Summary Of All Quiet On The Western Front

The book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque portrayed war as a great hole of death and despair dug by a nation's higher power for the citizens to patriotically march into. All Quiet on the Western Front was written as a 'new-age' war story; The book focused on the horrors of war rather than the romantic veneer other previous writers had plastered on.The War obliterated the distinction between civilian and military targets.'Armies were no longer targeting just their opponents, but the civilian towns that supply them too, killing innocent people. People still today, who are innocent civilians, are being killed for being on the wrong side. Nearly one million people died in the war. Many lives were lost and many families were heartbroken

Wars are being constantly fought and many, many, thousands of people are killed on the front every day. The war created suspicious tendencies between ethnic minorities suspected of disloyalty. People who were not white or American were looked upon differently and were judged as if they were supporting the opponents. Many people have been accused for being undercover and selling secrets. People of other ethnicities today, such as Muslims, are targeted for inspection frequently, especially in airports and border crossings. Remarque wrote this story so that common people would know the true treachery of war and how war is only a device to achieve greatness. War is portrayed as a waste of valuable time and human life that in the end, only corrupts and destroys the minds and lives of the many military families- all because a political power wanted something that somebody else had and couldn't come to a peaceful

"Everyone is so, not only ourselves here--the things that existed before are no longer valid, and one practically knows them no more.distinctions, breeding, education are changed, are almost blotted out and hardly recognizable any longer. Sometimes they give an advantage for profiting by a situation;--but they also bring consequences along with them, in that they arouse prejudices which have to be overcome. It is as though formerly we were coins of different provinces; and now we are melted down, and all bear the same stamp. To rediscover the old distinctions, the metal itself must be tested. First we are soldiers and afterwards, in a strange and shamefaced fashion, individual men as well." The author uses irony to show that the soldiers are no longer men- they are pawns of the German army. They march and shoot and kill, but they are sick in the mind and heavy in the heart, yet there is nothing they can do to help themselves. The irony is that they are no longer human and yet they fight for the completely human at the top of the food chain, so to speak. They are only out there because of the greedy Kaiser and the greedy leaders of other countries. They mindlessly fight now. Individual identities no longer have any real meaning for the soldiers. Rather, they see themselves as coins—de-individualized