Analysis Of Erich Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

“Their accounts conflict on significant details. But one thing they all agree on: the event provoked a seismic response” (Eksteins 10). Similarly, there are many accounts of what happened during The Great War, however, there is no accurate description of soldiers’ experiences. There are many resemblances between the opening night of Le Sacre du printemps and The Great War, but the resemblance that stands out the most is the different experiences each spectator had from both of these events. In “All Quiet on The Western Front,” Erich Remarque conveys a war account that focuses on the insightful depiction of the inner and social experiences faced by soldiers during the Great War rather than the physical combat. Therefore Remarque’s fictional
The war brought about new technology such as poison gas. Remarque presents the idea of improved technology to portray the instability that it brought to the soldiers. Remarque writes, “They are always completely calm, that is predominant in them; and if they are not really calm they become so” (Remarque 120). This description shows how a soldier recollects what brings him peace and how the war has altered his tranquility. Another, circumstance that Remarque magnifies is the effects of poison gas on the soldier. For example, “I remember the awful sight in the hospital: the gas patients who in a day-long suffocation cough up their burnt lung clots” (Remarque 68). This description represents the terrible effects that poison gas had on the soldiers if it had not already killed them in a battle. In all, Remarque captures the harm that done to the soldiers physically and mentally through the use of technologically advanced
“All Quiet in the Western Front” is a social commentary on how soldiers are effected emotionally and socially throughout the war and are conflicted on how to readjust to their lives after the Great War. Soldiers are conflicted by their character and do not know whether to pick back life up as a youth or as adults who have endured hard circumstances. The book does not focus on battles and it does not focus on a specific time frame, it rather evaluates what goes through the minds of a soldier. These men are literally being bombarded in the war front by explosives and in the home front by misinformed public who want to know the extremity of the war. Bystanders set High expectations for soldiers to be tough and to know how to behave in order to survive, yet those who did not participate in the Great War could only speculate what was going on in the soldier’s minds. The Great War damaged these soldiers physically and mentally, however certain elements gave the survivors the ability to pull through the war. The youth shifted its mentality and lost its innocence in the Great War. Therefore, Remarque did not focus his book on the combat that took place during the Great War, rather he presents social issues, which does not belittle his experience rather it presents a different view of the