What Is The Conflict In All Quiet On The Western Front Dehumanize Remarque

In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque, Paul, a 19 year old German soldier in World War 1 struggles when confronted with the realities of war. He finds that war is quite unlike the tales of heroism that he and his young classmates were told at enlistment and instead drives each soldier down to the animalistic core of humanity that is unknown to most. The brutality of death in the book demonstrates Pauls's development into a shell of the man he once was. The death of Gerard Duval, in particular, reveals the soldier's transformation to instinctual living and how that affects a person. Remarque uses dehumanizing diction and internal conflict in Gerad Duval's death scene to convey that the nature of war forces soldiers to degrade

Acting on instinct Paul stabs the soldier and in watching him die Paul begins to spiral. Remarque uses dehumanizing diction when he describes the soldier's death which shows Paul's descent from his past self. Paul describes how the only thing he felt while killing the soldier was how “the body suddenly [convulsed]” and then “ [became] limp” and “[collapsed] (216). The author's use of dehumanizing diction in this passage regarding the French soldier's murder is significant because the connotation of “body” lends itself to an unempathetic tone, enhancing the discussion on the loss of humanity because it demonstrates how Paul doesn't even think of the man he killed as a person; same as he. Remarques description of the person as a “body” makes the reader see the soldier as less than a human, how the war has impacted Paul. During the scene, Paul describes how he “[does] not think” and “make[s] no decision” which shows that the suffering of war has made Paul not consider the enemy as real people (216). The detachment that Paul demonstrates contributes to the idea that the notion of war makes people detach from empathetic views of the soldiers fought