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.
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.
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
The book All Quiet on the Western Front takes place during World War I. The author, Erich Maria Remarque, describes how dehumanizing war can be for soldiers who give their life to serve their country and protect it. Remarque specifically describes the hardships of a German soldier Paul during the war. Through Remarque’s story we learn that war affects relationships, thought processes, natural instincts and many more functions of a soldier. We learn over the course of this book that all soldiers change through war.
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
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.
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.
“War is hell” was said by General William Tecumseh Sherman, there is no expression quite as short that captures the image of war, and he said this quote as he was on a mission to raze the South to the ground. At the beginning of the book Paul is a hopeful soldier. It will end only as what you would expect of watching all of your friends die and spending years at the front. Erich Maria Remarque wrote All Quiet on the Western Front to show us the horrors of war, and in vain to teach us lesson, that we finally realized by WWII. The story follows the life of a 19 year old schoolboy pressed into service by his teacher, trained in 10 weeks in a barracks, then learns the reality of war through experience. Throughout the novel, you can watch as he
All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque is a story of a young man named Paul Bäumer who volunteers to be a soldier in the German army during World War One. Being at a very young age Bäumer, and three of his friends whom also enlisted to the German army from the same school he attended, felt proud when enlisting “we were a class of twenty young men, many of whom proudly shaved for the first time before going to the barracks” (AQOTWF p.21). Very soon, however, Bäumer and the young men he enlisted with begin to feel indifferent and embittered of being in the army “At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent.” (AQOTWF p.21/22). Joining the army for Bäumer changed the way he felt about everything he knew in the past, and the way he thought of the people who stayed back home. Bäumer said that as soldiers they “saw that there was nothing of the world left.” (AQOTWF p.13) and that they “were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.” (AQOTWF p.13). Meaning that Bäumer knew that people back home wouldn’t understand what they had gone through so they had to see it through alone, together as soldiers. As if they were different from the people who stayed back home.
In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the young men in battle quickly learn that the war is a awful, destructive force that ruins lives. The boys, who are pressured by their teacher to join the army for glory, soon discover that the war is not glorious, but rather devastating. Paul, the narrator of this novel, goes through a lot of pain as a result of this war. The war destroys Paul and his friends’ lives, both physically and mentally.
Conflict is what drives all stories, but stories with similar themes may use them differently in order to give different lessons and persuade you to form different opinions. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque and The Redemption of Althalus by David & Leigh Eddings have the similar themes of war, morals, and family, but display them in very different contexts to create unique conflict between their characters.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a story, in which it allows people to know the true horrors of war. Throughout the story and in Erich Maria Remarque’s writing he uses many literary devices to emphasize what he experienced and the emotions he felt. The devices that he used are used in order to help the readers understand his experience and emphasize the theme of his war novel. Throughout this essay, I will show you a few of the literary devices used within the novel that emphasized the theme, the brutality of war. Within this essay you will learn about imagery, metaphors, and symbolism. These are all devices that are vital in portraying the overall theme of the brutality of war, in All Quiet on the Western Front.
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. 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.
"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
The war novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque depicts one protagonist, Paul, as he undergoes a psychological transformation. Paul plays a role as a soldier fighting in World War I. His experiences during the war are not episodes the average person would simply experience. Alternatively, his experiences allow him to develop into a more sophisticated individual. Remarque illustrates these metamorphic experiences to expose his theme of the loss of not only people’s lives but also innocence and tranquility that occurs in war.