All Quiet On The Western Front Summary

In a time period filled with war and conflict, the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is a difficult read due to the heavy topic it pertains to. The story begins with Paul Bӓumer and his friends from school joining the army. They joined because they thought war would be honorable thanks to Kantorek, their teacher. After their ten weeks of training and their first two weeks of being on the front lines, only eighty of the one hundred fifty men return. Paul’s friend, Franz Kemmerich, has his leg amputated and he eventually dies because of it. At this point, Paul learns to disconnect his feelings from himself. Reinforcements come for their company and they are sent on a mission to place barbed wire on the front lines.
During this, many of the new men are killed. Their company is then caught in a battle against the allied forces. After this, only thirty-two men remain. Paul feels as though he must become an animal in war to stay alive. Paul returns home to find that his mother is dying of cancer, Kantorek is enlisted in the army, and Franz Kemmerich’s mother unaware of his death. After his seventeen days of leave, Paul returns to the company. In the next battle, Paul finds himself alone until a man jumps into the shell hole with him. The man is stabbed by Paul out of instinct. Gérard Duval, whom Paul stabbed, was a French soldier. This is the most traumatic event for Paul in the novel. In the next battle, Paul’s best friend, Albert Kropp, had his leg amputated and Paul also has to undergo surgery. After he is healed, his friends begin to be killed one by one in battle; including Stanislaus Katczinsky, his close friend in the war. Then in 1918, he is the only one left. Paul dies later that year with a calm expression on his face. Because Paul and his friends were in high school together, they all joined the army in hopes of being honorable men. They thought this because of what Kantorek had drilled into their minds with the speeches he gave in class. Paul, Kantorek, Albert, and Franz are all significant in the novel, not just because they are main characters. Their relationship is seen as a square because they all knew each other before the war. Paul narrated how many teachers had persuaded the young men they taught by saying, “The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief.” As Kantorek gave them this idea of war, the boys believed it was true what he said. However, as their first battle came and Franz was killed slowly, their respect for their teacher turned to hatred because he was the one who gave them an unrealistic picture of war. Their relationship is best portrayed as a square because of how they all knew one another before the war ripped them from the lives they knew. The next significant relationship, though short, was imperative to the understanding of the novel.
This exchange is between Paul and Gérard. When Paul kills Gérard, he feels sorrow and despair for what he has done. He learns of Gérard’s name, wife, kids, and farm back home by searching his body. Paul is traumatized after this experience. He says to the dead man, “Comrade, I did not want to kill you… now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship.” Even though Paul only knew Gérard when he had jumped into the shell hole and then died, he felt remorseful for killing a man that “could be his brother like Kat and Albert” if the rifles and uniforms were taken away. Paul also felt heartbroken because he had killed one of his own kind; another French man that became a soldier to honor and serve his country in World War I. The relationship between Paul and the dead man fueled Paul’s desire to be done with the war. It also made him realize that if he did finally become free from it, he would never live a normal life because of what he has seen and
done. The last relationship between Paul, Albert, and “Kat” (Stanislaus) is more or less like a brotherhood for the men.
Best friends from high school, Paul and Albert joined the army voluntarily with a few of their other classmates. They trained together, fought together, and always stuck together. At one point, Albert gets injured and the same happens to Paul. When Albert’s leg is amputated, Paul does not leave him until he has to go back to the front lines. Kat and Paul also have a special bond that is illustrated when Paul says, “We don't talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have.” The men were cooking a goose together in the middle of the night. They could have been in danger at any moment but they were just focused on how they were lucky to have a friend alive. Paul and Albert have the longest friendship, continuing through dark days. Kat and Paul have an unexplainable bond that blossomed as the war and fighting dragged on. The two men are the ones that Paul has the greatest interconnection with out of his company. The brotherhood they have stretches into the darkness of war. In conclusion, the different connections the characters have together makes the novel even more powerful than it already is. Paul has at least one connection to every character in the book but the men who knew each other before the war, the man that Paul killed out of instinct, and the brothers in combat are the most significant to the novel. All
Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that pulls on the heart strings in the entirety of it. Erich Maria Remarque presents the idea of how relationships affect everything in life, especially during war, through the ties between characters in the novel.