Theme Of Death In All Quiet On The Western Front

What is death? Instead of asking this question, many people tend to simply avoid it, finding themselves too afraid of what they might come up with. For soldiers, this question has an entirely different meaning. To every soldier, death is a concept needed to be coped with on a daily basis. With death constantly hovering around every one of them, even if each soldier refuses to answer this question, it is still relevant in any war. Being faced with the many different possibilities of how they may encounter death, it is bound to be an obstacle one way or another. In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul is a World War I soldier who is affected by death every day in at least one way. Paul learns about death throughout the

The first time Paul is clearly near dying, he fears for his life but tries to hide his emotions acting as if he doesn’t notice them. He panics, expressing “These first minutes with the mask decide between life and death: is it air-tight?” (68) concealing his worrisome in a single question. As the war continues, Paul learns to be more accepting of death, personally witnessing and coming so close to it. These experiences cause him to lose his emotions, the factor causing his primary anxiety over death. After Paul returns from furlough, his emotions return, replacing his instincts developed throughout the course of the war. Instead of intuitively sheltering from the bombs, he “[has] not heard it coming and [is] terrified… a bomb lies ready to blow [Paul] to pieces” (210). Having already experienced war, Paul is able to overcome his renewed fear of dying and quickly discards the emotions holding him back. Characteristics such as these are Paul’s strongest survival skill, and his extreme malleability make it that much easier. By the end of the war, Paul has developed such a resilience to nearly dying that the thought doesn’t even phase him anymore. Paul is literally cooking pancakes in the middle of a bombing, and his only strategy to avoid being blown to pieces is to “drop down on one knee with the pan and the pancakes, and duck behind the wall of the window. Immediately afterwards [Paul is] up again and going on with the frying”

When bombing or killing people in another trench, Paul barely comprehends the fact that he is taking another man’s life. This dramatically differs from the toll it takes on Paul “have killed with [his] hands, whom [he] can see close at hand, whose death is [his] doing” (221). Spending hours alongside this dead man, Paul begins to realize that all of the soldiers in this war are the same as him, so it isn’t unlikely that he will soon pass as well. It’s also the first instance Paul realizes the men he is fighting are also people, so if he makes it out of the war, he won’t have a life of his own and feels it is proper to replace the one he stole. Later, upon a discussion of this direct murder, Paul realizes death is just another ingredient in the disastrous recipe that is war. Any murders Paul witnesses weighs on him. Even when he was trying to save his close friend Kat, he can only blame himself for this death. Paul is told “’You might have spared yourself that...’ He points to Kat. ‘He is stone dead’” (290) while trying to believe that he is the one who rescued him. Paul attempted to save his best friend, but this ends up costing Kat his life. This situation leaves Paul in a conflicted state because on one hand, Kat is like Paul’s brother, but on the other, the war has hardened Paul to a point of another death having no effect on him. Overall, Paul has