AP Significant Works Study Form
Title: All Quiet on the Western Front Author: Erich Maria Remarque Genre: Realism Year Published: 1929 Literary Period: Modernism
Main Characters (one-sentence description of each)
Paul Bäumer – Protagonist and narrator of the novel and young German soldier, he feels disconnected from the world around him and does not see himself having a future.
Stanislaus Katczinsky – The forty-year-old soldier who is friends with Paul, Kat has a strange affinity for being able to find anything in the worst scenarios.
Corporal Himmelstoss – A sadistic corporal who originally disciplines Paul’s platoon, after he is enlisted into
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Albert Kropp – A German soldier and friend of Paul, he is one of Paul’s oldest and closest friends.
Müller – A German soldier and one of Paul’s friends, he was a physics student from Paul’s class who eventually dies.
Tjaden – A young soldier and locksmith, he is a friend of Paul’s.
Detering – A married farmer, he is disgusted that horses are being used in the war. Gérard Duval – A printer that Paul murders while he is hiding in a shell hole, he questions his actions as he is forced to stay with the man until it is safe enough to go back to his trench.
Major Settings (one-sentence description of each)
The Western Front – Most if not all of the events in “All quiet on the Western Front” take place on the western front. It is World War I, combat consists of trench warfare and soldiers are malnourished, waiting for the constant barrage of shells and gunfire to take them away, as it did their comrades.
One paragraph plot summary (note opening and closing
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“It’s unendurable. It is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror, and groaning (Remarque 62).” Here Remarque uses the horses to describe the profound effect that war has on the surroundings and nature.
Irony – A situation that may end up in quite a different way than what is generally anticipated. “In any case I must do it, so that if the fellows over there capture me they will not see that I wanted to help him, and so will not shoot me (Remarque 220). This statement is ironic because although Paul is fighting on the Germans’ side of which the French are their enemy, Paul still wants to help the dying French man.
Tone – An attitude of a writer toward a subject or an audience generally conveyed through the choice of words or the viewpoint of a writer on a particular subject. “It is autumn. There are not many of the old hands left. I am the last of the seven fellows from our class (Remarque 293).” Remarque uses tone in such a way that makes the reader sympathize and feel sad for Paul. It is within these words that the author is able to illustrate the moments of grief and remorse that fall upon Paul as his friends are taken from him one by
All quiet On the Western Front, a book written by Erich Maria Remarque tells of the harrowing experiences of the First World War as seen through the eyes of a young German soldier. I think that this novel is a classic anti-war novel that provides an extremely realistic portrayal of war. The novel focuses on a group of German soldiers and follows their experiences. Life for the soldiers in the beginning is a dramatic one as they are ordered up to the frontline to wire fences. The frontline makes Paul feel immediately different, as described here. "
was a preacher - known for his sermons like: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (God’s really mad and you’ll burn in hell forever)
Paul Bäumer's leave from the war is an opportunity for him to see life removed from the harshness of war. As he makes the journey home, the closer he gets the more uncomfortable he feels. He describes the final part of his journey, "then at last the landscape becomes disturbing, mysterious, and familiar." (154) Rather than being filled with comfort at the familiarity of his homeland, he is uneasy. War has changed him to the extent in which he can no longer call the place where he grew up home. Bäumer visits with his mother and recognizes that ideally this is exactly what he wanted. "Everything I could have wished for has happened. I have come out of it safely and sit here beside her." (159) But ultimately he will decide that he should have never gone on leave because it is just too hard to be around his family and see how different he has become. Bäumer finds that it is easier to remain out on the war front than return to his family.
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.
In the book, All Quiet on the Western Front, The soldiers show feelings of guilt and empathy towards the wounded horse’s in chapter 4 because the horses remind the soldiers of their younger, innocent, and carefree selves. The men’s use of the horses is a symbol for how the army uses the men. The men must lie still listening to the sound of the horse’s pain, "It's unendurable. It is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror, and groaning” (62). Detering becomes disconcerted and wants someone to put the horses out of their misery. Many of the younger soldiers that were drafted in had no control of what they wanted to do, neither did the horses. The horses were dragged into a the war with no voice
All Quiet on the Western Front shows the change in attitudes of the men before and
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
All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Delbert Mann, is based on the novel written by Erich Maria Remarque. It tells the story of a German schoolboy, Paul Baumer, and a group of his classmates, who journey from fantasies of heroic glory to the real horror of actual soldiering. Their journey is a coming of age tale that centers on the consternation of war and emphasizes the moral, spiritual, emotional, and physical deterioration suffered by the young soldiers.
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.
The emotions of the average young man are lost at war as their entire lives are put into perspective. Paul's young adulthood is lost and he does not feel shame in frivolous things any longer. His emotions are not the only thing he loses, as he also disconnects from his past, present and future.
All Quiet on the Western Front (1979) depicts the experiences of a youthful German soldier (Paul Baumer) during World War I. The eye-opening story is told in a first-person narrative through Paul Baumer’s perspective focusing on a soldier’s life. During the beginning of the film the story fluctuates between battle scenes and times of goodwill in the young man’s life. The film, adapted from Erich Maria Remarques novel “All Quiet on The Western Front” starts on the battlefield then jumps back to young boys in a class room being indoctrinated into enlisting into the war. The youthful German patriots are eager to enlist their services and fight for the “Fatherland” upon graduation, but the horrors of war quickly change the principled views
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.
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.