A Deconstruction of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front
The young soldiers depicted in Erich Maria Remarque's text All Quiet on the Western Front represent a generation without precedent, constancy, or forethought. The men, answering their elders' calls to become national heroes, have lost their innocence on the battlefield and remain forever altered in belief and spirit. Remarque contrasts the cold realities of war in the present to the tranquility of the past in order to illustrate the psychological transformation of the men stationed on the frontlines. The soldiers appear trapped in the present and alienated from their pasts; however, deconstruction of the text rejects the present and past as opposing states of time and identity, and reveals them as related conditions that are intimately and permanently intertwined.
Much of the critical literature regarding All Quiet on the Western Front concerns the binary relationship between the symbols of present and past. For example, critics Barker and Last assert: "This rupture with the past is one of the most dominant themes of Remarque's work, the discontinuity of life, this jolting from one place of existence to another, for which man is completely unprepared" (54). This opposition is represented in Remarque's descriptions of the contrasting environments of present and past.? The present is depicted as a state of unpredictability, uncertainty, and impermanence in which the soldiers merely exist on the edge of life. The narrator, Paul Baumer, imparts the dismal desperation of the front: "Shells, gas clouds, and flotillas of tanks--shattering, corroding, death. Dysentery, influenza, typhus‑scalding, choking, death" (Remarque 283). In contrast, the past is...
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...between the present and the past. Defining symbols, customs, and allegations of the past, both real and perceived, provoke a human battle between rival notions of an ideal present. Literary deconstruction approaches a text in much the same manner, confronting and dismantling fixed signs, traditions, and assertions. Yet like war, a deconstructive reading does not provide a final answer or the ultimate truth.
Works Cited
Barker, Christine, and R.W. Last. Erich Maria Remarque. London: Oswald, 1979.
Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction. New York: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Leitch, Vincent. Deconstructive Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. New York: Ballantine, (1928)1958.
Wagener, Hans. Understanding Erich Maria Remarque. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Physician-assisted suicide has been brought into light in recent years due to the increase in life prolonging me...
For those who want to use the term “physician-assisted suicide,” they hold the belief that this term is in fact an accurate expression that describes the relationship bet...
Luc Deliens, et al. "The role of nurses in physician-assisted deaths in Belgium." CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal 182.9 (2010): 905-910. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 28 Sept. 2011.
Newman, E. (1996). Making the final choice: Should physician-assisted suicide be legalized? San Diego, CA: Truth Seeker Co., Inc.
Steinbrook, Robert. "Physician-assisted suicide in Oregon--an uncertain future." New England Journal of Medicine 6(2002):460. eLibrary. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.
As one can see, physician-assisted suicide has a long and complicated history. Recent developments in the United States have brought the issues associated with end-of-life decisions under the microscope. The morality and ethics associated with voluntarily assisting someone while committing suicide have struck a chord with individuals, organizations, and in the political and medicinal sectors. The Hippocratic Oath and Pharmaceutical Oath have become subject to scrutiny with the gaining popularity and legalization of terminally ill patients seeking dignity in death. Increasingly, people are supporting the tough decisions made by patients.
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.
People with serious socio-emotional and emotional disturbances are challenged in many aspects of life. Historically people of color with serious mental health related issues had little assistance and chances to having their needs met equally to Whites. In order to properly or adequately address the emotional and mental wellbeing of everyone on an equal basis, the stigma association must be removed from people of color.
To address these fears, many people attempt to control when and how they end their lives. Naturally, they turn to their physicians for assistance because the physicians know what amounts of drugs are lethal and how to administer such drugs to ensure death and prevent pain. However, in recent decades, when a patient feels that his or her life is no longer worth living for, they will commonly ask for their physicians’ assistance in suicide. Many people feel that it is the physician’s moral responsibility to end the suffering of the patient, while others feel that it is unethical to interfere with a natural process of death. Physicians exist to save the lives of patients. Assisted suicide puts them in the position of ending lives and naturally creates arguments of ethicality and legality.
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.