Summary Of All Quiet On The Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque. He was a German veteran of world war I and describes war’s extreme physical and mental stress on soldiers, and the effects of detachment from civilian life on them. The soldiers are in horrible conditions for most of the book and they witness many men die. The story follows a young soldier named Paul Baumer and tells that even though some survived the war they were destroyed by it mentally.

Paul Baumer and his friends were members of 2nd company, a unit of German soldiers fighting during world war 1. The story starts with the company resting after being relieved from the front lines. The company had spent the past two weeks in constant battle and after a heavy attack on the

Their training was rigorous banded them together even though their commander was trying to tear them apart. Their commander, Himmlestoss, treated them so badly that they beat him one night while he was drunk. They often think of their old school teacher, Kantorek, who would give long speeches about patriotism, why they should, and how they were the era’s “iron youth”. They would laugh. Patriotism doesn’t exist on the front lines, and they are “iron” because they are scared from what they have seen. People like Kantorek disgust them now. They have big ideas but make the lower class do the work.

As Paul and the others have to go to the front and lay barbed wire, he tells how they change. There is no big change, but the men’s faces change, their senses heighten, and they become melancholy. They all understand that they could die any minute. There are such unsanitary conditions on the front, all the soldiers have lice, food is scarce, and what they get isn’t very good. Meals do come for them, that’s all it takes to make the men content. That's all they worry about, ever since they got to the front only primitive desires survive. Paul often think of this and how the war has stolen his youth. As the powerful men declare war none think of the young men who will lose any chance of experiencing youthful innocence. At one point Paul received leave to go home. He arrived to find that his mother is ill with cancer. 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,