Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a World War I anti-war novel that uses different objects that all symbolize different themes that impact the story. The leaves and different seasons impact the storyline to show the point in the lives of Paul and his comrades and to represent their feelings. The beginning of the novel takes place in late summer while everyone is experiencing a short period of lighthearted fun (9). The end of summer is usually associated as a time that people begin to wonder what had happened to the time that had previously appeared to be everlasting. Paul is faced with the stripping of his childhood due to being exposed to the harshness of war immediately after he was living without a care. Paul reports…
In All Quiet on the Western Front, author Erich Maria Remarque reinforces the idea that war is horrific, through his use of visual, auditory, and tactile imagery. Towards the end of the second chapter of the book, Remarque begins to disillusionize the glorious imagery of war by describing the death of Kemmerich, a German soldier and a fellow classmate of the protagonist Paul. Paul and his other classmates that enlisted sit by Kemmerich's deathbed, illustrating the mourning for their comrade by saying “Franz Kemmerich looked as slight and frail as a child...There he lies...Nineteen and a half years old, he does not want to die!” (29) Remarque uses words such as “slight” and “frail” to describe the condition in which Kemmerich is in. As you approach twenty years old, you should be in prime shape, ready for or already in college, strong and independant, not “slight” nor “frail.” When you are twenty, it should be the start of your life, not the end of it.…
In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the author utilizes imagery to describe many of the horrors that the soldiers are accustom to on a daily basis. Many of these horrors described lingered in my mind for some time after reading. I focused on the description made by Paul after an artillery bombardment. In this description, Paul sees his fellow comrades in serve pain, soldiers are holding their intestines in their hands, soldiers have their legs taken, and soldier hands are still hanging on to barbed wire with no body in sight. This is pure brutality.…
In All Quiet on the Western Front, the audience gets to see how Paul Baumer represents his generation, also known as The Lost Generation. In chapter 1 Page 11 Paul states, “The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.” Paul describes how he and many other people envisioned war to be, they underestimated the severity that would be displayed into this war. Throughout the story, we get to see how Paul's character shifts from a positive-innocent kid to an emotionless and lost man.…
Remarque tells of the dehumanizing effects that are perceived in ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. When the young soldiers arrive at the frontline its nothing to what was anticipated as they had “just begun to love the world and being in it, but we had to shoot at it.” Remarque’s characterisation of Paul is naive and inexperienced as he only just begins to grasp the understanding, through torment and fatality, that they didn’t “believe in those things anymore; we believe in war” their new objective was to survive. Trained to disregard their conscience and distancing themselves from their own emotions, taught to let go of their former lifestyle. “Keep things at arm’s length” was their innovative technique in being able to endure the horrors of war. The audience is alarmed by the lack of emotion deemed by the young soldiers through Paul’s metaphoric language that “we have become wild beasts” enlightening context to the overall traumatic experiences that were inflicted. Remarque continues to portray the emotional state in a distant tone that “we are dead” convincing the audience they are completely detached…
Paul’s experience at the front line changes him forever, and loses the urge to fight day by day. Patriotism is believed to fuel wars like this one by inspiring young men to go and fight for the love/pride of their country. These teachings do not conrispond correctly to what’s actually going to happen to them while in the fight for survival. The war was greatly extended because of the trenches. To conclude, patriotism or the love for your country contrasts does greatly contrast when compared because of the realities of war such as the ones that Paul and his friends had to face in the movie “All Quiet on the Western…
This plays a large part in the development of Paul’s relationships with his other comrades’. Paul admires Kat for these qualities, because Kat can find food, he can also calm the men after a crazy and scary fight. Paul inherits a lot of these qualities as his experiences continue; they look out for each other on the front no matter what. Latter in the book, Paul and Kat come up to this Fair Haired Recruit who is now missing his whole leg. During this, Paul wants to shoot him because he knows that this recruit/comrade is going to die if he is sent to the hospital. Paul and Kat stayed with him, and the reason of this was that Paul had comforted him during the bombardment in the creator that a bomb made. In one of the chapters, Kat is seriously injured in his leg. Paul clambers over many injured soldiers (crying for help) to get Kat (demonstrates strong relationship). Paul drags Kat to safety to a nearby ditch to stay out of the bombardment. This shows us that Paul’s developed a relationship with his comrades and that they would all die for one…
The setting in All Quiet on the Western Front takes place around the battlefield of the war, mainly the trenches. It was dark, morbid, chaotic and hopeless. Trench life was dreadful according to Paul. There was so much blood, mud and clamor from the blasts and bombs. The constant pounding of those bombs lasted for days, rumbling in those soldiers' ears. Moldy bread was served and was the only source of nutrition, which caused rats to run about, and also the water supply was scarce. It’s not unusual for soldiers to go insanely mad while cramped in those tiny little ditches while all…
Paul used to be a very sensitive and compassionate young man, who used to enjoy and write poetry before the war. However, all of this changed, as his time in the army made him completely detached from his feelings, disenabling him to experience certain feelings and emotions in the future. Paul describes his new self by saying, “We are dead men with no feelings, who are able by some trick, some dangerous magic, to keep on running and keep on killing.” Paul learned to take his mind completely off his feelings and emotions due to the terror of the war, and the shock of several events he witnessed, and insinuates that they have been transformed into ‘killing machines’. This once again demonstrates that Paul is a character of his time, as he demonstrates intense emotional coldness. The first indication that Paul is unable to mourn his comrades is found when Kemmerich’s death brings him down, but he is still not as depressed as one would be with the death of a…
In every Disney movie, the villain is portrayed as a horrendous beast who was once a human. The thing is, every wicked witch or horrendous beast was once a human with a kind soul who suffered a traumatic event. In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the German soldiers shift from fresh-out-of-high-school kids to shameless killing machines after witnessing the horrors of World War I. In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, while fighting the Vietnam War without understanding its purpose the soldiers are changed after experiencing war’s brutality. Even though one cannot undergo the experience of being in a war zone or fighting for one’s homeland, many lessons can be learned from reading literature.…
First, Paul swears on “everything that is sacred” (Remarque 181) to him for Kemmerich’s mom that her son’s death was painless and fast even though he knows it was Kemmerich suffered a lot through it. Many people wouldn’t consider this as a selfless behavior because Paul is not a very religious man, but seeing that Kemmerich’s mom is religious woman he technically did not care about anything but insuring that Kemmerich’s mother was at peace with her son’s…
In that time, Paul learns that the man is a French printer by the name of Gerard Duval. Paul reads his letters he had in his pocket and finds out that they both have something in common: they are tired of fighting. He feels extreme regret for killing the man, and realizes that despite their different nationalities, humans are, at their core, are the same. In his grief, Paul exclaims, “Comrade, I did not want to kill you…Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, 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—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?” (Remarque 223).…
His mother was very ill, but no one knew what the cause of her illness was. When Paul was sent off for war, he knew in the back of his mind that there was something entirely wrong with his mother, but he had to keep moving forward. Paul and a few other soldiers, Kropp, Muller, and Leer, were all from the same class at home and all volunteered to join the war at the same time. However, they were all heavily persuaded to join by their home schoolmaster, Kantorek. As the four men go to visit their wounded comrade, Kemmerich, Albert Kropp pulled out a letter from their schoolmaster and said, “Kantorek sends you all his best wishes” and the men laughed (Pg. 10). Paul goes on to say that he and his men used to look up to Kantorek and trust him and the idea of authority would associate them with more wisdom, but he said it all changed when “the first death we saw shattered this belief and the first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces” (Pg. 12-13). By that quote, Paul is saying that at first, he and the other men were ready to join the war and take on the authority and wisdom that they thought they would receive while joining, however, the little of what they have seen so far was so brutal that they think Kantorek was lying and they don’t believe anything good will come from…
Although fighting in World War I is definitely an important experience for Paul, it is certainly not an exciting one. In his epigraph, Remarque says that “death is not an adventure for those who face it.” In this quote, Remarque clearly explains why warfare is not an adventure for soldiers fighting in war. Paul describes his encounters in much detail and explains why his time in war was not an adventure. For example, in one of his experiences with trench warfare, he says, “The belly of [horse] is ripped open, the guts trail out. He becomes tangled in them and falls, then he stands up again” (63). In this scene, Paul watches as a wounded horse trips over its own entrails. It is written in extremely vivid detail and would not be something one would see in an “exciting” and “thrilling” adventure. The language in this scene is very strong and intense, causing the reader to feel Paul’s emotions through Remarque’s words. Also, Paul sees, “In the branches dead men are hanging. A naked soldier is squatting in the fork of a tree, he still has his helmet on, otherwise he is entirely unclad. There is only half of him sitting up there, the top half, the legs are missing” (208). Many of the action scenes in this novel are full of gory detail and makes it seem much more genuine than something one would read in a romanticized novel. Authors of romanticized war novels often portray…
This is also shown through Paul’s relationship with Rosie who he, during the early stages of their association, dislikes, despite her obvious affection for him. But as he grows and matures, he gains appreciation for Rosie and even later on in the book where he becomes very self focused and self involved, he says that ‘at a time when most of my love was saved for myself, that I loved her was no small feat.’…