All Quiet on the Western Front, written in 1929 by Erich Maria Remarque, is superficially the story of one soldiers’ journey in World War 1 and his eventual death. Beneath this, however, Remarque has composed a literary treasure which, above all, seeks to illustrate war as that which is engrained in the nucleus of humanity and through the hugely negative effects of war depicted, seeks to question humanities apparent advancement through its need to engage in such a futile exercise as war. Remarque’s Liberal Humanist ideology is given expression through the correlation between war and nature, thus emphasizing the innate position of war within man, the ultimate paradox contained within an advanced mankind engaging in primitive conflicts and the ironic search for an omniscient being derived from man’s reduction to the barest quest for survival. In addition through the examination of the negativities surrounding the social institutions and hierarchies set up in the absence of god, All Quiet on the Western Front becomes much more than an emotive and well constructed piece of historical realism. In All Quiet on the Western Front, the connections between war and the natural surroundings in which it is fought give rise to the position of war the collective psyche of mankind. The military jargon of the ‚the white puffs of smoke from the tracer bullets‛ is followed by the natural imagery of ‚the sun shining on them‛ in order to emphasize the apparent synchronization between war and nature. The colour imagery of white of the bullets and yellow of the sun, being light colours, connote the harmonious relationship between nature and war. Through the proximity of phrases describing both war and nature in an endearing fashion we are led to conclude that war and nature, or that which is primitive, are fundamentally linked. The gaian imagery ‚Earth, with your ridges and holes and hollows into which a man can throw himself , where a man can hide‛ is ironic as it takes a man-made…
