The Impact Of All Quiet On The Western Front

We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers- we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals (Remarque 56). The book, “ All Quiet on The Western Front” , written by Erich Maria Remarque is a book about World War I where soldiers are consistently surrounded by death, fighting, and the bare survival instincts that war brings out in people. World War I effected poetry greatly by the death and bitter pain it brought to people's lives which influenced their writing. In literature war was viewed as an honor and people were excited for it because they believed heroes were made but they never considered the price it would cost. In the poem, “Hope is the thing with feathers,” it says,“ Hope” is the thing with feathers/That

One of the things that happened in World War I that changed poets opinion on war was the mass death that occurred in the war. In total the casualties add up to about 37 million. That is more than half of the soldiers that were mobilized. The total number of deaths shows how much pain there was for so many people when they found their loved ones to be dead. That had to impact a lot of people all over and poets must've seen how badly War had hurt not only soldiers but everyone. In the book, “All Quiet On The Western Front,” one of the soldiers named Paul says, “I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.” This quote means that Paul is a soldier who has not yet lived life yet he has seen more than the average man. He has been forced to see many ways a man can die while suffering an intolerable amount of pain. This quote also shows that poets had no idea about the suffering that war brings and therefore once they knew about this, their writing must've changed in perception to the darkness of war. Another quote from , “ All Quiet On The Western Front,” says, “But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship.