d

Culture Research of All Quiet On The Western Front

In the gruesome novel, All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, tells a story of a young boy named Paul Bäumer that fights in World War I as a German soldier. Paul is the protagonist and the narrator for most of the novel. The reader can see, through Paul, the horrors of war. Critics agree that the novel is believable. “Paul's story is the realization of the horror of war…” (Tighe 60). The setting of the novel is in the trenches of the Western Front in France and in Germany. There are numerous cultural aspects going on within this anti-war novel. Remarque accurately portrays the culture aspects of, male roles, family relations, the economy, and historical references to life during World War I in Germany and France for the soldiers on the Western front during the last two years of Word War I between 1916 and 1918.

“Erich Paul Remark, as he was known before changing his name to Erich Maria Remarque in 1920, was born on June 22, 1898, in Osnabrück, Germany”(Henningfeld 10). He actually did fight in World War I on the Western Front during the same time period that the novel is based on. This makes his account of the war through the character of Paul more believable. Also Remarque’s mother really did die of cancer when he was in the war. The death of his mother and the war itself had a huge emotional impact on Remark (Henningfeld 10). “Consequently, he began working on All Quiet on the Western Front for cathartic purposes”(Henningfeld 11). After he published the novel in 1929, it became a success throughout the world, except with the Nazis. “Remarque soon became the subject of intense media and political scrutiny. Most notably, the Nationalist Socialist German ...

... middle of paper ...

...e has his main character make sense of his experiences by working through the episodes of his life to attempt to create order from the experiential chaos. The fundamental immorality of war is the blatant use of people to achieve goals they themselves do not understand or identify with” (Schlieper 3). This is exactly what Remarque does in his amazing novel. Remarque went through the horror of the deadly war and had to work out his feelings in a fictional novel. “The trauma of the war cannot be dismissed, and by engaging with alternative narratives historians can begin to represent and consider this trauma in their work” (Wilson264). The novel is believable because the author was part of the culture presented in the book. Even though it is a fictional work, one can trust the cultural aspects of the novel in relation to the real culture during World War I.