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Summary Of All Quiet On The Western Front

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War is one of the worst tragedies that can occur in the world. It causes loss, tragedy, suffering for countless amounts of people. It can have a debilitating effect on any country that participates in it but it can also bring the country together. War may also devastate soldiers, if they return, as many end up with psychological disorders and encounter problems when returning home. In the book, All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, the main themes in the book are based on the tragedies of war. Remarque talks about how war can devastate a country but also how it brings the country together. He also talks about its effect on soldiers as they lives can be crippled by it. Remarque’s novel shows that he detests …show more content…

One example is when Kropp says “Now who's in the right?”(shmoop.com). Kropp asks this question because Paul and his friends are realizing that the German soldiers and French soldiers are both fighting to protect their allies. This question shows how there is no way to tell who is right in the war since both countries are fighting for the same thing. This quote is one of the many in the book that question the justification of war, because there is no objective way to determine which country is …show more content…

“and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us aside… the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin.”(shmoop.com) The quote is in the end and it talks about how Paul’s generation will be the forgotten generation. The people that grow up after them will look upon them as savages that spent most of their lives killing other people. There were also no advances, socially or economically, during this time as many people in the world were forced to go to war. Paul reflects on how his generation will always be remembered as the savages who went to the front lines to fight, and the ones that couldn’t even live when they got back home. Remarque makes a valid point about war destroying the

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In chapter 3, one of Paul’s comrades, Kropp states that war shouldn’t involve millions of uninvolved souls fighting the war for their country. Believing that generals and world leaders should fight against each other once and for all, not yanking people from their substantial lives just to be in a war that chances of survival. “Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers

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A story that tells only of death, sorrow, and the bitter truth about World War One, Erich Remarque’s book, All Quiet On The Western Front, is simply a story of a generation of men who were lost to war. Told through the eyes of a 19 year old boy named Paul Bäumer, as he shows what World War One was, in all of its horrific glory. This ‘glory’ so to speak was a gruesome, traumatizing experience for many of the soldiers that fought in World War One, this experience engraved in their memory, that would continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives. In the epigraph in All Quiet On The Western Front, it tells that “ even though [the soldiers] may have escaped shells, [they] were destroyed by the war”. It is evident to say that even though some soldiers escaped death from the war, they all will be scared from the experiences they had.

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Mental changes were not the only thing Paul and his friends saw throughout the war. There was a change in technology as well. “There are too many new guns, too many aeroplanes (Remarque, pg. 280)”. Paul thinking about the war and situation they were in become more and more depressing. As technology becomes more effective; guns, tanks and even aircraft were even more significant in the

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The book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque gives us a good understanding of what war was like for the people fighting on the front. When reading this book people can get a front hand experience of what it is like being in battle. Remarque wrote this book so well that often times you picture yourself actually with Paul and all his friends. The one thing you specifically get to see is how humanity affects warfare. Humanity affects our decisions in warfare because humans are selfish, have fear, and seek revenge.

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In agreement with Eksteins, Paul’s generation is lost psychologically and bodily. All Quiet on the Western Front is not just the biography of one man as Pfeiler argues but rather the story of many men. Men that had potential to become more than dead soldiers. In the end, a lost generation exists from the dead that will not return home and the living that will return home as different people. Paul’s generation has lost its potential and energy to the war.

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(Remarque 263).” Paul realizes that all war is killing and fighting to survive. He also realizes that killing is easy but also hard emotionally for him and the person he is killing. The last example of the brutality of war is Paul not knowing if you are going to survive through the day. “We have lost all feeling for one another.

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All Quiet on The Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque, is a novel composed after World War One to convey the experiences of German soldiers during this horrific time of fighting. He brought to light many important issues that occur during wars. In this book, three horrors of war that had the largest impact were the lack of sanitation in the trenches, the loss of comrades, and the shock that came from unexpected and ongoing shelling. The lack of sanitation in the trenches caused many diseases, infections, and terrible memories to me made.

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World War I is a gloomy and cruel place; it obliterates the beliefs of fighting for one’s country and transforms the minds of the soldiers. This realization is found in Erich Maria Remarque’s book All Quiet on the Western Front. In the book, a young teen named Paul Baumer and his friends join in the war believing it’s going to make them become important and that fighting for their country is such a great privilege, but once they are in the war, they all realize it’s not the same as what they were told. The young soldiers witness what war is truly about and they reflect on what they were told, knowing the truth makes them see they were told lies, so they are the same which obliterates their trust in the adult world. Remarque employs symbolism,

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As Paul is talking he says, “And men will not understand us – for the generation that grew up before us, though it has passed these years with us here, already had a home and a calling; now it will return to its old occupations, and the war will be forgotten – and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us aside. We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered; – the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin”(Remarque 190). Paul talks about how generation ofter generation with push one aside after the other, and the outcome will always be the same. He also states that they will never be able t return to their old lives. He states that war was the only thing they new and they could never be a normal human in society.

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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.

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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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The author expresses throughout the novel that the war destroys an entire generation’s lives. Paul explains, “[Him and the other young soldiers] had not as yet taken no root. The war swept [them] away. For the older men, it is but an interruption. They are able to think beyond it.[Paul and the other young soldiers], however, have been gripped by it and do not know what the end may be” (20).

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The phrase “We are not youth any longer” suggests that the soldiers lost their innocence due to the trauma they faced throughout the war. Paul Baumer talks about losing his desire to pursue his goals and dreams, indicating a loss of hope. When Paul talks about being cut off from progressing in life, the reader can picture what it was like to be a teenager involved in the first world war and relate to the destructive nature of that war beholds. In addition, Erich Maria Remarque proposes that the experiences of war can cause soldiers to lose their innocence and become disillusioned. Paul Baumer talks to himself saying “We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial--I believe we are lost”.

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All Quiet On The Western Front “The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. ”-Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The future man will not know what character is without books. The future German will be a weak imbecile without the writings of many authors to help guide him into manhood. This quote shows the German ignorance when it comes to things that would undermine “King Hitler”.

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To him, the war represented newfound uncertainty of ridiculous social norms and thus a complete remodeling of those rules and strident challenging of Positivistic thinking. Entering the war, Germany was a confident nation full of “noble” young Nationalists ready to die for their country, but the realities of the war soon dispelled that veil of Positivistic thinking. Prior thinking states that it is noble to die for your country, but Remarque is deeply critical of this belief. There is no reason to die for the cause – he calls for soldiers to break the social norm of unwaveringly fighting for your country. The war dashed the confidence of young soldiers and shocked them into realizing that what they perceived before was not so certain.

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