The Destruction of a Complete Generation

The dictionary defines war as “a state or period of armed hostility or active military operations”, but soldiers in Erich Maria Remarque’s powerful World War One novel All Quiet on the Western Front would be able to tell one otherwise. In the preface statement to the novel Remarque declares, “It [the book] will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.” The soldiers start to be destroyed thoroughly as they continue to lose all hope, humility and any previous ties to their former lives. The narrator, Paul Bäumer, sees and experiences life altering events after he enlists to which he will never be able to regain composure from. He gradually becomes worn down and merely a shell of the twenty year old boy he was prior. Similar to Paul, each soldier from the younger generation slowly starts to be devastated from the inside out as they commence to lose grip on the reality they have once known.

War is brutal, violent and unforgiving which causes the physical destruction of soldiers to be prevalent. Every time Paul is at the front hel sees another one of his comrades fall from injury or death to the ammunitions of the Allied forces. One becomes accustomed to seeing their friends lying with a limb missing or bleeding profusely from the hip. Franz Kemmerich, Paul’s best friend and classmate who had enlisted with him, gets shot in the hip and has to have his leg amputated. As Paul and the rest of the soldiers in their company visit him, they notice the change in his demeanor and appearance. Paul describes, “In his face there are already the strained lines that we know so well, we have seen them now hundreds of times. They are not so much lines as marks. Under the ski...

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...olved in it.

When one thinks about war and how soldiers may be affected by it, most people would only think of the physically repercussions they would receive. Not many would realize the emotional and psychological toll the war is to them as well. A soldier is not going to experience one of these forms of destructions without it being inevitably followed by the other two. Remarque claims in the preface statement that the book will try to tell of the generation of young men who fought for Germany in World War One and how they may have possibly been affected. His account is one that provides an honest perspective of the war many would have never known before. As one can see how soldiers are destroyed on so many levels they might be able to truly respect what they go through to defend their countries and may have a new outlook on the German forces from so long ago.