Throughout the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator of the story, Paul Baumer goes through the realization how joining the war was destroying his and others’ youth while turning people against each other. Remarque uses the phrase “abyss of sorrow” as figurative language to describe the suffering and heartbreak the young boys experience in the front line, earning the generation of boys that served in World War 1 the name “the Lost Generation”. After Paul observes the pain of the prisoners that he is assigned to watch, he sees for himself “how people are set against one another, and in silence…slay one another”. Just because two sides are waging war, people are brainwashed or persuaded to sacrifice themselves for a fight that is
Before World War I, all of Europe in 1914, was tense and like a bomb or a fire was waiting to erupt. Europe had not seen a major war in years, but due to Militarism, Imperialism, Alliances, and Nationalism tensions grew high. Each country was competing to be the best by gaining more territory and growing in their military size and successful economies. World War 1 was waiting to happen and the assassination of the Archduke was the spark that lit Europe up. In All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque we see the effects of the assassination.
Erich Maria Remarque’s classic account of misery, woe, and war overrides the plot of All Quiet on the Western Front, recreating the devastation and emotional dismemberment of German soldier, Paul Baumer, and his childhood acquaintances. Baumer is violently ripped through a symbolically eternal dispute between opposing nations; however the entirety of the novel is seen through Remarque’s eyes. As a vessel for propaganda and persuasion, Remarque attaches parasitic personalities, desolate descriptions, and vivid verbs to convey desperate times on The Western Front. Without Remarque’s vocabulary and literary devices, the novel would be stripped of its ability to evoke passionate emotions in the reader.
An Evil Force through the eyes of an Innocent Man World War II was a devastating war with over 18 million casualties accounted for not even including famine and diseases. All Quiet on the Western Front follows a group of germanic recruits and their pathway throughout the way they saw the tragedy of the war. In the classic novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque uses symbolism to show camaraderie, a loss of innocence, and how life can be impacted in monumental ways when people choose to not back down when an evil force awakens. During hardships and tough times, comradeship through a brotherhood can be tested but true comrades will stick together. Recruits always had to be under supervision
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.
War is something won by a country, but lost by every soldier. The inevitable reality of war, causes soldiers to lose attributes, he or she would not have thought they could lose, one of which is their innocence. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque, this concept of loss of innocence is conveyed through the iron youth. As the book progresses, innocence possessed by the boys quickly decreases as they realize the true horrors of war.
Erich Maria Remarque was a man who had lived through the terrors of war, serving since he was eighteen. His first-hand experience shines through the text in his famous war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, which tells the life of young Paul Bäumer as he serves during World War 1. The book was, and still is, praised to be universal. The blatant show of brutality, and the characters’ questioning of politics and their own self often reaches into the hearts of the readers, regardless of who or where they are. Brutality and images of war are abundant in this book, giving the story a feeling of reality.
"All Quiet on the Western Front" is a war novel by Erich Maria Remarque that reveals the ways in which war is not glorious, and the ways in which destroys a soldier 's happiness, innocence, and youthfulness. In addition, it uses imagery and characterization to describe some of the hardships the soldiers face in the trenches and at the front. Likewise, "Suicide in the Trenches" is a poem by Siegfried Sassoon that glosses over these topics as well, in the form of a poem. While both Remarque 's "All Quiet on the Western Front" and Sassoon 's "Suicide in the Trenches" portray war as a destroyer of innocence and youthfulness, Remarque 's use of characterization to illustrate the theme is more effective than Sassoon 's use of imagery and word play, because it is more
Throughout the ages, wars have wreaked havoc and caused great destruction that lead to the loss of millions of lives. However, wars also have an immensely destructive effect on the individual soldier. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, one is able to see exactly to what extent soldiers suffered during World War 1 as well as the effect that war had on them. In this essay I will explain the effect that war has on young soldiers by referring to the loss of innocence of young soldiers, the disillusionment of the soldiers and the debasement of soldiers to animalistic men. Many soldiers entered World War 1 as innocent young boys, but as they experienced the full effect of the war they consequently lost their innocence.
The First World War was a lengthy and brutal affair that claimed the lives of over 17 million individuals. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, its effects were equally as ferocious on the intellectual front, where it marked a turning point in the clash of European intellectual values. Philosophers such as Nietzsche had already challenged established institutions of Positivistic thinking toward knowledge and progress; however, his movement lacked widespread support. It was the disaster of WWI that accelerated their movement by inspiring culture-wide undermining of prior intellectual beliefs through newfound uncertainty: authors such as Erich Remarque and Vera Brittain drew upon sudden doubt underscored by the war to completely reverse prior thinking by breaking down pre-war notions of intellectual
However it may seem, this is not violence simply for the shock factor, neither is it simply included to add realism to the novel. Instead this is an effort on Remarque’s behalf to communicate the human aspect of war, and describe the immense suffering that could be inflicted on any soldier during the GReat War. Through the use of the Narrator Paul Baumer, and the graphic imagery and description, Remarque illustrates the suffering that a soldier had to go through, both psychological and physical. The physical injuries sustained by men on the frontline in All quiet on the western front were absolutely horrendous. Remarque communicated this through his vivid use of gore and graphic imagery, however did was not supposed to be a surprise factor, but more for the reader to truly understand what soldier could go through.
"Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and uniforms you could be my brother just like Kat and Albert (Remarque 223)". Comradeship among soldiers is a major theme throughout the novel, "All Quiet on the Western Front" because the soldiers knew each other before the war, protected each other during combat, and can relate to one another without having to literally speak. This story 's theme shows comradeship because Paul and the other soldiers were in class together before joining the war. In the beginning of the novel Paul introduces his friends he went to school with before going to war with. "
In All Quiet on the Western Front, many young soldiers around seventeen years old are being sent to fight in the war without sufficient training. These young recruits are not being sent into this war because they are powerful and prestigious soldiers, but are rather sent in because the German soldiers are losing hundreds of thousands of men and are desperate for replacements. These are teenagers who have a whole life ahead of them, but in All Quiet their lives are being wasted and destroyed in the cruel war, showing that these soldiers are dehumanized because their lives and futures are not valued. In the book, Remarque is able to show the harsh consequences the war does to adolescents that destroy and dehumanize them. One soldier that Paul encounters in All Quiet on the Western Front to a young recruit, described as “such a kid,” (73), by Kat, suffered from a serious injury: “a hip covered with blood,” (71) only recently after arriving at the Front.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque’s use of irony and metaphors to prove that the horrors and evils of war outweigh any positives. When Paul, the main character, and the other men in his company move to the front lines to lay down barbed wire they are shot at and find protection in a cemetery. Paul remarks, “I merely crawl still farther under the coffin, it shall protect me, thought Death himself lies in it.” (67). Paul knows that his only protection from the shootings is inside of one of the coffins, which ironically, is where he would end up if he was shot there.
Erich Maria Remarque, a World War I veteran, took his own personal war experience to paper, which resulted in one of the most critically acclaimed anti-war movement novels of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front. The voice of the novel, Paul Baumer, describes his daily life as a soldier during the First World War. Through the characters he creates in the novel, Remarque addresses his own issues with the war. Specifically, Remarque brings to light the idea of the “Iron Youth,” the living conditions in the trenches, and the sense of detachment soldiers feel, among other things. Therefore, All Quiet on the Western Front criticizes the sense of nationalism, which war tends to create among citizens by quickly diminishing any belief regarding it as a glorious and courageous act.