World War I has begun and merely months into the war, pitiful deaths, horrifying injuries, and heartbreaking miseries have occurred. To closely apprehend how impactful fighting in the war is, Erich Maria Remarque, the author of All Quiet on the Western Front, focuses on the transformation of Paul Bäumer, a sensitive, young adult who voluntarily enlists in the German army. Paul engages in war unaware of the ordeal that he will face; and immediately witnesses men blowing into pieces, soldiers holding their own arteries for survival, and gory ugliness of trenches. This rigorous journey is what provides him a new understanding of the world, teaches him how to detach from feelings, and forever alters his thinking. Through the symbolism of books and earth, Remarque communicates how the brutal violence and intense fear that soldiers first-hand …show more content…
Remarque uses Paul’s books to represent memories from his youth to strategically symbolize how soldiers are incapable of returning to their common behavior and mentality due to the ruthless violence of war. After being alienated from home for a prolonged time, Paul has a difficult time adjusting as he is back home on his leave. After being ineffective in connecting with his mother the way he used to, Paul enters his room with hope that noticing his childhood accoutrements will retrieve him to the sensible man he was. Paul strolls around and attempts reminiscing the past as he expresses, “The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of
In the history of modern western civilization, there have been few incidents of war, famine, and other calamities that severely affected the modern European society. The First World War was one such incident which served as a reflection of modern European society in its industrial age, altering mankind’s perception of war into catastrophic levels of carnage and violence. As a transition to modern warfare, the experiences of the Great War were entirely new and unfamiliar. In this anomalous environment, a range of first hand accounts have emerged, detailing the events and experiences of the authors. For instance, both the works of Ernst Junger and Erich Maria Remarque emphasize the frightening and inhumane nature of war to some degree – more explicit in Jünger’s than in Remarque’s – but the sense of glorification, heroism, and nationalism in Jünger’s The Storm of Steel is absent in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead, they are replaced by psychological damage caused by the war – the internalization of loss and pain, coupled with a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness with the past and the future. As such, the accounts of Jünger and Remarque reveal the similar experiences of extreme violence and danger of World War I shared by soldiers but draw from their experiences differing ideologies and perception of war.
Everyone knows what war is. It's a nation taking all of its men, resources, weapons and most of its money and bearing all malignantly towards another nation. War is about death, destruction, disease, loss, pain, suffering and hate. I often think to myself why grown and intelligent individuals cannot resolve matters any better than to take up arms and crawl around, wrestle and fight like animals. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque puts all of these aspects of war into a vivid story which tells the horrors of World War 1 through a soldier's eyes. The idea that he conveys most throughout this book is the idea of destruction, the destruction of bodies, minds and innocence.
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, is a classic anti-war novel about the personal struggles and experiences encountered by a group of young German soldiers as they fight to survive the horrors of World War One. Remarque demonstrates, through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier, how the war destroyed an entire generation of men by making them incapable of reintegrating into society because they could no longer relate to older generations, only to fellow soldiers.
Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel All Quiet on the Western Front is based on World War I; it portrays themes involving suffering, comradeship, chance and dehumanization. The novel is narrated by Paul, a young soldier in the German military, who fights on the western front during The Great War. Like many German soldiers, Paul and his fellow friends join the war after listening to the patriotic language of the older generation and particularly Kantorek, a high school history teacher. After being exposed to unbelievable scenes on the front, Paul and his fellow friends realize that war is not as glorifying and heroic as the older generation has made it sound. Paul and his co-soldiers continuously see horrors of war leading them to become hardened, robot-like objects with one goal: the will to survive.
It’s always interesting to see what other people have to say concerning a book one has read personally. Sometimes it is so disappointing because a story may have meant the world, but the reviewer or the critical writer rips it apart heartlessly. Or, as one may hope, the reviewer enjoyed each bit of the tale as much as was possible. Of course the reality and purpose of a critique is to demonstrate whether the author was successful in his/her goal to create a widely-read piece, a moving piece, or a well written piece to be added to one’s collector items. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, is lucky enough to be on my list of agreement with most critics. This almost ninety-year-old, historical fiction novel has been said to embody impressionist ideals about World War I. Great characterization on three different levels also helps the reader come to a better understanding about the Great War as an event and the ideals people were feeling as a direct result. This tale was so great that it was snatched up by Hollywood’s affluent of the time and produced. I cannot argue the likelihood that Hollywood picked it up because it was well-written. .
Erich Maria Remarque's classic war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, deals with the many ways in which World War I affected people's lives, both the lives of soldiers on the front lines and the lives of people on the homefront. One of the most profound effects the war had was the way it made the soldiers see human life. Constant killing and death became a part of a soldier's daily life, and soldiers fighting on all sides of the war became accustomed to it. The atrocities and frequent deaths that the soldiers dealt with desensitized them to the reality of the vast quantities of people dying daily. The title character of the novel, Paul Bäumer, and his friends experience the devaluation of human life firsthand, and from these experiences they become stronger and learn to live as if every day were their last.
If one looks at propaganda posters from World War I and II, one often sees an ugly portrayal of the enemy leader, stereotypical portrayals of enemy citizens, or heroic depictions of men from one’s home country followed by motivational text. Despite the obvious fallacies that are being used, scare tactics are great methods of promoting nationalism within a country. Propaganda posters and media were widespread during both World Wars, within both opposing powers. To unite the people of a country, it is necessary to invoke a sense of nationalism into them. In All Quiet on the Western Front, the schoolmaster Kantorek drilled into his students’ heads poems and pretty ideas about nationalism and eventually convinced them to enlist in Germany’s army during World War I. Through the course of the book, the protagonist of the novel and his comrades shine candor through the romanticized ideals of war, and this is what makes the book such a powerful antiwar novel. However, to a military leader, opacity is vital in rallying national support. In Hitler’s case, it was vital to hide from the people the horrors of full-scale war. Governments have the right to censor media in order to build a military base, and to bring the country together without internal conflict.
According to the biography of Erich Maria Remarque on cliffsnotes.com, Erich is a German author who was called “ the recording angel of the Great War”. Once he became old enough Erich, then named Erich Paul Remark, was drafted in to the german army as a musketeer. After he completed his training he was transferred to Celle and there he could visit his mom who 9 months later would die from cancer. In 1918 Remarque was no longer in the army due to a medical discharge. Eleven years later in 1929, Erich wrote the war novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front”. Two & half million copies would sell in the first 18 months and today the book is published in 22 languages.
While soldiers are often perceived as glorious heroes in romantic literature, this is not always true as the trauma of fighting in war has many detrimental side effects. In Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front, the story of a young German soldier is told as he adapts to the harsh life of a World War I soldier. Fighting along the Western Front, nineteen year old Paul Baumer and his comrades begin to experience some of the hardest things that war has to offer. Paul’s old self gradually begins to deteriorate as he is awakened to the harsh reality of World War 1, depriving him from his childhood, numbing all normal human emotions and distancing the future, reducing the quality of his life. At the age of nineteen, Paul naively enlists in World War 1, blind to the fact he has now taken away his own childhood.
Paul and his comrades face many mental and emotional difficulties throughout the war, and they overcome their feelings by coming to terms with their death. In chapter 2, Paul’s reaction to Kemmerich’s death shows how death in war is hard on soldiers. When Paul sees Kemmerich dying, his thoughts start to take over his consciousness: “My thoughts become confused. This atmosphere of carbolic and gangrene clogs the lungs, it is a thick gruel, it suffocates” (Remarque, pg. 29). Here, Paul reveals his anxiety about death and war. In this moment he realizes his friend is dying from the wounds of war. The war hits home for him; he begins to realize this could happen to him. After Kemmerich’s death Paul wishes to “drop down and never rise up again” so that he doesn’t have to face his feelings (Remarque, pg.
During the last year of World War I, Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier, envisions his future after the war when he "Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing anymore. I am so alone and so without hope that I can confront them without fear"( Remarque 295). These final despondent thoughts that occurred after Bäumer’s death, is manifested in All Quiet on the Western Front, a war novel written by German soldier, Erich Maria Remarque. Remarque explicates the German soldiers’ physical and psychological stress throughout the war, and the disengagement from pre-war life felt by many of these comrades upon returning to their neighborhood from the trenches, where they faced drenching conditions and abundance
Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that takes you through the life of a soldier in World War I. Remarque is accurately able to portray the episodes soldiers go through. All Quiet on the Western Front shows the change in attitudes of the men before and during the war. This novel is able to show the great change war has evolved to be. From lining your men up and charging in the eighteenth century, to digging and “living” in the trenches with rapid-fire machine guns, bombs, and flame-throwers being exposed in your trench a short five meters away. Remarque makes one actually feel the fun and then the tragedy of warfare. At the beginning of the novel Remarque gives you nationalist feelings through pride of Paul and the rest of the boys. However at the end of the war Remarque shows how pointless war really is. This is felt when everyone starts to die as the war progresses.
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.
World War I had a great effect on the lives of Paul Baumer and the young men of his generation. These boys’ lives were dramatically changed by the war, and “even though they may have escaped its shells, [they] were destroyed by the war” (preface). In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer and the rest of his generation feel separated from the other men, lose their innocence, and experience comradeship as a result of the war.
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.