacked by his thoughts, he concludes that, “Let the months and years come, they can bring me nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me,” (279). The conclusion that Paul has nothing to work for, nor anything to live for