All Quiet On The Western Front the Novel

Kantorek would say

We stood on the threshold of life

And so it would seem

We had as yet taken no root

The war swept us away

For the others, the older men,

It is but an interruption, they are able to think beyond it

We, however, have been gripped by it

And do not know what the end may be

We know only

That in some strange and melancholy way

We have become a wasteland

What does war do to a man? It destroys his inner being; it crushes hope; it kills him. Experiencing battle leaves only the flesh of a man, for he no longer has a personality; it leaves a wasteland where a vast field of humanity once was. Through the main character, Paul Baumer, the reader experiences the hardships and consequences of war. During the course of the war, Paul reflects on how the young men involved in the war have no future left for them, they've become a "lost generation." Paul feels that his generation has "become a wasteland" because the war has made him into a thoughtless animal, because he knew nothing before the war, and because the war has shown the cheapness of human life.

Throughout the novel, Paul must face dangerous tasks. For example, in chapter nine Paul crawls through No Man's Land to gather information about enemy forces. While in No Man's Land, the enemy begins to bombard the Germans. Paul, fearing death, hides in an old shell crater and pretends to be dead. While feigning death, an enemy soldier enters the crater. Paul quickly reacts and strike at the enemy with his dagger, fatally wounding the soldier.

In a later chapter, Paul explains why he reacted so quickly. War has turned all the soldiers into "unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct." This primal instinct is one of survival; it is the only thing that matters during war. It allows the soldiers to remain calm in battle, it allows them to escape solitude, and aids them in survival. "As in a polar expedition, every expression of life must serve only the preservation of existence, and is absolutely focused on that;" Paul and the other soldiers do only what is necessary to ensure their own survival.

This affects each soldier when the war is finished. When a soldier returns back to his home after the war, he is unable to escape his primitive feelings of survival.