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

In an ever-changing world, never has a war been so innovatively brutal as the First World War. One can speak of dehumanization, animalization and desensitization, evoking images of pain, terror and deadening. In his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque melancholically, yet beautifully, depicts the absolute horrors of war and the way this gruesomeness affected the common soldier, analyzing both the psychological and the physical aspects, and assessing the ultimate ramification on its often-innocent victims. Through means of his pivotal narrator Paul Baümer, how effective was Remarque’s novel as a critique and debunking of World War I actually?

The most obvious predominant theme of All Quiet on the Western Front is of course the incessant brutality of modern warfare, which the reader can experience in every single chapter. Whereas often war poetry and books, especially German literature, attempted to romanticize the concept of war with ideas of patriotic duty, glory and adventure, All Quiet on the Western Front has the clear mission of portraying war as it actually happened. Remarque boldly replaced this romanticized archetype of heroism and honor

Never has a book so accurately described the horrors of war on humanity, and depicted them in such a faceted and rich way. Not only does he evoke the carnage and butchery generated by war in a unique and innovative fashion, but he also daringly personifies the absolute torment imposed upon the soldier psyche. Epitomizing this; at the end of the novel, every single major character has been slain in some barbaric way or another, allowing the author to once again highlight the endless disaster of war. He shows how soldiers were fundamentally and inherently altered by war, physically tortured and mentally