Erich Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

Through Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front the reader learns that war is not all combat and wounded men. It is brainwashing soldiers, forcing them to forget their homes and families. The war suffocates innocent people simply trying to serve their country, and turns them into living corpses. In the beginning of the book all the new soldiers are very excited. They are fresh into the war and ready to fight for their country. They bond over talk of their life at home and some of their hobbies that they miss already. They join together against their superiors and constantly disrespect them. It is all fun and games. Soon they find out war is not all they thought it would be. They assumed that if they could get through the training,
bad conditions, hand-to-hand combat, and the death, that they could handle the war. Unfortunately, they learn the hard way that it can not only destroy you physically but also mentally. For example, a quote from the main character Paul is, “…we recognized that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill,” this is the beginning of when their minds started to be taken over by the war. It shows that war is over everything and more important than remembering where you came from. However, everyone stilled tried to constantly pretend that it was not real. They played cards while their base was being bombed and they would talk like there was not hundreds of people being shot right above the trench they were hiding in. They continuously tried to escape from their reality. Another example is when Paul visited the Russian prisoners.
He gets a glimpse into how the war has changed these people and how it will eventually change him. Luckily, these men still held on to their hobbies. One played an instrument and others kept themselves busy with games from when they were children. Paul felt bad for the imprisoned and even snuck in food for them. This shows that he is already giving into the strength of war. At one point in the book the main character Paul was forced to lay in a trench with a dead Russian soldier. This was one of the most obvious turning points for him and his mind. He had to kill this man with hand-to-hand combat and then lay there looking at him for days. The guilt ate him alive, especially when he found out he had a whole family at home. From that point on he lost hope. Even his friend’s did just from hearing about it. One would rather be killed than losing a leg. Everything hits them harder after that. In chapter eleven one soldier gets reminded of home from a leaf that flew past them. Before that leaf he was not even thinking about his life before. This is because they have lost all hope completely. They have decided not even to waste time dreaming of returning home. They are mindlessly going on with their lives and not caring where it
goes. By the end of the book, when Paul dies, he says he was almost glad to go. That he did not have anything to look forward to if he lived. He knew that if he ever returned home it would not be the same. He knew that everywhere he turned he would be reminded of war. It would never be the same and he actually dreaded going back. All of his friends died before him and he was all alone. And he knew that even if he went home to family, that feeling of loneliness would continue to haunt him all his life. War took an innocent person and killed them. Not just by a shot in the heart but with poison in their mind. It took away their will to live. Erich Remarque was able to show readers a glimpse of what this felt like.