World War I was one of the most barbaric and horrendous events that impacted world history. In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich M. Remarque drives home this brutality through his main character. The theme brutality and carnage is displayed through the presence of death, violence, and the guilt the soldiers must carry within them. The soldiers were permanently scarred by the events they witnessed as death is always around them.. At the end Paul realizes that everything flashes before his eyes after all his friends had died,” I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how people are set against one another…” (Remarque, 263). The main character, Paul reaches the point where he understands that he has no knowledge of the meaning of life. This quote gives a better understanding of the factors of the war, death and fear and the role they play for the comrades. We are reminded the short amount of time most soldier survive, in Paul’s company the initial number of soldiers was one hundred eighty,” Second Company—with difficulty a line, a short line trudges off into the morning. Thirty-two men”(Remarque, 136) . The author mentions how many men are left over to show what the war does to these men that …show more content…
One of the very first times they were at the Front line, Behm, a solider was the first to be injured, “He got hit in the eye during an attack, and we left him dying for dead… and was mad with pain, he failed to keep under cover, and was so shot down before anyone could go and fetch him in”( Remarque 12) . No one risked their own life to go back and help out the injured soldier. The way Behm died was harsh and painful as the author described him being shot. The violence being depicted will sink into the soldier’s