Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

War is one of the most horrific things that the human race is capable of. Such armed conflicts are nothing more than a manifestation of the barbarism that lurks within the human heart. Nonetheless, some beautiful things have emerged from the ashes of war. One such thing is Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. This particular novel covers the struggles of Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier, and his brothers-in-arms during the First World War. As such, Remarque mounts a concerted effort to try and depict the savagery of war accurately. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque uses plot, character development, and setting to illustrate the horrors of the First World War, as well as the effects that they have on

Until his death, he expresses his fascination with the natural world and fauna of all sorts. While the other men like to try and escape the war by means of brothels and drinking, Paul prefers to simply spend time in nature. In fact, he even considers the possibility of nature being able to help him recover mentally after the war, as he says, “But perhaps all this that I think is mere melancholy and dismay, which will fly away as the dust, when I stand once again beneath the poplars and listen to the rustling of their leaves” (Remarque 294). This is an intriguing revelation as up until this point, he had only been nihilistic and pessimistic in regards to attitude on life. Even when his memory of other things has faded, he still remembers the raw beauty of his hometown, as one commentator writes, “Pail remembers his hometown very vividly. He describes a washing house, a tower, bridges, and a chestnut tree. This shows that Paul’s love of nature and family has not completely gone extinct” (Bloom 90). Unfortunately, Paul would not live to see his hometown after the war. It is through simple, yet poignant moments like these that Remarque’s descriptive language and use of setting is best