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Summary Of All Quiet On The Western Front

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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 …show more content…

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

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Throughout All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul and some of his comrades wonder why they’re fighting a war that they have no relation to. Furthermore, that doesn’t give them a sabbatical for going home, even though they aspire to go home to their families. In the book, Paul and the other soldiers are taught that the country they are fighting against is their enemy, and whenever they are to approach any of the “enemies” they are to tranquilize them promptly. Just because you are fighting against a country that you believe is atrocious or corrupt, doesn’t mean that an individual on that side is in that manner. Nevertheless, a book should not be judged by a cover.

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At this time, Paul and his friends still saw war as a heroic, and something of which to be proud, so they were naturally willing and enthusiastic to server their fatherland. They soon became aware, however, of the hardships they would have to face through the basic training, and soon after they faced their

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After the traumatic experiences he suffered through, Paul made mental growth in the human aspect. He figured out that “there are still human faces” even in his enemies. Further in this realization he sympathizes with the rest of the wounded soldiers stuck in similar hospitals all over the enemy lines. This identification attaches Paul to the enemy, positively affecting his mental condition. He recognizes that he is not as drastically different as he thought which ultimately changes his outlook on the war.

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Paul is constantly plagued with depression during his time at home and mistakes many sounds as bombardments. No matter how hard he tries, Paul can’t find a way to fit back into the civilian life, his life as a soldier is the only thing he can cling to as a person. As the war goes on the, Germans start lose. The soldier’s conditions continued to declined,

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For example, on page 13 when Paul reflects on how much in the army they pushed them to be stronger and to be like vicious animals he says that it's just what they needed to be able to survive the war, he also says, “We did not break down, but adapted ourselves.” This example shows how physically and mentally tougher he has gotten since starting the war in order to stay alive. Additionally, when Paul kills a man for the first time he is troubled by it at first but then on page 109 he says, “It was only because I had to lie there with him so long," I say. "After all, war is war.” This shows how war has mentally changed him.

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As a soldier fighting in battle, Paul is unable to “think at all” during these desperate situations. His actions of “[striking the soldier]” viciously emphasizes how he had become desensitized, which also reveals his animalistic nature because of how he follows his instincts of “[striking the soldier without thinking]” about the consequences. Paul, like many other soldiers in WWI, was forced to kill more people “[without any thought]” for the preservation of his own life allowing him to develop inhuman behavior. Throughout the war,

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During a soldier's time on the front they are faced with a type of very particular torture called trench warfare, in which a man’s only saving grace is the brotherhood between his fellow soldiers. During a shelling on the front Paul is caught in a perilous position, where

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In the novel, the first most relevant posttraumatic behaviors are demonstrated through Paul's character, by means of him reflecting on his past interests he had before entering the war, in comparison to his attitude after. When Paul returned home he began to experience isolating thoughts: “I imagined leave would be different from this. Indeed, it was different a year ago. It is I, of course, that has changed in the interval. There lies a gulf between that time and today.

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Paul indicates that after becoming a soldier, “they” took everything from him, such as his friends and the life he once had. He has nothing else to give and feels all alone, the life sucked out of him. The book comes to an end with a semi-epilogue, in which Paul has been shot dead. “[Paul’s] face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end has come” (Remarque 296). Paul has gone through many hardships and although his ending wasn’t particularly merry, it seemed as if he was content with dying.

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The excerpt shows a man doing everything natural to protect himself, but ends up feeling terrible about it. If Paul ended up surviving the war, he would not forget this day and feel guilty for the rest of the life he lives; as would any man. Psychological warfare could even cause a man to stop doing and stop fighting after a traumatic experience as John Sheppard is a victim to with his “behavior became erratic, and soon he refused to go on patrol” (Paragraph 3). People in war have moments that just break them, and this was his moment. There is really no good solution to stop someone from having a quitting point because it is all psychological.

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Throughout the novel on way the theme is portrayed is when you would go home from war on leave it was hard for some soldiers to deal with. Being on leave the soldier would eventually have to go back, but they would go home and some could have a hard because some of them could have been through a lot. When soldiers would be on leave they would usually arrive home with their family hugging them and showing them love. In the story Paul is going home on leave to arrive at his mother’s house. When soldier usually go on leave they go to visit the people that are most important to them.

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Moreover, commonly, soldiers are exhilarated to finally go home after long periods of time at the front, and the men dread when they have to return to battle. However, in Paul’s case, he desires to return to the front, rather than staying in his home town and seeing his mother in pain, he yearns to feel numb again. Therefore, Paul is in “agony” because before going on leave, he was hopeless and had no will to live, thus making him a better soldier. Although, after visiting his mother and sister, he has rediscovered a reason to survive, making it harder to go back. Moreover, the word, “comfortless,” illustrates how Paul feels isolated even at home, he feels little comfort where he grew up.

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Paul learns that war obtains the capability to demolish society. War destroys so many innocent people’s lives, whether it kills innocent human beings or shatters the innocence of those who fight in

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“Won’t you join up, Comrades?” (Remarque, 11) said Kantorek, who was Paul’s schoolmaster and had swayed Paul and his friends to go to the District Commandment and volunteer for the war. Paul and his friends were merely adolescents full of ignorance and innocence going straight from high school into an unknown environment full of death, despair, loneliness and hopelessness. They did not know what to expect from war, all they knew was that they were doing this for the good of the country they loved. It can be seen Paul was affected when he experienced the first bombardment and sees his fellow comrade Joseph Behm die during the attack and Paul and his troop are unable to help him.

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The reason that his classmates died is because their teacher talked them into joining war without telling that what to expect. The group of boys didn’t expect to risk their lives so most of them died. Paul is now all alone still fighting in the war. I feel like that it is tough for him because he had lost his closest friends and is still away from home risking his life. “Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm” (296)

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