Summary Of All Quiet On The Western Front

The novel All Quiet on the Western Front demonstrates a theme, war can be physically and psychologically harming. In this book it constantly shows examples of characters being harmed physically, but they also get mentally torn apart. An example of mental pain is when Paul goes on leave to visit home. He experienced severe PTSD and felt like he didn't belong there anymore because of his experiences. “I find I do not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world” (Remarque 168). While everyone keeps on going, forgetting about the war, he goes on with constant reminders everywhere. While there is psychological harm, physical harm occurs multiple times throughout the book. “Now I see that he is tormenting me, he is merely raking up the wound and looking up surreptitiously at me over his glasses” (Remarque 243). This instance is when Paul is getting pieces of shell picked out of him. The war causes men to

In the beginning he is just a schoolboy who enlisted in the war. By the end though, the war has changed him into a man who has seen too much for his own good. While at war Paul develops PTSD. “I was a soldier, and now I am nothing but an agony for myself, for my mother, for everything so comfortless and without end. I ought never to have come on leave” (Remarque 185). Paul is starting to realize he can never escape the war, and going home only made this realization come quicker. Paul also suppresses his feelings in order to get through the war. The only time he really lets it out is when someone of importance dies. “We want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they might be ornamental enough in peacetime, would be out of place here” (Remarque 139). Paul states that feelings are out of place at war and are more of a burden in these situations. This is how Paul developed throughout the