Analysis Of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

For centuries, in countless countries, war has been romanticized. This means, "If you romanticize war you 're making it sound like a glorious, beautiful thing. To romanticize is to interpret things that are not glamorous in a glamorous way" ("Romanticize" par. 2). The effects of romanticized wars are seen throughout Slaughterhouse Five and All Quiet on the Western Front. The false visions of war that soldiers blindly go into mentally destroy them little by little.

Through both of his poems, Dulce Et Decorum Est and Disabled, Owen clearly illustrates his feeling about war. Both of them convey the same meaning that war destroyed people’s lives. For Dulce Et, Decorum Est, it mainly illustrates soldier’s life during war, the dreadfulness of war, whereas, Disabled illustrates how war have damaged soldier’s life. Also, the saying that said that war it is lovely and honorable to die for your country is completely against his point of view. Owen conveys his idea through graphically describing his horrible experiences in war.

The poems, “To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars” by Richard Lovelace, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred Tennyson, “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, and “The Song of the Mud” by Mary Borden, are all concerned with war. However, each poem has a distinct representation of it. While the two authors, Tennyson and Lovelace, glorify war by portraying it as honorable and worthwhile, Borden and Owen view war as a destruction of mankind and show their indignation and censure of war by depicting it as vile and gruesome in their poems. This essay will examine and compare the diction and tone of each poem to understand how they influence each poem’s underlying theme on war.

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. 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. In the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front" is the description by Erich Maria Remarque of the graphic violence and gore and the psychological pain that the average soldier endured on the western front.

These are all devices that are vital in portraying the overall theme of the brutality of war, in All Quiet on the Western Front. One of the main literary devices used in All Quiet on the Western Front is imagery. An example of this is when Detering, Paul and, his friends become pale and sick at hearing

The soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front, have experienced many hardships and they are expressed in a way of great horror and violence along with In The Field written by Tim O’Brien, and In Flanders Fields, written by John McCrae. Throughout the novel of All Quiet on the Western Front, which was written by Erich Maria Remarque, there are countless mentions that truly show the true horrors of war. Paul Baumer, the leading protagonist in All Quiet on the Western Front, states his surroundings in a way that entices the reader to his perspective and really coaxes with their mind to induce the harsh surroundings and environments that lie in war. In the beginning of chapter six, Paul and the other soldiers are settled along the front, which for the average person, is enough to scare them to a point where they would not even consider going into warfare because of the horrors that lie within Paul Baumer and the other soldiers.

“Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected,” Paul Fussell wrote in “The Great War and Modern Memory,” his classic study of the English literature of the First World War. “But the Great War was more ironic than any before or since.” The ancient verities of honor and glory were still standing in 1914 when England’s soldier-poets marched off to fight in France. Those young men became modern through the experience of trench warfare, if not in the forms they used to describe it. It was Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Joyce, and Lawrence who invented literary modernism while sitting out the war.

Among the most moving sections of the book is near the end, when Hosseini describes the atrocities committed by the Taliban, including the stoning of two innocent people. Through the use of details and incongruity, Hosseini puts the Taliban’s brutality on full display, as well as the systematic abuse of power that took place during this period. This theme is central to the novel, as those in power repeatedly, and heart-wrenchingly exploit those beneath them. Though it has happened for all of history, the firsthand descriptions within The Kite Runner make it a powerful, riveting book with themes as prevalent in today’s world as they were in 1980s

The entire short story can be envisioned as a scary dream. Poe sets the tone of the story in the very beginning, stating, “The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal- the redness and the horror of blood,” (Poe 3). This sets an emphatically dark and horrific tone for the reader, which carries into the plot of the story.

All Quiet on the Western Front and The Storm of Steel, are two novels about World War I that were written from completely different viewpoints of two German soldiers. Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front emphasized the atrocities of war that the main character, Paul, experienced which outweighed any purpose other than to support his brothers on the battlefield. In the Storm of Steel, Junger is totally convinced that World War I was a great event and he stressed how important it was to be fighting for the motherland of Germany. These two novels demonstrate how soldiers may be driven to fight in a war for different reasons.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the author retells the chilling, and oftentimes gruesome, experiences of the Vietnam war. He utilizes many anecdotes and other rhetorical devices in his stories to paint the image of what war is really like to people who have never experienced it. In the short stories “Spin,” “The Man I Killed,” and “ ,” O’Brien gives reader the perfect understanding of the Vietnam by placing them directly into the war itself. In “Spin,” O’Brien expresses the general theme of war being boring and unpredictable, as well as the soldiers being young and unpredictable.

The book has been called "The greatest war book that has yet been written" by Rodakteur Stohr. All Quiet on the Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque, is about a young German soldier named Paul Baumer who is in World War 1. The book uses many motifs, which are repeating objects or ideas. The motif of brutality teaches the reader that war is full of horror by showing that people kill other people in a way they wouldn 't anywhere else. Two examples of this are when a man’s chin gets smashed away and when Kat smashes a man 's face with the butt of this rifle.

World War I is a gloomy and cruel place; it obliterates the beliefs of fighting for one’s country and transforms the minds of the soldiers. This realization is found in Erich Maria Remarque’s book All Quiet on the Western Front. In the book, a young teen named Paul Baumer and his friends join in the war believing it’s going to make them become important and that fighting for their country is such a great privilege, but once they are in the war, they all realize it’s not the same as what they were told. The young soldiers witness what war is truly about and they reflect on what they were told, knowing the truth makes them see they were told lies, so they are the same which obliterates their trust in the adult world. Remarque employs symbolism,

We can all agree that war is dreadful. The impact to citizens and soldiers during times of war is significant and widespread. The fictional works: The Shawl, The Red Convertible and The Things They Carried, allow insight into the impact that war has on individuals. Although these stories are works of fiction, they all resonate real struggle and unbearable circumstances. Throughout these stories, the characters are continually impacted by their surrounding circumstances.

“There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best--- in a way that cost them nothing. And that is why they let us down so badly” (Remarque 12). Leadership plays an important role in every war, especially those of major importance. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque has many examples of leadership on display. Three types of leadership displayed in the novel are Kantorek’s hypocritical leadership, Himmelstoss’s authoritarian leadership, and Kat’s pack leader qualities.