Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

War is a tragedy. We’ve already learned from history that there are no winners in war. We fight for the common good such as money and land to only achieve despair, death, and fear. In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, soldiers’ emotions and natural human instincts, such as the will to survive animalistic mindsets are represented throughout the progression of the novel. If a 2015 film were to be made of, All Quiet on the Western Front, If a modern film were to be made of All Quiet on the Western Front, it would describe how war changes soldiers’ view points towards life and forces them to disconnect their feelings from the reality around them by changing their personality and character.

In Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, the expressions of the soldiers imply that they have developed a focus on survival. Before the war broke out, Paul was an ordinary college student. Just

It hides neither brutality nor insanity. “When a man has seen so many dead he cannot understand any longer why there should be so much anguish over a single individual. So I say rather impatiently… ‘He died immediately. He felt absolutely nothing at all. His face was quite calm’ ” (Remarque 239). At first, Paul falls deeply in thoughts after he sees a dead body, but after facing so many deaths, Paul has become numb. He acts calmly towards the insanity that he faces. This indicates that the soldier becomes less like a normal human being and turns in to more like an animal. Paul mentions during the battle that he describes himself as an animal, and veteran soldiers, who survives many insane battles are experiencing the same. Remarque shows how the brutal battle experience hinders soldiers from thinking straight. The theme of the animal instinct tells and shows that war erodes the humanity of the soldier, cancels their ability to think and feel, and lastly makes them more similar to a beast rather than a human