Trauma In All Quiet On The Western Front

Throughout World War I, 18 million people died, making it one of the most deadly conflicts in human history. To put that number into perspective, a little more than 18 million people live in the country of Chile today. Imagine the outrage that would occur if everyone in Chile was killed. Now, there is an understanding about the number of people, soldiers and civilians, that were killed in atrocious ways during World War I. World War I was one of the first wars where modern technology and modern warfare was used effectively, enabling the death toll to be much higher than in wars during the 19th century and before. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, World War I is shown from a German soldier’s perspective. This

Remarque’s character Paul points out, “We have lost all feeling for one another, we can hardly control ourselves when our glance lights on the form of another man. We are insensitive dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are able to run and kill” (116). Paul is so used to trauma at this point in the war, that he has lost the ability to feel when his friends or other men in his platoon die or suffer a major injury. One smaller reason that the soldiers were traumatized was the screaming of the commanding officer, which could lead the soldiers to quiet obedience, and the breaking of their spirit. Throughout World War I, soldiers on both sides lost the ability to feel regular human emotions because they are surrounded by environments that are filled with traumatic events such as death, injury, and all other horrific events that occur during war. Due to the brutality of what the men have experienced, they become more hardened to traumatic events, which will lead to hardships after the war is

In Remarque’s text, when Paul is on leave, he narrates, “I have been startled a couple of times in the street by the screaming of the tramcars which resembles the shriek of a shell coming straight for one” (165). Paul is used to being on the front and hearing shells come at him constantly, so when he is home, hearing the tramcar makes him have PTSD, and think that he is at the front. Experiences that are very normal to most people, such as hearing a tramcar running down the street, can be traumatizing to soldiers. Most citizens who have not been to war, cannot understand how these soldiers feel because these citizens usually do not have an experience of PTSD to help them empathize. Even though the war made soldiers more hardened in regard to certain emotions, it also made them more sensitive in regard to experiences that are part of everyday life because they triggered memories of the