Superficial animus, haughty explanations, and pretentious leaders; these are the abstruse complexes that have dictated the semblance of War- no longer straying away from the aboriginal embodiment of a cooperate-or-compete mindset. With selfish deeds intact, pretentious leaders allow the preparation of war to commence and naive -yet devoted- juveniles enlist in patriotic hopes of bettering their just nation. However, these naive souls corrode into contrite ones dominated by early signs of post-traumatic stress disorder and spurious morals. Immersed in this story of duplicit devilry and tenacious comradery, many artists, playwrights and authors have taken it upon themselves to encapsulate the real essence of patriotism; this often leads to over-romanticized …show more content…
For instance, During Paul's time on the front with the second company, he is able to see the beauty of a butterfly while being entrenched by cadaverous comrades and enemies ''brimstone-butterflies, with red spots on their yellow wings. What can they be looking for here? There is not a plant nor a flower for miles. They settle on the teeth of a skull.''( Remarque 60 ). Remarque's purpose is to show that a meaningless battle that decimates everything around it including nature and the men within it. The contrast of an aesthetic creature to that of the atrocities created by man project the major disparities of life during a war to the life surrounding it. War is filled to the brim with men circumscribed by their own corrupted kill-or-be-killed mentalities. This also makes the reader contemplates their own existence and the fragility of life. So, by acknowledging the presence of a butterfly in the midst of battle shows how soldiers now find the smallest acts of beauty …show more content…
While visiting his mother Paul contemplates telling her the truth or telling her what she wants to her, or better or worse he tells her- However, moments before hand Remarque does not shy away from revealing just how gruesome the war can be ''Should I tell her how we once found three enemy trenches with their garrison all stiff as though stricken with apoplexy? against the parapet, in the dugouts, just where they were, the men stood and lay about, with blue faces, dead.'' ( Remarque 161 ). Remarque was in the war himself which is why he's not timid when it comes to showing the true semblance of war as his purpose was to put the reader in the story and give them a chance to imagine a concept that they could only understand if they -God forbid- experienced it themselves. Remarques use of carnage imagery truly expounds the ruthless eradication of innocent soldiers and the distortion of a man's psyche that comes with it.
By and large war is the enemy itself as it causes men to rearrange their mindset and tests their mental capacity. A traumatic event at the very least war takes men and molds them into beings with more animal instinct than human inclination. Remarque's novel All quiet on the western front perfectly demonstrates how war can affect a man's psyche when tested give a kill or be killed ultimatum. Without the help of carnage imagery and unique symbols the themes
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:
To Pursue Remarque’s tone farther, his tone throughout this novel was rather easy to find because of the horrific, depressing, yet at the same time a little sympathetic, scenes. Paul explains a scene after a bombardment, “In the branches dead men are hanging. A naked soldier is squatting in the fork of a tree, he still has his helmet on, otherwise he is entirely unclad. There is only half of him sitting up there, the top half, the legs are missing” (93). The bombs are killing several men at a time. Paul not only observes this in real life, he ultimately has to live through it. Once a war has been going on for a long period, the soldiers know that war is all about death.
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.
War can destroy a young man mentally and physically. One might say that nothing good comes out of war, but in Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, there is one positive characteristic: comradeship. Paul and his friends give Himmelstoss a beating in which he deserves due to his training tactics. This starts the brotherhood of this tiny group. As explosions and gunfire sound off a young recruit in his first battle is gun-shy and seeks reassurance in Paul's chest and arms, and Paul gently tells him that he will get used to it. The relationship between Paul and Kat is only found during war, in which nothing can break them apart. The comradeship between soldiers at war is what keeps them alive, that being the only good quality to come out of war.
The new technological advances of weapons add to the cruelty and tragedy of World War 1. This ultimately is why Remarque focuses on the losses suffered by Paul and his fellow soldiers. In addition, the observations made by Remarque are not unique to war and are exemplified by the struggles soldiers, like Paul, face physically and
The story of several schoolmates who symbolize a generation destroyed by the dehumanisation of the First World War, All Quiet on the Western Front tells of the men who died, and the tragically changed lives of those who survived. Remarque follows the story of Paul Bäumer, a young infantryman, from his last days of school to his death three years later. Whereas the journey motif is typically used to portray a positive character development, that of Paul is deliberately the opposite. In what has been dubbed the greatest antiwar novel of all time, Remarque depicts the way in which Paul is snatched away from humanity by the brutality of war. However while Paul and his comrades become separated from society, and begin to rely on their basic survival instincts, in their own surroundings they still show humane qualities such as compassion, camaraderie, support and remorse. Paul’s transformation from human to soldier begins in training camp, and is reinforced by the trauma at the front. His return home further alienates him from society, and Paul begins to feel safe at the front with his friends. Nonetheless throughout the novel suffering and mortality bare Paul’s true side, and he momentarily regains his former self. Bäumer, the German word for tree, is an early indication that Paul must remain firmly rooted in reality to survive the brutality of war.
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 course of war, though, he is consumed by it and in the end is "weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope" (Remarque page #). Through Baümer, Remarque examines how war makes man inhuman. He uses excellent words and phrases to describe crucial details of this theme. "The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts," (page #). Baümer and his classmates who enlisted in the army see the true reality of the war.
Erich Remarque uses the character Paul Baümer to depict the image of war. All of the knowledge the reader acquires, of war and its effects on the men are through his thoughts and experiences. Due to this first
Imagine being in an ongoing battle where friends and others are dying. All that is heard are bullets being shot, it smells like gas is near, and hearts race as the times goes by. This is similar to what war is like. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator, Paul Baumer, and his friends encounter the ideals of suffering, death, pain, and despair. There is a huge change in these men; at the beginning of the novel they are enthusiastic about going into the war. After they see what war is really like, they do not feel the same way about it. During the war the men experience many feelings especially the loss of loved ones. These feelings are shown through their first experience at training camp, during the actual battles, and in the hospital.
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 longer be heard" (Remarque 63-64).
Remarque introduces Paul at the beginning of the novel as a veteran. We never see his first days in combat, but we do see comparable experiences in the battles of the replacement soldiers. Paul comments in the beginning on the secrets to staying alive in the trenches by learning the skill of differentiating between the different kinds of shells by the sounds that they make. He can distinguish between gas shells, trench mortars, and long range artillery by saying, “That was a twelve-inch, you can tell by the report. Now you’ll hear the burst (52).” and imparts this key knowledge to the recruits. These actions exemplify Paul’s character at the beginning of the novel. He cares about the other soldiers and uses his veteran’s status as a source of knowledge for the volunteers. Paul has light humor in regards to a soldier’s life as well. This quote exhibits Paul’s carefree attitude toward his situation,
Remarque accurately portrays all aspects of the war. However Remarque is best able to portray the effects the war has on the soldiers and the rest of the people and the scene of the battlefield compared to home.
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.