Analysis: All Quiet On The Western Front

War is good and bad, beneficial and pointless, but above all other things, immensely inhumane. Man created war, and with our controversial human nature egged it on. “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque is a war novel that shows the war experience and how war changes people. During the time spent at the front and at rest the soldier is turned from human to inhumane. They are taken away from the normal human emotion and placed into a state of being more animalistic and superhuman.
“One-two-three-four, and ceased at thirty-two”. (Remarque 136) Of the entire Second Company, thirty-two men are left. This was a Company that started with 150 men, cut to eighty, and then again to thirty-two. This inhumane act of sending men to be killed is called war. Man after man is sent to war, trained, and then killed. Training a man for his death is not something that could be considered healthy
at all. War by this is an extremely demoralizing act that no man could ever come back from the same – or even at all. Men in war become animals and very inhumane because of their surroundings and the things they go through. They constantly find themselves alone, and doing whatever they can to survive. “I do not think at all, I make no decision – I strike madly” (Remarque 216). Paul, the narrator of this novel, strikes and kills an enemy soldier, Gerard Duval without thinking a second about it. This instinct relates much to the animals in the animal kingdom, and in this shell hole for Paul it was either kill or be killed. With this same event Paul also proves himself to be superhuman – another state of no longer being a ‘human’ – when he realizes what he has done. After killing Duval, Paul thinks about the actual human consequences that his death has. Not only has it put an end to Duval’s life, but it will devastate Duval’s family back home as well. “My state is getting worse, I can no longer control my thoughts…I wish Kantorek were here…if Kemmerich’s leg had been six inches to the right: if Haie Westhus had bent his back” (Remarque 222-223). As you can see, many of the events that Paul had simply looked past earlier in the book all come rushing to him the second he gets the slightest bit of human emotion back. Paul becomes completely overwhelmed by all of the compiling of demoralizing events that it throws him into a state of mind giving him this superhuman personality. When Paul is stuck in this superhuman state, he starts making false promises of the things he wants to do to correct all of his human faults. Once back off the front line, Paul is able to regain ‘war consciousness’ and once again return to looking by the bad and feeling nothing – making him no more human than he was on the front. Another incident reinforcing the fact that war is inhumane is when Himmelstoss, a noncommissioned officer, was sent to the front.
Himmelstoss was tough on all of his trainees at the camp but especially cruel to a select few. While at the training camp, Himmelstoss would do things such as making the bed wetter’s bunk on top of one another, peeing on each other through the night. That alone is an act of compassionless inhumanity that no everyday person would torture another human being with. One of the bed wetter’s included a of the member of the Second Company, Tjaden, who was a main character and good friend of Paul. Thus cruel act of torture from the camp caused Tjaden to hold a grudge that was continuously growing with time and with every other traumatic experience he went through. “We prepared ourselves to square accounts with Himmelstoss.” (Remarque 47). In this quote, you can tell that the war has made Paul, Tjaden and the rest of their friends from the Second Company to lose that human state of mind when planning their very in depth and harsh payback on
Himmelstoss. “Their necks are bent, their knees sag, their heads droop as they stretch out their hand and beg in the few words of German they know” (Remarque 190). This is how they German’s treated their war prisoners, stringing them on upon the edge of death. They were fed only enough to be kept alive, and left hungry and with diseases. This torture is just is bad as that of Himmelstoss’s and extremely inhumane. These Russians are reminded by every minute of everyday that they are at war – not real life, and certainly not real beings based on how terribly they are being treated. Searching and hunting for food, is a very animalistic trait that the soldier must adapt to in order to be well fed during war. Katczinsky or Kat, in this novel was Paul’s best friend, and had the best animal senses of the entire Second Company when it came to foraging. Somehow he was always able to find food, or what ever else was needed to take better care of himself and his friends, when the army’s supply was low. “He finds everything – but above all food.” (Remarque 40) Obviously Kat has a gift, he always gets what they need for survival, once again very much like animals will. Speaking of acting on animal instincts, you could also bring up the fact that animals don’t need words to know things, they can just tell - which is just like Paul and Kat. “We don’t talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communication with one another than even lovers have…so intimate that we don’t even speak.” (Remarque 94) These animal instincts are also very superhuman too, because something that you can just tell by emotions means that you can see through people like a window or a book simply waiting to be read. Either way it is a wordless communication that can actually say more than words themselves. Often times when you are in an uncomfortable situation with someone, you find the silence hard to handle or constantly needing to be filled; which is our human nature to do so. It is when the silence becomes comforting that you become superhuman. Going home from war is not really an option to soldiers once they have fought the battle and experienced the front. These men have seen death happened right before them, and have more than likely come pretty close to it themselves too. “We can destroy and kill, to save out ourselves” (Remarque 113). By this we can tell that all of these men are desperate to live, get past war and move on. Although as Paul comes to realize this is impossible, because war destroys humans. They all become inhumane by the end of war, with nothing left to live for. Paul really learns this lesson when he goes home for a while, on leave. “I used to live in this room before I was a soldier.” (Remarque 170) Once at home Paul sees he is a different person, unable to connect with his past life, or with any of the people back home who were not created inhumane and destroyed by war. War is inhumane, makes men superhuman and animalistic, but ultimately leaves them as shells with nothing to return to and nothing to look forward to. Their best friend could die and they speak all would speak all of three words; “Katczinsky has died.” (Remarque 295) We see here by this quote that Paul has past his human state – of love and compassion – gone through an animalistic stage – of fear, protecting, and instinct – to a superhuman state – of feeling more than a human is able to – to the final step of becoming a shell – with nothing left at all. Furthermore we can see that war is inhumane. Men go to war as men and learn all sorts of ways to fend for themselves, and survive with close to nothing – but more than anything else how to inhumane humans can really be. Man created this act of killing and with our human nature it was continued on, but what many people failed to see and still do today is that war makes change. They become inhumane during war and the longer they are there the worse it gets, to the point where they will never come back. While they may physically come back, they never will emotionally – because this sense of inhumanity will stick with them from war until they die.