Erich Maria Remarque was born on June 22, 1898 in Osnabrück, Germany. During his childhood, Erich attended private Catholic schools where he planned to become a school teacher. Before he could finish his schooling, Erich was conscripted into the German army. During his service in WW1, Erich fought many battles on the Western Front in Flanders, Belgium. “In 1933, Remarque was forced by the rising tide of Nazism to flee his native Germany for the relative calm and security of Switzerland. Several months later, in May 1933, pro-Nazi students consigned his works to the flames during the fiery book burning spectacles staged throughout the country(Author).” Although many of Remarque’s works were burned, the Nazi’s never questioned his loyalty to …show more content…
The novel depicted the brutality and the horrors of World War 1 through the experiences of a group of young German soldiers. The novel became an instant success, and it was even translated into more than a dozen languages. All Quiet on the Western Front has earned many accolades and awards, mostly from the liberal and leftist press for its anti-war and pacifist stance while the Nazi’s and more conservative side saw it as an assault on Germany’s honor, a piece of anti-war propaganda, and the work of a traitor. Although All Quiet on the Western Front has received high fame since it was first published, it also has its fair share of critics as …show more content…
A majority of the public saw Remarque’s work as eye opening and showed the true tragedies of war. One critic noted that: “All Quiet on the Western Front paints a very vivid picture of the realities of WWI and the nature of warfare experienced by the soldiers at the front. The fear and alienation soldiers felt on account of the carnages they were forced to witness and the progressive nature of warfare as new weapons technologies were introduced year after year, only lead them to cling to life in fear and made recuperation into civilian life after the war virtually impossible”(Pintaya). I completely agree with this statement. Remarque did not tell this story for fame or fortune. He wrote it to tell of his stories and his experiences during the war that would end all wars. Remarque would be doing himself and the world a disservice if he were to leave out details, or to change details to make the story less gruesome. The world needs to know the true tragedies of war and the stories and experiences of the young men known as “the lost generation” who fought in this
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 ...
All Quiet on the Western Front is a book written by Erich Maria Remarque. It was a book written to reflect the human cost of war. It shows us how war has a hidden face that most people do not see until it is too late. In the novel, he describes a group of young men who at first think war is glorious. But as the war drags on, the group discovers how war is not all it is set out to be. As the war went on, they saw their friends either die or be permanently wounded. Then the end comes when there was only one person left.
In Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, characters such as Paul and his friends become indifferent to shocking elements of war through constant exposure to them. For example, the characters are unconcerned about the dangers of the front because they are accustomed to being on the front. In another instance, Paul’s friends show no emotions when they witness snipers killing enemy soldiers. Also, Kat finds the unusual effects of mortar shells amusing. These examples prove that through war, characters of the book have become indifferent to things that they would normally find shocking.
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:
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.
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, is a classic anti-war novel about the personal struggles and experiences encountered by a group of young German soldiers as they fight to survive the horrors of World War One. Remarque demonstrates, through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier, how the war destroyed an entire generation of men by making them incapable of reintegrating into society because they could no longer relate to older generations, only to fellow 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”.
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 future, reducing the quality of his life.
Remarque displays the brutal effect war has on people’s minds. Paul Baumer suffers from several psychological disorders that the war
Remarque uses a variety of techniques to display the gruesome affects that war has not only on soldiers but on the nation as a whole. One technique that Remarque uses is imagery. One example that shows the imagery that Remarque displays occurs in chapter six when Paul Baumer talks about what the French do to the German prisoners who carry bayonets that obtain a saw on their blunt edges: "Some of our men were found whose noses were cut off and their eyes poked out with their own saw bayonets. Their mouths and noses were stuffed with sawdust so that they suffocated" (Remarque 103). Remarque shows how horrible the opposing sides treated one another's prisoners. The details used make one think of how bad the war must be and how it changes one's perception of war. Another example Remarque uses to show the brutality of war is through the imagery of sound. In chapter four Paul talks about the paranoia everyone gets when they hear the loud death cries of the wounded horses at the front: "We can bear almost anything. But now the sweat breaks out on us. We must get up and run no matter where, but where these cries can no linger be heard" (Remarque 63-64). The soldiers at war can handle hearing the bombs and shells going off never ending at the front in a small tight trench, but they cannot bear the cries of the horses and become paranoid.
Although All Quiet on the Western Front shows bravery of a group of young German soldiers, the novel also shows the horror of trench warfare and the terrible conditions of war. The conditions of war described in All Quiet on the Western Front made Hitler afraid that men would be deterred from wanting to fight for Germany or that German men would be less confident when they went to war so they would not be useful soldiers. Hitler had to be a mast...
Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that takes you through the life of a soldier in World War I. Remarque is accurately able to portray the episodes soldiers go through. All Quiet on the Western Front shows the change in attitudes of the men before and during the war. This novel is able to show the great change war has evolved to be. From lining your men up and charging in the eighteenth century, to digging and “living” in the trenches with rapid-fire machine guns, bombs, and flame-throwers being exposed in your trench a short five meters away. Remarque makes one actually feel the fun and then the tragedy of warfare. At the beginning of the novel Remarque gives you nationalist feelings through pride of Paul and the rest of the boys. However at the end of the war Remarque shows how pointless war really is. This is felt when everyone starts to die as the war progresses.
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.
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. Works Cited Remarque, Erich Maria.
Taylor, Marvin J. “biography” the Life and Writings of Erich Maria Remarque. Fales library. http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales/exhibits/remarque/documents/intro.html