A World Without War
In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, the author, Erich Maria Remarque, presents readers with a vivid picture of a life a soldiers had to endure during WWI. Being a former soldier himself, Remarque expresses his opinions of war through his character Paul Baumer, a nineteen-year-old boy who finds himself fighting in the German army along the French front. Like Baumer, many young men found themselves forced into a suicide mission to aid their countries in the fight for a “greater good” during WWI. For these men, despite their good intentions, find themselves in unthinkable carnage that results often times in death. Through the use of several themes, such as the horrors and deceit of war, comradeship, and physical effect of war, Remarque makes a profound statement against war.
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The author wanted readers to understand through his book that he conspires an anti war attitude from his own first-hand accounts he experienced as a soldier. The novel also emphasises the brutality of war that WWI was, a slaughtering fest of men on a battlefield. In many ways WWI changed the face of war from long raging battles to the new technology countries utilized. As stated by Paul in the novel, “Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades--words, words, but they hold the horror of the world” (All Quiet on the Western Front 132). By using these advancements, as mentioned in the novel, war took a new and easier approach to killing, often placing many soldiers in hospitals where they suffered until death or millions strung across the
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:
Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front gives you detail and insight into the long, destructive “Great War”. Quickly, romantic illusions about combat are disintegrate. Enthusiastic teenage boys convinced to fight for their country by their patriotic teachers came back feeling part of a lost generation . This novel teaches us what a terrifying and painful experience World War I was for those fighting in the trenches on the front.
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.
Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel set in World War I, centers around the changes wrought by the war on one young German soldier. During his time in the war, Remarque's protagonist, Paul Baumer, changes from a rather innocent Romantic to a hardened and somewhat caustic veteran. More importantly, during the course of this metamorphosis, Baumer disaffiliates himself from those societal icons-parents, elders, school, religion-that had been the foundation of his pre-enlistment days. This rejection comes about as a result of Baumer's realization that the pre-enlistment society simply does not understand the reality of the Great War. His new society, then, becomes the Company, his fellow trench soldiers, because that is a group which does understand the truth as Baumer has experienced it.
Essay: All Quiet on the Western Front. An anti-war novel often portrays many of the bad aspects and consequences of war. Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel set in the First World War that is against war. Remarque describes the terrible reality of the war, focusing on the horrors and involved. The novel portrays an anti-war perspective as it brings up issues about the brutality of war, the narrator’s change of attitude towards war, the futility of war and In the novel, Remarque presents the brutality of war. Early on in the novel, he describes the sound of the wounded horses and how brutal the war atmosphere is. “There is a whole world of pain in that sound, creation itself under torture, a wild and horrifying agony” (p44). The brutality of war in the novel, however, is mainly shown through human suffering. Baumer talks about brutal things that soldiers are just expected to do.& out.” (p74). The German soldiers attack the enemy with extreme instinctive brutality. “With the butt of his rifle, Kat smashes to pulp one of the machine-gunners. We bayonet the others before they can get their grenades out” (p84). The use of poison gas is also a very brutal practice throughout the novel. Baumer describes this while he is in a gassed area, hoping that his gas mask is working properly p 48. -. & nbsp;
Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the greatest war novels of all time. It is a story, not of Germans, but of men, who even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war. The entire purpose of this novel is to illustrate the vivid horror and raw nature of war and to change the popular belief that war has an idealistic and romantic character. The story centers on Paul Baümer, who enlists in the German army with glowing enthusiasm. 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 #).
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.
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.
At the beginning of chapter seven, the Second Company is taken further back to a depot for reinforcements, and the men rest. Himmelstoss wants to get on good terms with the boys and shows them kindness. Paul starts to respect him after seeing how he carried Haie Westhus when he was hit in the back. Tjaden is won over too after he learns that Himmelstoss will provide extra rations from his job as sergeant cook.
All Quiet on the Western Front. Literary Analysis The U.S. casualties in the "Iraqi Freedom" conquest totals so far at about sixteen thousand military soldiers. During WWI Germany suffered over seven million deaths.
Throughout All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer undergoes drastic changes as he realizes the full extent in which the war has changed his life. Paul starts out the book as a veteran, yet he is never the less changed by the war that shook the world. Paul realizes the full extent of his transformation when he is forced to kill a Frenchman just because the Frenchman tried to find shelter. Paul Baumer changed by a subject too messy to be discussed in proper decorum. T.S. Matthews says, “This is a book about something that nobody likes to talk of too much. It is about what happens to men in war. It has nothing whatever to do with the politeness, the nobilities, or any of the sometimes pretty and sometimes ridiculous notions to which the world has once again settled down (130).” Paul is changed by a war directed by people who had no idea of the horrors that would change the men of their country. Paul lived in brotherhood and died in anonymity. His life wasted by a political war, and uncaring generals. Only by accepting his transformation can Paul be at peace with his life and live in peace in death.
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.
World War I had a great effect on the lives of Paul Baumer and the young men of his generation. These boys’ lives were dramatically changed by the war, and “even though they may have escaped its shells, [they] were destroyed by the war” (preface). In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer and the rest of his generation feel separated from the other men, lose their innocence, and experience comradeship as a result of the war.
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.
Erich Maria Remarque wrote the perspective of Paul Baumer, a German who was the supposed “enemy” in World War I. However, Remarque humanizes the opposing side, as he reminds the audience that soldiers are average humans too; not murderers. His motive for writing All Quiet on the Western Front is to describe the gap between paradise and war; emphasizing the horrors of war, the alarming transformation from men to animal in combat, and the collapse of young men in the following generation. While Deterring, Kat, and Paul are suddenly swept with a sneak attack, the men quickly take shelter to escape being harmed. Faintly, they hear a noise that appear to be the cries of “wounded horses”...The men cannot stand the wailing as “it is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror, and groaning...We are pale” (62). In a civilized society, the sorrow and wretchedness of an animal is unquestionably distressing for a human; nonetheless the soldiers encounter these experiences in their day to day lives, and eventually grow accustomed to. Himmelstoss emerges as he tells the soldiers that he is the head-cook. Paul pays attention to the substantial amounts of food in the cook-house he feels satisfied as the soldiers “momentarily have the two good things a soldier needs for contentment”(138).