All Quiet On The Western Front Inhumanity Analysis

Humans or Inhumane Beasts?
Inhumane: lacking qualities of sympathy, pity, warmth, compassion, or the like; cruel; brutal(Inhumane: Dictionary). Inhumanity is one of the major themes portrayed in All Quiet on the Western Front. This is shown by the treatment of the Russian Soldier's, Müller’s request for Kemmerich's boots, and Paul’s reaction to the French man who fell into his hole.

The treatment of the Russian soldiers is a prime example of inhumanity during the war. The Russians were treated like filthy, stray dogs, Paul actually says “they look like meek, scolded, St. Bernard dogs” (189). The soldiers were reduced to digging through the German soldiers garbage for food, which was basically nothing since the German soldiers had so little
As Kemmerich lays on his deathbed, all Müller could do was ask for his boots. Where is the compassion? One of his fellow comrades is dying and all he wants is a material object? This is a product of the war. Paul defends Müller’s actions by saying “We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important for us. And good boots are scarce (20). The war has hardened everybody up so that they can’t dwell on tragedy. They just have to keep going, throw death away like an old sock, insignificant and irrelevant. Because if they dwell on things and see the truth in what they are doing, they will not be the nationalistic killing machines the military wants them to be. They are after all the “Iron Youth”, unbreakable by
After Paul is sent back to the front, he has to crawl through No-Man's-Land, an attack begins, he becomes lost, crawls into a hole to play dead, and stabs a French soldier who falls into the hole. This shows how Paul and others during the war are changing from the civilized people they were into savage animals. Paul doesn't even think when he stabs the man, he just strikes madly at home (9.216) like a bear whose territory has been invaded, but it isn't just Paul. If the situation was reversed, the Frenchman would have killed Paul the same way, not thinking, but letting a primitive instinct take control. The war has stripped people of everything, making that primitive instinct come out. It is almost like Paul is possessed, not fully in control of his actions. This war is like a dogfight, innocent dogs fighting with only the high ups profiting. But Paul realizes “that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony”. Paul even asks for forgiveness “Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?” (223). He is remorseful as “I [he] did not want to kill you[Frenchman]. . . . But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response” (223). This gives hope, that not all humanity is