All Quiet On The Western Front Literary Analysis

In Erich Maria Remarque’s, “All Quiet on the Western Front” the soldiers face fear, hardships, love, trust, and death together during World War 1. The question is, why? All soldiers were clueless to the reason why they had to leave their families, friends, and loved ones, only to return home to suffer from the mental and physical pain afterward. The novel focuses on Paul Baumer who enlists in the German army and experiences the horrors of war while trying to survive in the trenches. “War Some More” by Sandra Osborne connects well with the novel in the sense that war is brutal and brings forth hatred without a solid explanation as to why.

Another example in line 3 is, “… valley of Death.” Of course this isn't an actual valley, but it does represent how the battleground was grim and many men had died. Imagery was used throughout the poem and gave readers a mental image of what the war must´ve been like.

In the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, displays that nihilism is a result of war. Throughout the book, several key events occur that point back to that theme, nihilism is a result of war. War fosters nihilism and creates a loss of innocence in the soldiers. The feeling of nihilism causes the soldiers to expect death, and channel their feelings into caring only about material things. This book, All Quiet on the Western Front, gives countless examples that point to the main theme, war causes nihilism.

The poem features a soldier, presumably Owen, speaking to fellow soldiers and the public regarding those atrocities. Correspondingly, drawing on the themes of innocent death and the barbaric practices of warfare, Owen expresses his remorse towards his fallen comrades and an antagonistic attitude towards the war effort through a solemn tone and specific stylistic devices. The poem is structured as free verse, contributing towards the disorganized and chaotic impression Owen experienced while witnessing these deaths firsthand, enabling the audience to understand the emotional circumstances of demise in the trenches as well. Throughout the poem, Owen routinely personifies the destructive weapons of war, characterizing them as the true instruments of death rather than the soldiers who stand behind them. Owen describes how, “Bullets chirped…Machine-guns chuckled…Gas hissed…” (Owen 3,4,15).

Aeschylus once claimed “And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our own will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of god.” Aeschylus shows that pain has incredible effects on the being. Pain plagues and diminishes the mind, body and heart, corrupting the soul itself. In Erich Maria Remarque 's All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator, Paul Baumer, along with his fellow soldiers, experience these pains almost constantly throughout the story. Due to the traumatizing situations the men are put into during war, they are incapable of readjusting to humanity outside of the battlegrounds. They have been completely dissolved by the incredible pain they experience.

In All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the main character, Paul, develops a new viewpoint on war as the reader follows the story of his time fighting for Germany during World War I. Remarque keeps a realistic, poetic, and contrastive style in his writing that conveys the scenes Paul sees and experiences in such a way that draws the reader in. Each style has its own significance and is represented at least once throughout the novel. The first style, realistic, is one of the most common styles throughout the book. Remarque goes into great detail in many scenes, helping to describe the feeling and sight of the scenes around Paul. One of the greater examples is when the Second Company is sent to the front-line for

Although these novels focus on a false reality of wars, Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front illustrates Bäumer’s horrifying experiences that he and his regiment, the Second Company, faces throughout the front lines of World War I, along with the physical and emotional

War habitually desensitizes and numbs the fighting soldiers due to the harsh, crippling events they have witnessed. War creates a feeling of endless hopelessness felt by the comrades during the war. In “All Quiet on the Western Front”, Erich Maria Remarque exposes the change of characterization of Paul Baumer from an innocent boy transformed by the monstrosities of war into a desensitized soldier by repeating the pattern of soldiers going to the front, being at the front, and then being away from the front to expose the personal destruction caused by it. On the way to the front, the comrades are experiencing rising anxiety and intimidating tension from the realization of the unavoidability death on the frontline. For example Baumer is thinking, “Every time it is the same.

All Quiet on The Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque, is a novel composed after World War One to convey the experiences of German soldiers during this horrific time of fighting. He brought to light many important issues that occur during wars. In this book, three horrors of war that had the largest impact were the lack of sanitation in the trenches, the loss of comrades, and the shock that came from unexpected and ongoing shelling. The lack of sanitation in the trenches caused many diseases, infections, and terrible memories to me made. For instance, while in the trenches at the front ugly, fat, and hungry rats would attempt to eat the soldiers’ bread and cheese.

Through use of setting and contrast, both poets contribute to presenting the theme of the realities of war. Firstly within the poems, both Owen and Harrison present the horrific images of war through use of visual imagery.“And leaped of purple spurted his thigh” is stated. Owen describes the immediate action of presenting the truth of war as horrific and terrifying . The phrase “purple spurted” represents the odd color of the blood which was shedded as the boulder from the bomb smashed his leg in a matter of seconds. The readers