Summary Of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque was born in Germany in the year 1898 into a lower-middle-class family. In 1916, he was drafted into the German army to fight in World War I where he was badly wounded. Ten years after the war ended, he published a book which was translated a year later into English with the title All Quiet on the Western Front. This is a novel about the experiences of ordinary German soldiers during World War I. Remarque starts off the novel by stating, "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war." This statement, from the novel 's epigraph, sets up the intention of discussing a

The young soldiers no longer feel young because the hell of combat has aged them beyond their years. Baumer states, "Our early life is cut off from the moment we came here, and that without lifting a hand." Baumer emphasizes that although the boys are young, their youth has left them. Baumer and his friends feel that people in authority betrayed their trust and sent them to die for empty and futile ideas. They especially blame Kantorek for pushing them into the army and exposing them to the horrors of war, even though he knows how traumatizing it is. As a result, Kantorek, a man who was once idolized by these teenagers, is now despised. Remarque uses this incident to expose the injustice people in authority has done to these poor younger generations by manipulating their minds to make them believe war is amazing. People in authority abuse their power and misguide the youth. Thus, Remarque wrote All Quiet on the Western Front to be a statement against the human rights violations and the abuse of authoritative power that was present in Germany during World War I. All the stress that resulted from the war began to affect the soldiers