All Quiet On The Western Front By Erich Maria Remarque

Veronika kozachek

Mr.Solander

Sophomore Literature and Composition

B Set

7 March 2017

Trauma can lead to dehumanization, losing so many people in your life can make you lose all emotion towards death. In the book All Quiet On The Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, a soldier, Paul Baumer and his friends experience life on the German Western Front during World War I. He joins the army based on nationalism and regrets his decision of fighting for his country because of the realities of war which are harsh. Creating a bond with Kat, an older man, and forming bonds with other soldiers are the only good things about war. Despite the hardships of sudden bombardments, gas attacks, and witnessing so many deaths, they still manage

Let the months and the years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has been borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not” (295). Paul feels alone because all of his friends are now dead. He spent his adulthood building precious bonds with people that understood everything he experienced during the war when he loses that bit of happiness, Paul gives up on life. Life is now meaningless and he would rather be dead than continue living without a purpose. Just a month before the end of World War 1, Paul dies: “He fell fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front” (296). Despite all the effort and pain the soldiers went through, their deaths have been ignored by the living. Paul survived the constant bombings, gas attacks, and shelling, only to be acknowledged as another dead body laying around. Paul builds an identity as a suffering soldier and joy from the company of his friends disappear causing him to long the arrival of