Traumas In All Quiet On The Western Front

Paul Baumer and the Lost Generation

The traumas of war affects active duty servicepersons and veterans every day. What we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was undiagnosed as an illness during World War I and was thought of as a side effect of being in the war. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, the readers are introduced to Paul Baumer. Paul is an enlisted soldier who joins the war as a young, innocence schoolboy, who falls apart and becomes broken by the war. During the war, Paul encounters many traumatizing events that changes him and when he is released from the war he cannot seem to find himself. Paul and his generation are known as the “Lost Generation” because the war took so much from

We first see loss of innocence in Paul when his good friend Kemmerich dies after his leg is amputated. Seeing such a close friend of his be in so much pain and having him die right in his arms is devastating to Paul and it haunts him for the rest of his life. Death happens every day during war and eventually the soldiers just come immune to it. “We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control ourselves when our glance lights on the form of some other man. We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill” (116). Towards the end of the novel the readers realize that the Paul Baumer that came into the war as an enlisted soldier is not the same Paul Baumer fighting on the front. Experiences such as death can change a person, especially if you experience it every day. Experiencing such loss and such pain, has caused Paul to lose more innocence than the average person does in a lifetime. This causes Paul to mentally shut down and become an outcast that doesn’t know anything else but

Paul was only in war a short time before being confronted by the death of one of his comrades as the result of poor medical care. Paul was deeply affected by the death of his comrade because he thought of him as a brother and someone that he should have protected. Throughout the novel, Paul witnesses similar situations and can’t help but wonder if things would be different if he stayed home. “We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war” (88). The very last vestige of Paul’s youth was lost when he killed the French soldier, Gerard Duval. This action destroys Paul because he finally realizes that war is evil and that all men are essentially fighting for the same thing: their own life and their own