Character Analysis: All Quiet On The Western Front

In the year 1914, a war started that would turn innocent people against each other, and have aftermaths that include thousands of people dead due to new equipment like tanks, gas attacks, and hand-to-hand combat. In this war there was a soldier named Paul Bäumer who is a German nineteen year old who has made friends that will last a lifetime during this experience, but has also felt immense pain. His daily routine is to sleep, eat, and fight in the trenches, and he experiences death every day. Most soldiers view death as a recurring event, but Paul views it as wretchedness, which makes him different from others by caring about his comrades more than others. Paul shows many qualities through this experience of being a soldier in the First World War, and he learns what is necessary in life, which takes some people years to figure out. In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul Bäumer participates in the bloodiest war of all time, and he develops the skills of intelligence, leadership, and loyalty.

World War I was one of the most barbaric and horrendous events that impacted world history. In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich M. Remarque drives home this brutality through his main character. The theme brutality and carnage is displayed through the presence of death, violence, and the guilt the soldiers must carry within them. The soldiers were permanently scarred by the events they witnessed as death is always around them..

The main focus of the book All Quiet in the Western Front, the author illustrates his ideas of war through writing. Understanding the nature of warfare allows the reader to easily be able to know specific events in that time period. The story involves a young man Paul and his beliefs and observations throughout his experience in war. His knowledge of warfare will change from when he first joined and to the end of his journey. - Erich Maria Remarque's classic war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, deals with the many ways in which World War I affected people’s lives, both the lives of soldiers on the front lines and the lives of people on the homefront.

Millions of people have gone through life-altering experiences in their time in World War I. In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Bäumer, a 19-year-old German soldier, narrates his personal memoirs of this war. He describes the mental change and suffering he goes through as he is forced to mature from a young boy to a soldier in order to survive, leaving him permanently scarred from the throes of war. By employing juxtaposition to contrast Paul’s mindset, before and after the war, Remarque demonstrates how the mental health of the World War I soldiers is damaged because of the abrupt loss of their youth, leaving them in a state of survival and mental instability.

Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, follows the life of a German Soldier, Paul Baumer, serving in the trenches in France during World War I. This novel is told from Baumer’s perspective and depicts the horrors of living in his shoes during this time. Paul and several other young soldiers volunteered for the war after their instructor in school, Kantorek and other authority figures back home filled their heads with glorious ideas about the war. Very quickly, he discovers the reality- gas attacks, fatal illness, starvation, rat infestations, and bloody trenches. This dehumanizing war affects Paul and the soldiers who fought in it by destroying their physical and emotional well being, changing their views on the meaning of life and death, obliterating their sense of nationalism by betrayal, and

Erich Maria Remarque showed disillusionment in very many different ways in his book that he wrote ¨All Quiet On The Western Front. ¨ The theme of ¨All Quiet On The Western Front¨ is to never let your emotions get to you when you need to power through things and need to be strong at the moment. Paul never let his emotions get to him throughout the story. Besides at one point when he went home and saw his mother so sick she was stuck in bed, and she left all the good food that they had for when Paul came back even though Paul knew his mother and sister needed the food more than him.

The book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque gives us a good understanding of what war was like for the people fighting on the front. When reading this book people can get a front hand experience of what it is like being in battle. Remarque wrote this book so well that often times you picture yourself actually with Paul and all his friends. The one thing you specifically get to see is how humanity affects warfare. Humanity affects our decisions in warfare because humans are selfish, have fear, and seek revenge.

When Paul and his comrades attempt to protect themselves from an incoming bombardment by the French, Paul reflects on how the war has come to “[fill] [them] with ferocity, [turn] [them] into thugs, into murderers, […] this wave that multiplies [their] strength with fear and madness and greed of life, seeking and fighting for nothing but deliverance” (Remarque 114). The author utilizes the words “murderers” and “thugs” to emphasize how the soldiers have turned into inhumane, barbaric humans while participating in the war. This callous characterization suggests that Paul acts instinctively without considering his actions and the guilt that follows. The fact that Paul chooses to describe himself with such a demoralized character demonstrates how he has abandoned his morality into becoming a merciless soldier who feels no remorse for his brutal actions. In addition, Paul’s determined tone of “fighting for nothing but deliverance” indicates that he no longer has an interest in the lives of others, but only for his own survival.

Near the end of Paul’s leave of absence, he felt isolated and full of regret, “I ought never to have come here. Out there I was indifferent and often hopeless-I will never be able to be so again. I was a soldier, and now I am nothing but an agony for myself, for my mother, for everything that is so comfortless and without end. ”(Remarque 185) This quote accentuates the narrator’s separation from his family, when he cries out “I ought never to have come here.”

As the book goes on, Paul starts to overcome his fears by confronting Erik and Arthur. He overame the fears that dominated his life. For once Paul wasn’t afriad, instead showing courage and bravery. Others might dissagree and say that Paul reveals fear because on it says “... I felt afraid for the first time, afriad that we might all get sucked down and drwon in the mud”, Even if Paul was sacred, he forgot about that and saved multipul kids from the sinkhile in this quote, “My glasses were so caked with mud that I couold no longer se anything clearly. I muyst have pulled twenty kids up befor

Unlike other military men, Paul has the ability to see through the enemy military members’ perspective to the extent that he could see their struggles. He believes that the enemies from Russia are as “kindly as the peasants in Friesland” (Remarque 190). Paul’s analyzes that the eastern side enemy begs and acts just as humane as the peasants in Friesland, Netherlands because both side want to survive and have a good life. Furthermore, Paul connects to the person who he had slain by describing that his “mother is just as anxious as [theirs]”, and they have “the same fear of death” (Remarque 223). Remarque shows this comparison between Paul and the dead man because he wants to show how Paul has the ability to look into his enemy's’ side of the war.

In chapter two, we see Paul reminiscing over his poems and plays that he wrote abundantly while at home. Paul and the other soldiers have lost their zeal and human need for curiosity and growth as a person. When out on the front, the risk of them dying is high and survival is of utmost priority. The men are currently living at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a psychological theory, in the Physiological section. This means that the top priorities of the men are eating, sleeping, and basic bodily functions while they did not spend time or energy focusing on meeting their personal potential or “self-actualization”, which is at the top of the pyramid.

When Paul was sitting there thinking about his past with his books, “the breath of desire then arose from-the books, [it] shall fill [him] again-it shall bring back the lost eagerness of [his] youth.”(171). Paul recognizes that things are never going to be the same again. He can never describe to both of his parents what he is facing. Also, he doesn’t have a strong connection with his them anymore because they have nothing in common or anything to talk about. All in all, Paul used to have a stress free life before going to war and he will just never be able to relive his time before he went to be

When disaster struck, we all had to do something. I’m not saying I was a hero. All I did was slide around in the mud and try to pull people up” (83, 85). Paul does not think of himself as a hero on any means, even after risking his life to save others. This shows that he can’t see that he is a strong minded and important person.

War is a harsh reality that is inflicted upon the unwilling through the “need” of it’s predecessors and those whom wish it. All Quiet on The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is about 19 year old Paul and his friends in the “Second Company”. Even though they are just out of school age, they have already seen things that many could not bear to even think about. Eventually, all of his friends die, and even Paul too, dies. Remarque uses diction and syntax as literary devices to express his anti-war theme, or lesson.