All Quiet On The Western Front Themes

In his magnum opus that closely mirrored his own personal experiences, Erich Maria Remarque had many driving themes, all of which to inform the reader of what war was like, especially for those souls actually experiencing it. Remarque has the themes of the terrors of war, and war's effect on a soldier running throughout the descriptively gruesome novel. Remarque had written the novel to show the citizens and soldiers how terrible fighting for the war really was. The book served its purpose well, and was critically acclaimed, both positively and negatively by many. One of the many themes in All Quiet on the Western Front is the intensity of how terrorizing a war is, especially to those right in the middle of it. Most war novels written around

Remarque uses them to capture the alarming details of how he and his friends felt, and that is why he wrote the novel, simply to inform. I would recommend this book to everyone, but furthermore, I recommend world peace. Throughout All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque throws in a fair amount of symbolism to give support to his themes running through the novels. He gathers together symbols such as the soft airman’s boots, the horses in chapter four, and the butterflies flying around in Germany, and hides them. The reader can easily miss these symbols initially reading through, but Remarque relates them all the way from the themes he is writing about to his boyhood in real life.

One of the most meaningful uses of symbolism in the text are the soft airman's boots, which pass from man to man after each wearer eventually dies in a terrible way. Worn by Kemmerich before his injury that led to his death, they were taken from a British airman before changing hands, which they do twice more as each owner of the boots dies. In all, four men possess the boots; none survives the war. In some parts of the novel, Russian prisoners exchange their boots for bread; dismembered bodies lose not only boots, but the feet and legs they cover. This symbolism supports Remarque's theme of the horrors of war, as people are dying and losing their limbs, showing how

Paul is certain of what he knows, and does include extra words, or unnecessary adjectives. In fact, there is only one adjective in the entire passage of the previous quote: "heedless." Similarly, Paul is heedless of our desire to know more. He doesn't to pour out every thought in his head. We know there must be a lot going on in his mind at this point, but he will not say more than is necessary. He is sparing with his words. The book is also written in chronological order, allowing themes and images to mature and grow, as Remarque adds on to his powerful message sentence by