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War narrative writing
An essay on character development
Stories of war narrative writing
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Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front
“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another (263).” Powerful changes result from horrifying experiences. Paul Baumer, the protagonists of Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front utters these words signifying the loss of his humanity and the reduction to a numbed creature, devoid of emotion. Paul’s character originates in the novel as a young adult, out for an adventure, and eager to serve his country. He never realizes the terrible pressures that war imposes on soldiers, and at the conclusion of the book the empty shell resembling Paul stands testament to this. Not only does Paul lose himself throughout the course of the war, but he loses each of his 20 classmates who volunteered with him, further emphasizing the terrible consequences of warfare. The heavy psychological demands of life in the trenches and the harsh reality of war strip Paul of his humanity and leave him with a body devoid of all sentiment and feeling.
Remarque introduces Paul at the beginning of the novel as a veteran. We never see his first days in combat, but we do see comparable experiences in the battles of the replacement soldiers. Paul comments in the beginning on the secrets to staying alive in the trenches by learning the skill of differentiating between the different kinds of shells by the sounds that they make. He can distinguish between gas shells, trench mortars, and long range artillery by saying, “That was a twelve-inch, you can tell by the report. Now you’ll hear the burst (52).” and imparts this key knowledge to the recruits. These actions exemplify Paul’s character at the beginning of the novel. He cares about the other soldiers and uses his veteran’s status as a source of knowledge for the volunteers. Paul has light humor in regards to a soldier’s life as well. This quote exhibits Paul’s carefree attitude toward his situation,
The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and intestines. Three-quarters of his vocabulary is derived from these regions, and they give an intimate flavour to expressions of his greatest joy as well as of his deepest indignati...
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...t have to infer his change, Paul states for the reader, and he is right.
Throughout All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer undergoes drastic changes as he realizes the full extent in which the war has changed his life. Paul starts out the book as a veteran, yet he is never the less changed by the war that shook the world. Paul realizes the full extent of his transformation when he is forced to kill a Frenchman just because the Frenchman tried to find shelter. Paul Baumer changed by a subject too messy to be discussed in proper decorum. T.S. Matthews says, “This is a book about something that nobody likes to talk of too much. It is about what happens to men in war. It has nothing whatever to do with the politeness, the nobilities, or any of the sometimes pretty and sometimes ridiculous notions to which the world has once again settled down (130).” Paul is changed by a war directed by people who had no idea of the horrors that would change the men of their country. Paul lived in brotherhood and died in anonymity. His life wasted by a political war, and uncaring generals. Only by accepting his transformation can Paul be at peace with his life and live in peace in death.
So said German World War I Veteran, Erich Maria Remarque, in his book All Quiet on The Western Front. War is an extremely complex and corrupt affair that many can’t even begin to comprehend. This juxtaposing quote perfectly depicts how Remarque’s detailed and personal novel allows the reader inside the mind of a soldier, giving unique insight on war. The novel follows the events narrator Paul Bäumer encounters whilst at war and shows Bäumer’s reflective thoughts on these events. This form of narration is a large part of what makes the book so effective. The book conveys many strong messages about war but the most prominent ones in the story line are:
... While the corpse represents each of these concepts, in the end it is Paul’s faith – his own luck – that saves his life once again. What, upon first glance, appears to be a hectic and confused account of a destructive shelling becomes a wonderfully connected verse of one soldier’s struggle to preserve himself against all odds. What more can be said about Paul?
Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front gives you detail and insight into the long, destructive “Great War”. Quickly, romantic illusions about combat are disintegrate. Enthusiastic teenage boys convinced to fight for their country by their patriotic teachers came back feeling part of a lost generation . This novel teaches us what a terrifying and painful experience World War I was for those fighting in the trenches on the front.
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.
In his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque depicts a transition in the nature of reality from idealism to realism and naturalism. This transition takes place at different parts of his novel, and to different degrees. At the beginning of the novel, on page 12, we see through Paul B„umer's comments regarding Kantorek that he and his friends were taught in school of the "glory" of war. B„umer stated, ".they taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing." Since B„umer and his friends respected and trusted Kantorek, they hardly gave the prospect of not going into war a second glance. On pages 84-85, the conversation between B„umer, Mller, and Kropp reveals that practically everything they were taught in school is of no use to them anymore. All of the knowledge they had acquired via their studies was not applicable in the trenches. Instead of having to know, for instance, "How many inhabitants has Melbourne?", they have to know how to light a cigarette in pouring rain. On page 263, Paul comments, "I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow." This sums up his entire disposition towards himself at the end of the novel. He was taken into the army, willfully, but still taken, in the prime of his youth, to a place where death and destruction were facts of life. Remarque depicts a transition in the value systems of Paul and his comrades.
Warfare is a dreadful and horrifying experience that shows the violent side of humanity. War is the worst thing a human being can go through. The recruits suffer inevitable damage by the ordeals they encounter and the ruff experiences they take part in. War changes a person, from a nice boy into a stone-cold killing machine. Erich Maria Remarque, the expressive German author, shows the scenes of war in his novel All Quiet on the Western Front. In the novel, Paul Bäumer, the protagonist, journeys to war, like his fellow classmates from high school, and fights for his country. He watches slowly as each one of his friends die until he is the only one left. At the end, Paul dies on the front treating death as a friend; he is "glad the end has come" (296). Paul experiences the horror of war through the rough training, the murderous front, and the reoccurring flashbacks.
Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel set in World War I, centers around the changes wrought by the war on one young German soldier. During his time in the war, Remarque's protagonist, Paul Baumer, changes from a rather innocent Romantic to a hardened and somewhat caustic veteran. More importantly, during the course of this metamorphosis, Baumer disaffiliates himself from those societal icons-parents, elders, school, religion-that had been the foundation of his pre-enlistment days. This rejection comes about as a result of Baumer's realization that the pre-enlistment society simply does not understand the reality of the Great War. His new society, then, becomes the Company, his fellow trench soldiers, because that is a group which does understand the truth as Baumer has experienced it.
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 #).
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.
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.
Remarque opens this passage by introducing “the juniper and the birch trees on the moor” as Paul practices drill at the training camp (188). Detailing his daily routine at the camp, he states that "it is bearable if one expects nothing better" (187). That is to say that only someone inexperienced with these drills, and war, would expect even a small amount of leniency. Especially at the camp where the notoriously cruel Himmelstoss "gave Tjaden his education" no soldier would expect a good time (187). Paul performs his drills wherein he must "advanced at a run" and "fling down" in a seemingly intensive nature (187). In the midst of this intensity, Paul focuses his energy onto a more peaceful. He watches as his breath moves "the flowers and the heather too and fro" (188). Despite being midway through a drill, Paul finds time to admire the delicacy of the gentle flowers, moved by the tension in his breath.
All Quiet on the Western Front follows the narration of a young German soldier named Paul Bäumer. It would follow his experiences and memories from civilian life to the realities of the frontline during World War I. Enlisting in the army
Paul believes that he was tricked into joining the army and fighting in the war. This makes him very bitter towards the people who lied to him. This is why he lost his respect and trust towards the society. Teachers and parents were the big catalysts for the ki...
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.