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Analysis Of All Quiet On The Western Front: The Horrific Penalties Of War

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Horrific Penalties of War Mickie Ann once said, “It’s exhausting to fight a war inside your head every single day.” These words express the fight that many soldier face daily due to the horrific scenes of battle that do not only scar them emotionally, but in one’s mind and somatically. The ongoing fight in one person's head can lead to a long list of problems like mental illness, suicide, and not being focused in battle leading to their ultimate demise. The same struggle to stay away from the mental, physical, and a person's inner feelings of the destructiveness of war are seen in Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front. This novel follows the struggles of Paul Baumer, narrator and protagonist, through World War I. The …show more content…

To begin, Paul realizes a young recruit is starting to have a mental breakdown and Paul describes, “He looks up, pushes the helmet off and like a child creeps under my arms, his head close to my breast”(61). Remarque uses this to compare the young recruit to a small child looking for comfort in Paul’s arms. The soldier is horribly affected by the war's casualties along with the explosions which affect his mental state. The mental destruction of war causes many of the men to break down or go insane. Next, Kat and Paul try to calm down a recruit who is suffering from a nervous breakdown and Paul describes it as, “It is a case of claustrophobia, he feels as though he is suffocating here and wants to get out at any price. If we let him go he would run about everywhere regardless of cover”(109-110). The young soldier with no prior knowledge or training in battle is now being introduced to the mental drawbacks of warfare. The young combatant is reduced to relying on only his instincts, no matter how strong or weak they may be, instead of coping with war by not thinking much of it. The mental catalysis of war cause many to break down emotionally and mentally, and after they are left with an unstable mental state with no say at what they might do next. Ultimately, Paul himself begins hallucinating and imagining many commodities he has seen from the time he started the war till the present, “In whirling confusion my thoughts hum in my brain- I hear the warning voice of my mother, I see the Russians with the flowing beards leaning against the wire fence, I have a bright picture of a canteen with stools, of a cinema in Valenciennes; tormented, terrified, in my imagination I see the grey, implacable muzzle of a rifle which moves noiselessly before me whichever way I try to turn my head”(210). After earlier in this novel Paul being one of the men to comfort

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The book cover of, All Quiet on The Western Front, quotes to be ‘’the greatest war novel of all time’’. The author, Erich Remarque, experiencing war himself; uses the protagonist, Paul Baumer, to express his own background and horrors of World War One. With this, it alternates between his vividly dying memories of the times before the war and the nightmares of trench warfare; although a first person narrative. Erich served in combat during WW1 in Germany and was wounded five times. The last injury was very severe and kept him out of the war.

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This passage shows how the soldiers are emotionally and mentally drained by the horrors of war, and how they feel disconnected from the world they once knew. The

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Also while at home, Paul’s fear and anxiety of the war grows due to all the

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While the wounded man remains faceless, Paul’s decreasing humanity becomes very evident. His humanity only returns once the enemy starts to be

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In his experiences, Paul quickly learns that the patriotism and pride surrounding the war are due to general oblivion

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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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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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Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is the brief overview of German soldier Paul Bäumer’s time spent serving on the western front during World War I. It reveals the decline of German power from the perspective of the soldier. As the story progresses, total German mobilization turns into brutality, rationing, and suffering. From the time between the beginning of the novel to the end, Bäumer loses a countless number of his comrades—as well as other men in his company.

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Erich Maria Remarque was a man who had lived through the terrors of war, serving since he was eighteen. His first-hand experience shines through the text in his famous war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, which tells the life of young Paul Bäumer as he serves during World War 1. The book was, and still is, praised to be universal. The blatant show of brutality, and the characters’ questioning of politics and their own self often reaches into the hearts of the readers, regardless of who or where they are. Brutality and images of war are abundant in this book, giving the story a feeling of reality.

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What were the effects of the war on the soldiers who fought in it? The effects of war on these soldiers’ lives, had a very negative impact. Some of the effects were a lost generation, scarring the soldiers for life, causing them to lose their innocence, and to take other people’s lives. I’m going to synthesize and analyzes these three situations; in All Quiet on the Western the Front the main character is Paul Baumer, the movie Gallipoli the main character is Archie Hamilton, and the poem They. All of these situations are about what one certain soldier experience in World War 1.

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In addition, Paul was injured in the book and goes home and stays with her family while he recovers. He is no longer able to relate to his family, since it is very difficult to think and have emotions and at the same time with much death all around him in the war. There is much talk of how he and his friends do not think about deep things, but just think about eating and silly things. His father and people over all his people want me to tell them stories of war and hate Paul because their experiences are horrible. Paul has just returned to the fight and basically everyone in the book is wounded and dies.

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However, when they were sent out into the midst of the war many of them realised the misconceptions they had and were led to believe. They became disillusioned as they realized that the war was much more brutal and horrific than they had previously believed. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Remarque effectively comments on the horrors of war from Paul’s perspective, especially when Paul comments on injuries the soldiers endure and witness by stating “We see men go on living with the top of their skulls missing; we see soldiers go on running when both their feet have been shot away…Another man…with his guts spilling out over his hands as he holds them in.” (Remarque,

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Human suffering is a major topic in both “All Quiet on the Western Front” and in “Civilization and its Discontents”. Sigmund Freud discuses and presents his theory’s on how people and society work and think while Maria Remarque describes the Life of a German solider in World War One. Freud underlines the reasons why humans suffer and Remarque describes a story where these aspect of suffering are present. Suffering is part of everyone’s lives and is present in society for several of reasons. People, their own body’s and the world around them causes suffering.

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Paul’s reunion with his mother permits him to recognize the impacts war has had on his mind and life. In the seventh chapter, Paul receives 17 days of leave. During this time, he visits his mother as she suffers in ominous distress. After Paul witnesses his mother deteriorating, he aspires to “weep and be comforted too, indeed I am little more than a child” (Remarque 183). Paul feels little, if any, content with his life as a consequence of experiencing a plentiful

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His mind has been programmed to be a soldier ever since he was in combat. In chapter 7 we see how being a soldier has affected Paul when he states the following, “I ought never to have come here. Out there I was indifferent and often hopeless;--I will never be able to be so again. I was a soldier, and now I am nothing but an agony for myself, for my mother, for everything that is so comfortless and without end. I ought never to have come on leave” (Remarque 185).

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