The novel All Quiet on the Western Front demonstrates a theme, war can be physically and psychologically harming. In this book it constantly shows examples of characters being harmed physically, but they also get mentally torn apart. An example of mental pain is when Paul goes on leave to visit home. He experienced severe PTSD and felt like he didn't belong there anymore because of his experiences. “I find I do not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world” (Remarque 168). While everyone keeps on going, forgetting about the war, he goes on with constant reminders everywhere. While there is psychological harm, physical harm occurs multiple times throughout the book. “Now I see that he is tormenting me, he is merely raking up the wound and looking up surreptitiously at me over his glasses” (Remarque 243). This instance is when Paul is getting pieces of shell picked out of him. The war causes men to …show more content…
In the beginning he is just a schoolboy who enlisted in the war. By the end though, the war has changed him into a man who has seen too much for his own good. While at war Paul develops PTSD. “I was a soldier, and now I am nothing but an agony for myself, for my mother, for everything so comfortless and without end. I ought never to have come on leave” (Remarque 185). Paul is starting to realize he can never escape the war, and going home only made this realization come quicker. Paul also suppresses his feelings in order to get through the war. The only time he really lets it out is when someone of importance dies. “We want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they might be ornamental enough in peacetime, would be out of place here” (Remarque 139). Paul states that feelings are out of place at war and are more of a burden in these situations. This is how Paul developed throughout the
The German government: Instable and “You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well” ( Remarque 40 ) . This quotation from the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque stands in representation for the symbol of questioning the decisions of a government. This book shows how a government may not be making decisions regarding war that are in the best interests of the people. The German government was in a time of struggle and despair during the times of World War I (1912-1918). The instability and false trustworthiness of the German government in the time period of 1910-1930 fed the feelings and themes from the book All Quiet on the Western Front.
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarqueis a book about a German soldier Paul Bäumer and some of his friends from school who joined the army voluntarily after their teacher talked about joining the war. The group of nineteen year olds started the war with a great sense of nationalism and enthusiasm, but after experiencing ten weeks of hard training from Corporal Himmelstoss and the brutality of life on the front. Paul and his friends realize that the reasons of for which they enlisted are simply meaningless after some time on the front. Also, Paul and his friend realize that war is not as glorious or honorable as it is made out to be, and constantly lived in strain both mental and physical.
Throughout All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul and some of his comrades wonder why they’re fighting a war that they have no relation to. Furthermore, that doesn’t give them a sabbatical for going home, even though they aspire to go home to their families. In the book, Paul and the other soldiers are taught that the country they are fighting against is their enemy, and whenever they are to approach any of the “enemies” they are to tranquilize them promptly. Just because you are fighting against a country that you believe is atrocious or corrupt, doesn’t mean that an individual on that side is in that manner. Nevertheless, a book should not be judged by a cover.
At this time, Paul and his friends still saw war as a heroic, and something of which to be proud, so they were naturally willing and enthusiastic to server their fatherland. They soon became aware, however, of the hardships they would have to face through the basic training, and soon after they faced their
World War I was a brutal time period, with over hundreds of deaths each day. The soldiers in this period had great exposure to many harsh environments and moments. The novel All Quiet On the Western Front emphasizes the many themes consisted throughout World War I. The novel focuses on the essence of camaraderie,the horrors of war, and transformation from man to animal.
For example, on page 13 when Paul reflects on how much in the army they pushed them to be stronger and to be like vicious animals he says that it's just what they needed to be able to survive the war, he also says, “We did not break down, but adapted ourselves.” This example shows how physically and mentally tougher he has gotten since starting the war in order to stay alive. Additionally, when Paul kills a man for the first time he is troubled by it at first but then on page 109 he says, “It was only because I had to lie there with him so long," I say. "After all, war is war.” This shows how war has mentally changed him.
Paul is constantly plagued with depression during his time at home and mistakes many sounds as bombardments. No matter how hard he tries, Paul can’t find a way to fit back into the civilian life, his life as a soldier is the only thing he can cling to as a person. As the war goes on the, Germans start lose. The soldier’s conditions continued to declined,
In the novel, the first most relevant posttraumatic behaviors are demonstrated through Paul's character, by means of him reflecting on his past interests he had before entering the war, in comparison to his attitude after. When Paul returned home he began to experience isolating thoughts: “I imagined leave would be different from this. Indeed, it was different a year ago. It is I, of course, that has changed in the interval. There lies a gulf between that time and today.
Paul had to detach his emotions and suppress them to prevent himself from going mad. He forgot what civilian life was like before war. He ended up becoming like an animal, by learning to kill by instinct to survive. Before war, Paul was a sensitive and passionate person.
During a soldier's time on the front they are faced with a type of very particular torture called trench warfare, in which a man’s only saving grace is the brotherhood between his fellow soldiers. During a shelling on the front Paul is caught in a perilous position, where
The excerpt shows a man doing everything natural to protect himself, but ends up feeling terrible about it. If Paul ended up surviving the war, he would not forget this day and feel guilty for the rest of the life he lives; as would any man. Psychological warfare could even cause a man to stop doing and stop fighting after a traumatic experience as John Sheppard is a victim to with his “behavior became erratic, and soon he refused to go on patrol” (Paragraph 3). People in war have moments that just break them, and this was his moment. There is really no good solution to stop someone from having a quitting point because it is all psychological.
Throughout the novel on way the theme is portrayed is when you would go home from war on leave it was hard for some soldiers to deal with. Being on leave the soldier would eventually have to go back, but they would go home and some could have a hard because some of them could have been through a lot. When soldiers would be on leave they would usually arrive home with their family hugging them and showing them love. In the story Paul is going home on leave to arrive at his mother’s house. When soldier usually go on leave they go to visit the people that are most important to them.
The reason that his classmates died is because their teacher talked them into joining war without telling that what to expect. The group of boys didn’t expect to risk their lives so most of them died. Paul is now all alone still fighting in the war. I feel like that it is tough for him because he had lost his closest friends and is still away from home risking his life. “Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm” (296)
He focused on the experiences of six men that enlisted in the army to battle in the war. The novel is told from the perspective of Paul, who shares his experiences as a young soldier fighting during a time of severity. He describes the massive bombardments, gas attacks, and explosions that were present as the war went on. As Paul began to live his life as a soldier along the front, he endured weeks of severe and brutal training that led him to the inevitably cruel aspects of the war. In order to express his experiences as a soldier at war, Paul used the words “The thunder of the guns swells to a single heavy roar and then breaks up again into separate explosions.
The war made Paul a different man. Before the war he was very fond of poetry and he even wrote some, but after he had gone off to fight he no longer felt he had any interest in poetry. He talks about how he and the rest of the young soldiers' lives were ruined, just as their lives were about to begin where they would go off to study, become independent and start their career. They were cut off from that. The older men are the lucky ones, when the war ends, they will have their families and jobs to go to, whereas the younger ones will have nothing to go to.