Preview

All Quiet on the Western Front: War and Its Purpose

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1032 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
All Quiet on the Western Front: War and Its Purpose
"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing. That to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one."
- Agatha Christie

We as people never stop to think about war and its definition. Accroding to the dictionary, war is defined as a state of hostility, conlict, antagonism and death. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque tells the story about Paul Baumer, the narrator and protagonist of the book , a neneteen year old German soldier who fights in the front lines of Western Europle during Wold War I and describs its synical hateful environment. The autobiographical book, Night by Elie Wiesel, takes place during The Holocaust. Elie, as a young Jewish boy witnessed mass murder and loses his loved ones in the process in the hands of the Nazis while imprisoned in the most notorious death camp, Auchwithz. "I thought I was honoring my country, but I was very wrong " recalled Benjamin Mejia, a 40 year old army veteran who fought in war during Desert Storm. These descriptions of War follow its definition with high precisement and leads to the raw truth. The truth is that through its hostile nature, war negatively affects the lives of the people involved with it buth physically and mentally which they have to carry for the rest of their lives.

War and its antagonistic influence has the potential power of making its victims suffer physically. "I am operated on and vomit for two days. My bones will not grow together, so the surgeons' secretary says. It is damnable." said Paul Baumer as he was wounded as a cause of war. It must have been even worrse under the conditions soldiers in the past faced on account of not having the medical advances we have today. Antibiotics were not invented until later on in the century so soldiers back then had to suffer the enduring paing for a much longer period of time. "The pain was undefiable. It was like if someone were to stab you with a fiery pitchfork in the back," recalled Benjamin Mejia as he

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    All Quiet on the Western Front is by Erich Maria Remarque. This book was an extraordinary war story. Remarque uses excellent words and phrases to describe crucial details of the book. Remarque had first hand experience‚ because he was a German in World War I. So he expresses his opinions through Paul‚ the main character of the book. One of the strongest themes in this book is that war makes man inhuman. From the author's point of view soldiers was often compared to various non­living objects‚ that were inhuman. The soldiers are compared to coins of different provinces that are melted down‚ and now they bear the same stamp(236). Remarque thinks that the soldiers mind state has been changed from when they were school boys‚ the stamp being the…

    • 321 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may happen” said Paul in All Quiet On the Western Front. In this book friends from college are recruited to the army to fight for their country in the Great War. The boys were full of pride until they got to the front and were conquered by fear. The front wasn’t what they expected; everything that was done was for nothing but survival. Like any war the war came to an end but not all the college classmates/friends survived, and many of them didn’t get the chance to visit their families. This was a good book due to its tone, theme, point of view, and plot.…

    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, vivid images of gruesome animal instincts and the innocent animals’ lives ending are illustrated for the reader repeatedly. Remarque indicates that for a soldier’s survival in battle they must cease sanity and rely solely on primitive instinct. This notion of animal instincts leads soldiers to be less like a human being with rational thoughts. The protagonist, Paul Bäumer, believes he is a “human animal,” and similarly, soldiers who survive multiple attacks think the same. Battle has wounded many, and throughout the novel the reader is given a chance…

    • 778 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the author utilizes imagery to describe many of the horrors that the soldiers are accustom to on a daily basis. Many of these horrors described lingered in my mind for some time after reading. I focused on the description made by Paul after an artillery bombardment. In this description, Paul sees his fellow comrades in serve pain, soldiers are holding their intestines in their hands, soldiers have their legs taken, and soldier hands are still hanging on to barbed wire with no body in sight. This is pure brutality.…

    • 204 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The soldiers experienced such physical, emotional, and mental pain that they became unfit for fighting. It is estimated that almost one third of soldiers that died didn’t die from the war, but from the pain the war caused aside from fighting, such as: famine, emotional sickness, and mental breakdowns. The author, Erich Maria Remarque, shows the reader new perspectives and gives them different ideas to focus on to illustrate the severity of the Effects of World War One. In perception, all of the endless pain was pointless. The war was at a standstill point; such unnecessary harm was caused for what? To prove that one country can kill more than another? To prove that one alliance can outlast another? The main idea is this: The war was a waste of time, money, technology, and life. The book shows how the soldiers suffered, which adds to the idiocy that caused the war to continue. After reading the book, it is apparent that the war only caused harm. The war itself lead to millions of lives being lost, countries being torn apart, an economic downfall- the list is endless. In the end, there is only one final question readers and historians have to ask to understand the war: Was it really worth it all? After reading the book, the answer is no. The mental instability, physical pain, and emotional sadness was not worth…

    • 1049 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the story All Quiet On The Western Front, the author Erich Maria Remarque uses the motif of blood and death to display a theme of withering innocence, and how soldiers had to witness horrible events through humanity’s downfall. Erich uses animals to show crude human nature, the story describes to us how “the belly of one horse is ripped open, the guts trail out. He becomes tangled in them and falls, then he stands up again” (63 Remarque). This passage of gruesome death shows decaying innocence by humans forcing innocent creatures of the land, to fight for their own selfish needs and ways. Throughout the story, Paul is thrown again and again into life or death situations, “I grab for my gas-mask.…

    • 245 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Contrary to other literary history works, “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Remarque Erich Maria is so unique because of the way it displays such a realistic view of war and the associated loss of humanity, innocence, and emotion that accompany it. Throughout this novel, Remarque proves his point that war is unnecessary, and dishonorable. The novel really emphasizes on the accumulating body count everyday, showing every aspect of how war is absolutely gruesome and such a waste of pure lives. Also, “All Quiet on the Western Front” shows how the position of being in war can change a person dramatically preventing them from returning to their previous lives, and scarring them permanently.…

    • 114 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In All Quiet on the Western Front, the audience gets to see how Paul Baumer represents his generation, also known as The Lost Generation. In chapter 1 Page 11 Paul states, “The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.” Paul describes how he and many other people envisioned war to be, they underestimated the severity that would be displayed into this war. Throughout the story, we get to see how Paul's character shifts from a positive-innocent kid to an emotionless and lost man.…

    • 142 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Power. The word itself instigates a conundrum of fear and attraction. The attraction for it, the attraction for more, and the attraction for seeking the absolute highest boundary of it. Those who thirst for it see visions of wealth, vast expansions territory, and above all, the ability to do whatever one wants whenever he wants. And those who thirst for it will seek it through whatever means necessary, whether it be a fistfight or a war. Necessity is the basic derivation for all hostility and aggression; therefore, power, and its corruption, is the source of all war. Such corruption is exemplified in the World War I novel, All Quiet On the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, through the eyes of the platoon leader, of the military officials, and of the highest level of power in Germany at the time, the Kaiser.…

    • 956 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The military life has not treated me well at all, and all of the propaganda about the Germans back home riled me up for a job that I would have never expected. The living conditions here are horrid, and every day I question how I am still living and have enough power left in my body to write this letter. Every day, my friends in my platoon die from either the awful conditions, or they are blown to fractions from enemy shrapnel. Besides the numerous dead bodies, there are large, repulsive rats that feed on the dead bodies of my friends. Since they are so numerous, they’ve gotten bold enough to start stealing our bread.…

    • 399 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Written by Erich Maria Remarque is a novel about young men who are fighting in the German army on the French front in World War I. The story expresses life in the war from the view point of Paul Baumer a young German soldier fighting for his life in the war. Throughout the novel, Remarque expresses vivid details based on his own experiences at war. “During World War I, Remarque was conscripted into the army at the age of 18. On June 12, 1917, he was transferred to the Western Front...”…

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Fatigue. Explosions. Blood. Guts. Death. These are only a few of the horrid images that the World War I soldiers endeavoured. Serving in war is not for the faint of heart or those considered not able to stomach the sight of gore and dead bodies every step. In the story, All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, this story depicts these exact horrors during Remarque’s time spent on the German battlefront. Deaths are of the norm. Soldiers become immune to the smell of rotting bodies and bits and pieces of flesh everywhere. Although comradery is a positive aspect of war, corruption and lost youth outweigh comradeship, therefore making war a negative circumstance.…

    • 1317 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In All Quiet on the Western Front, different attitudes are betrayed from different people. Attitudes that come from various walks of life. When someone lives in a certain area and is surrounded by certain things, I believe it forms your opinion about life and people. That attitude can either make you or break you. War is definitely an example of a situation that can change your thoughts, actions, and emotions.…

    • 625 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A comrade is a friend or companion, to a soldier it means much more than that. Throughout the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the soldiers learn through numerous events on the front that their fellow comrades mean everything to them. In a place so horrific as the front their comrades are all they have that they can rely on and through this they have complete trust in one another.…

    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    “What a cruel thing war is... to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors.”…

    • 1295 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays