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In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer, a German soldier, along with his comrades, suffer through traumatic events and devastating losses as they struggle to survive the violent maelstrom of the Great War. As they fight, the grave circumstances and decimated landscapes they witness has a haunting effect on them. In order to cope with this drastic setting, they resort to dehumanization. By seeing their enemies as less than human, the war conditions them to kill, relying solely on instinct alone. They distance themselves from their comrades by dehumanizing them, making it easier to cope with their deaths. To maintain their sanity and face the horrors of the war, Paul and his company must suppress their humanity. Soldiers, using their instinct alone, must set aside their humanity to survive during their time on the battlefield. When Paul and his friends reach the battlefront, they find that they “become on the instant human animals” (56). Because of their desire to survive, they must surrender their morals and beliefs to their primal instinct. In this instance, they become savage beasts, making it easier to kill on the field. Their former selves effectively die in the war, becoming “insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill” (116). The war takes a toll on …show more content…
By abandoning their humanity and relying completely on their instinct for survival, they are left with a sense of apathy. Dehumanizing their enemies enables them to murder with ease, and even with a sense of pride in their work. Without suppressing their humanity and abandoning their morals, their mental health would have sustained significant damage from their traumatic experiences. Devaluing the lives of their enemies and their emotions allows soldiers to cope with the tragic horrors they face on the battlefield every
All Quiet On the Western Front By 1929, the example of Remarque's altered text of All Quiet on the Western Front, as Hemingway pointed out, gave further proof of greater intolerance in America than in England. Aldington's experience with Death of a Hero, however, would prove the exception. This war novel is actually an anti-war novel, tracing the lives and losses of a young group of soldiers caught in the brutality of World War I. Gripping, realistic, and searing with a vision inconsistent with post-war German character, this book caused Remarque to receive death threats and to leave Germany to live and work in Hollywood. (All Quiet on the Western Front) The differences between the English and American versions of Remarque's novel are instructive. Remarque originally had trouble publishing Im Westen nichts Neues in Berlin. It was rejected by the prominent and conservative Fischer Verlag before being accepted by the liberal house of Ullstein Verlag. It was the grim reality of Paul Baumer's victimization in the war, the disillusioned antiwar sentiments and pacifism of the characters that proved problematic for German leftists and nationalists alike, not the matter-of-fact language of the soldiers. But A. W. Wheen's translation for Putnam's English edition, retaining such words as shit, fart, piss-a-bed, turd, and masturbate had to be converted for Little, Brown's American edition. Skit became swine, piss-a-bed became wet-a-bed, cow-skit became cow dung, and the comical simile like a fart on a curtain pole became like a wild boar. Masturbate and turd dropped out of the American edition completely. (Firda, Richard Arthur 1993) Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they ...
In Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, characters such as Paul and his friends become indifferent to shocking elements of war through constant exposure to them. For example, the characters are unconcerned about the dangers of the front because they are accustomed to being on the front. In another instance, Paul’s friends show no emotions when they witness snipers killing enemy soldiers. Also, Kat finds the unusual effects of mortar shells amusing. These examples prove that through war, characters of the book have become indifferent to things that they would normally find shocking.
Life for the soldiers in the beginning is a dramatic one as they are ordered up to the frontline to wire fences. The frontline makes Paul feel immediately different as described here. "As if something is inside us, in our blood, has been switched on." The front makes Paul more aware and switched on as if his senses and reactions are sharpened. I think Paul and his friends are frightened when they are near the front line. After they wire the fences and they are heading to the barracks their group start to be fired at by the enemy. They manage to get through the shelling unscathed but they hear a horse that has been shot. The horse makes a terrible noise of anguish and is in terrible pain and it has been shot as the author describes here. "The belly of one of the horses has been ripped open and it guts are trailing out." This shows that there are not just human casualties of war; the innocent lives of animals can be affected as much as humans who fight in wars. Detering-one soldier in Pauls group-says." It is the most despicable thing of all to drag animals into a war." I agree with Detering, as animals had no choice about going to war. On the way back to the trucks that would take them back to the barracks Paul Baumers company are hit again by heavy shelling and they have to take cover in a military graveyard. The shells blow huge holes in the graveyard and create large...
German propaganda spread throughout Germany like wildfire. The glory and enthusiasm of going to war to fight for your country aims and ideals was the mood set. Everyone wanted to be a hero, and if you did not want to fight than you would be thought of as a coward,.. “ because at the time even one’s parents were ready with the word ‘Coward’..” (Remarque p.11). The elders glorified war by writing and talking about it, expressing that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing. The soldiers saw the hideous wounds and dying men and distinguishing the false from the true, realizing that there is nothing of their world left. That is how Paul Baumer felt when he was in the Catholic hospital with his friend and comrade Albert Kropp. Looking around at all the wounded solders he saw what a waste war was. Up until this war, nobody had ever seen such a destructive war, partly due to all the advanced technology, and therefore none of the great world powers knew what they were getting themselves into. “ To shed one’s blood for the fatherland is not difficult it is enveloped in romantic heroism” (McKay/Hill/Bucker 904) as explained by a German soldier who volunteered for the front. The fact that the whole country of Germany was patriotic, energetic, and unified towards the war effort glorified it even that much more. Who would not want to fight for their homeland at that time? “ We were still crammed full of vague ideas which gave to life, and to the war also an ideal and almost romantic character” (Remarque 21). Once these combatants experienced the real life threats such as poisonous gasses, rapid machine gun fire and a constant flurry of explosive shells, these were propelled into a New World of killing or being killed. They are fighting with animal like instincts and all their proper manners that they are raised with vanish.
In Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer paints a vivid picture of the horrors of war. Many of these horrors are purely physical, such as the constant bombardments and gunshots whizzing overhead. But along with these physical horrors come mental and emotional ones. Chief among these is the "war mindset" that the soldier must acquire in order to survive war. The essence of this mindset is the total disregard for human life, and with it, human beliefs and customs. War requires a suspension of these standard human beliefs and customs. Paul outwardly appears to have acquired this "war mindset," but he does not internalize it and thus eventually dies.
War can destroy a young man mentally and physically. One might say that nothing good comes out of war, but in Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, there is one positive characteristic: comradeship. Paul and his friends give Himmelstoss a beating in which he deserves due to his training tactics. This starts the brotherhood of this tiny group. As explosions and gunfire sound off a young recruit in his first battle is gun-shy and seeks reassurance in Paul's chest and arms, and Paul gently tells him that he will get used to it. The relationship between Paul and Kat is only found during war, in which nothing can break them apart. The comradeship between soldiers at war is what keeps them alive, that being the only good quality to come out of war.
The story of several schoolmates who symbolize a generation destroyed by the dehumanisation of the First World War, All Quiet on the Western Front tells of the men who died, and the tragically changed lives of those who survived. Remarque follows the story of Paul Bäumer, a young infantryman, from his last days of school to his death three years later. Whereas the journey motif is typically used to portray a positive character development, that of Paul is deliberately the opposite. In what has been dubbed the greatest antiwar novel of all time, Remarque depicts the way in which Paul is snatched away from humanity by the brutality of war. However while Paul and his comrades become separated from society, and begin to rely on their basic survival instincts, in their own surroundings they still show humane qualities such as compassion, camaraderie, support and remorse. Paul’s transformation from human to soldier begins in training camp, and is reinforced by the trauma at the front. His return home further alienates him from society, and Paul begins to feel safe at the front with his friends. Nonetheless throughout the novel suffering and mortality bare Paul’s true side, and he momentarily regains his former self. Bäumer, the German word for tree, is an early indication that Paul must remain firmly rooted in reality to survive the brutality of war.
All our senses are assaulted: we see newly dead soldiers and long-dead corpses tossed up together in a cemetery (Chapter 4); we hear the unearthly screaming of the wounded horses (Chapter 4); we see and smell three layers of bodies, swelling up and belching gases, dumped into a huge shell hole (Chapter 6); and we can almost touch the naked bodies hanging in trees and the limbs lying around the battlefield (Chapter 9). The crying of the horses is especially terrible. Horses have nothing to do with making war. Their bodies gleam beautifully as they parade along--until the shells strike them. To Paul, their dying cries represent all of nature accusing Man, the great destroyer.
Many of Remarque’s ideas expressed in All Quiet on the Western Front were not completely new. Remarque emphasized things that portrayed the magnitude of issues soldiers face, and how the physical body and senses affects their emotional well-being. The ideas in All Quiet in the Western Front of not knowing the difference between sleep and death, seeing gruesome sights of people, and frustration towards people who cannot sympathize with soldiers, are also shown in Siegfried Sassoon’s “The Dug-Out”, Giuseppe Ungaretti’s “Vigil”, and Sassoon's’ “Suicide in the Trenches”.
Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the greatest war novels of all time. It is a story, not of Germans, but of men, who even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war. The entire purpose of this novel is to illustrate the vivid horror and raw nature of war and to change the popular belief that war has an idealistic and romantic character. The story centers on Paul Baümer, who enlists in the German army with glowing enthusiasm. In the course of war, though, he is consumed by it and in the end is "weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope" (Remarque page #).
Paul and his friends move back and forth between their camp and the front lines and for Paul almost nothing else exists but the game of war and the ground it is played on. life is extremely horrible for the men due to constant bombing lasting for days and rations of mouldy bread, these conditions show the literal effects on the soldiers. There are also rats living with them in the trenches that crawl over them in the night and the soldiers are forced to kill them like they are the enemy. Living in the trenches at the front surrounded by constant shelling and bombing means that the men live with a lot of anxiety and fear, causing some recruits to become mentally unstable. In the book some of the newer soldiers attempt suicide, showing that the war has damaged them to the point of them not caring for their lives
Paul and his company were once aspiring youth just graduating school thinking about having a wonderful life. Sometimes things don’t always play out the way you want. The effects of war on a soldier is another big theme in the novel. Paul describes how they have changed and how death doesn’t affect them anymore. “We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defen...
Imagine being in an ongoing battle where friends and others are dying. All that is heard are bullets being shot, it smells like gas is near, and hearts race as the times goes by. This is similar to what war is like. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator, Paul Baumer, and his friends encounter the ideals of suffering, death, pain, and despair. There is a huge change in these men; at the beginning of the novel they are enthusiastic about going into the war. After they see what war is really like, they do not feel the same way about it. During the war the men experience many feelings especially the loss of loved ones. These feelings are shown through their first experience at training camp, during the actual battles, and in the hospital.
Throughout their lives, people must deal with the horrific and violent side of humanity. The side of humanity is shown through the act of war. This is shown in Erich Remarque’s novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front”. War is by far the most horrible thing that the human race has to go through. The participants in the war suffer irreversible damage by the atrocities they witness and the things they go through.
All Quiet on the Western Front is the story of Paul Baumer’s service as a soldier in the German army during World War I. Paul and his classmates enlist together, share experiences together, grow together, share disillusionment over the loss of their youth, and the friends even experience the horrors of death-- together. Though the book is a novel, it gives the reader insights into the realities of war. In this genre, the author is free to develop the characters in a way that brings the reader into the life of Paul Baumer and his comrades. The novel frees the author from recounting only cold, sterile facts. This approach allows the reader to experience what might have been only irrelevant facts if presented in a textbook.