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All quiet on the western front analysis essay
All quiet on the western front analysis essay
All quiet on the western front analysis essay
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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. Soon after, Remarque describes Paul’s admiration of the "fine sand" which seems to him, to be neatly composed of "millions of the tiniest pebbles" (188). Paul admires these pebbles and observes them to be "as clear as if they had been made in a laboratory" (188). Whereas the normal eye would see a pile of sand granules, Paul notices each pebble individually, despite the little individuality they actually possess. Paul's fascination with the sand continues and he is surprised by what comes next. As he digs his hands through the sand he reveals that it is "strangely inviting to dig one's hands into" (188). Although Paul as narrator often uses first person, he reframes at this moment and chooses a word less personal. Using the highly less personal "one" as opposed to “my” or “your”, Paul indicates that he does not identify with the ... ... middle of paper ... ...eed only to follow command. As Paul witnessed, the life and youth was stripped away from them, changing their entire character. However, these soldiers stand united in the end. Facing the sky above them, which controls them entirely, the soldiers shares a commonality, a weakness and a strength in one. As much as the brutality of the war deteriorated their will power, they prevailed and fought in order to live. Although they fought each other, again it was not personal. Their intense discipline led them to follow orders blindly. They were once innocent and “gleaming white", but too soon they became stained by each of their experiences in war, begging them to question “What am I fighting for?” (188). This passage serves to foreshadow Paul's realization in chapter 9, that war is fought for those in power and that, ultimately, every soldier is left with the same scars.
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 ...
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 were 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 starts to be fired at by the enemy. They manage to get through the shell unscathed, but they hear a horse that has been shot.
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.
Society wants soldiers to believe that war is glorious. But it is not. Society wants soldiers to believe war is an adventure. But it is not. Society wants soldiers to believe that our enemy is the only enemy, that our cause is the only cause, that our people are the only people. But there are many enemies, many causes and many peoples. According to Paul, all these causes are equally ignoble, and none of these enemies are worthy of being slaughtered en masse. For Paul, as for many people, past, present, and future, war is simply unacceptable, and nothing can repair the damage it does.
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.
During training Paul and his schoolmates come across Colonel Himmelstoss who teaches them the survival skills needed in the front. During training Himmelstoss tortures the recruits but is indirectly teaching them to become hard, pitiless, vicious, and tough soldiers. Althou...
The older generation had an artificial illusion of what war is and although Paul's generation, the soldiers, loved their country, they were forced to distinguish reality from illusion. Because of this disti...
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.
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
Even when the novel begins, all Paul has known is death, horror, fear, distress, and despair. He describes the other soldiers in his company, including his German school mates with whom he enlisted after constant lecturing from their school master, Kantorek. The pressures of nationalism and bravery had forced even the most reluctant students to enlist. However weeks of essential training caused any appeal the military may have held for them to be lost. Corporal Himmelstoss, the boys’ instructor, callously victimizes them with constant bed remaking, sweeping snow, softening stiff boot leather and crawling through the mud. While this seems to be somewhat cruel treatment, it was in fact beneficial for the soldiers.
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”.
`In the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque being a soldier in World War I was not at all amusing. The soldiers in the war,fighting for their country, had very inferior living conditions such as ditches infested with rats, a widespread of lice among the men and decaying bodies all around them. This war was the turning point for technology, introducing more advanced weapons making killing much easier. They found from trenches to protect themselves from being killed. Each side would switch off running into no man's land. Not only did these soldiers undergo blatant living conditions but they were also losing limbs, dying and watching their men be killed. Three major ways in which the soldiers were affected by the war in All Quiet on the Western Front were that they faced many physical injuries, they were traumatized by watching man after man die making them fearful, and they gained a great amount of camaraderie.
He realizes that he has to lose feeling to survive, “That I have looked far as the only possibility of existence after this annihilation of a human emotion” (194). Paul loses all feeling which may be one of the main factors keeping him alive in battle, so that he does not allow himself to process the violence and horror to which he is exposed. Even in the short time where he thinks about all that he has lost he is immediately overwhelmed with feelings and there is no time for this on the battlefront. Paul has no empathy to the enemy and kills without even thinking, “We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control ourselves when our glance lights on the form at some other man” (117). The tragedies during combat desensitize the men of normal human emotions such as remorse, empathy, guilt, and fear; the un-naturalness of killing another human dulls all of these feelings. People were not made to destroy each other, and as a natural defense to this they shut down all of their feelings. Paul 's normal thought of insecurity are gone as he says, “Since then, we have learned better than to be shy about such trifling immodesties. In time things far worse than that come easy to us” (8). The emotions of the average young man are lost at war as their entire lives are put into perspective. Paul 's young adulthood is lost and he does not feel shame in frivolous things any longer. His emotions are not the only thing he loses as he also disconnects from his past, present and
People who have actually been through war know how horrible it is. Society on the other hand, while it believes it knows the horrors of war, can never understand or sympathize with a soldier’s situation. The only people who can understand war is those who have been through it so they can often feel alone if they are out of the military. Paul cannot even give a straight answer to his own father about his dad’s inquiries about war. Paul’s dad does not understand that people who have been in the war can in no way truly express the horrible things that that have seen and experienced. Nor can Paul fit in with the society who does not understand him. Paul and so many others were brought into the war so young that they know of nothing else other than war. Paul held these views on society as he said, “We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered;-the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall in to ruin.
Remarque also tried to teach his audience. Written within a decade of the end of the war, the book calls on those who forfeited their youth to the war not to allow time to hide what had happened. Time may heal all wounds, but the cause of those wounds must not be forgotten, nor allowed to repeat itself. The author is; however, pragmatic enough to realize that all will not learn the lesson; nevertheless, those who are willing to learn it will discover that the story has been told before, and without their intervention, it is doomed to be told again.