In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque creates Paul Bäumer to represent a whole generation of men who are known to history as the "lost generation." Eight million men died in battle, twenty-one million were injured, and over six and a half million noncombatants were killed in what is called "The Great War." Throughout the story, I feel that the generation has gone through an event that…
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…
Paul Baumer, a young German soldier at age 19, is the protagonist, main character and narrator of the story…
Paul Bäumer is a German, young boy, who, together with his classmates, enlists for the army to fight in the Great War. Full of enthusiasm and adventurous thoughts, they arrive at the front, but then are faced with the horrific and soul-destroying war. One by one the classmates are fall in action……
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.…
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…
In the book “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Remarque, the author uses nature, and comradeship, to describe what the characters are going through. Erich uses nature in several ways, such as describing how the soldiers are facing terrible hardships, also it reflects on their sadness, and provides a contrast to the unnatural world of war. The author also uses the theme Comradeship through all the horrifying pictures of death and inhumanity, he talks about when Paul and his friends pick on Himmelstoss and beat him. We think it’s funny because Himmelstoss deserves it for being rude to them, and Paul and his friends are just giving him what he deserves. As we start going farther into the book, we start to realize that beating on someone isn’t funny anymore. We read the how the soldiers feel after assaulting and killing other people, it gives us a disturbing thought about war.…
Erich Maria Remarque’s original 1928 novel, turned movie, All Quiet on The Western Front, is very useful in helping to understand the many social and cultural difficulties soldiers faced in WW1 during the period of 1914-1918. One could argue that the given film is reliable, but being a secondary source this is arguable. AQOTWF exhibits the saviour physical, and mental stress German soldiers of World War 1 encountered, and the raw emotional detachment from civilian life displayed by many on returning home from the front. The film has a strong connection and relation to many poems, letters and images received and taken right from the Western Front itself and is very useful in helping viewers to grasp unique insight of physically commencing in battle, living conditions, and rare friendships formed in such harsh, dreadful conditions.…
“The first bombs, the first explosion, burst into our hearts.” (Remarque 88) This is what the soldiers felt like in Erich Maria Remarque novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer, a young man serving in the German army during World War One, is constantly being faced with the horrible and terrifying aspects of war. From seeing, his fellow soldiers lying dead on the battle field, to learning how to survive on the western front of the war. With his rifle by his side and his comrade’s right next to him, he knew what his job was to do in the war and that was to serve his country. Although Paul fought for his country in the War, Corrie Ten Boom a member of the Dutch reformed church was faced with the horrific scenes…
The novel, All Quiet on the Western Front is the harshest story about war ever written. This novel was written by Erich Maria Remarque, based on his real life experience about World War 1. It tells a story about a group of companions at war and how they live their life everyday there. After analyzing the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, readers realized that almost all the characters were either very noble or not noble at all. The one character that stood out of all the character for being a noble man was the narrator, Paul. He is the most noble for being loyal to all his companions, for being sensitive to others and for being selfless in difficult times.…
The protagonist of the All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer, says, "I believe we are lost" (Remarque 123). The soldiers themselves recognize that they are part of a lost generation. They are, "forlorn like children, and experienced like old men" (123). Lost Generation is revealed in All Quiet on the Western Front through the young soldiers loss of innocence, loss of life, and loss of home. The First World War has no positive effect on the lives of the young soldiers.…
In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Bäumer and his generation feel separated from the rest of the world. These boys’ lives were drastically changed by the war, and “even though they may have escaped its shells, they were destroyed by the war,” (Remarque Epigraph) describing that even though they survived the war physically,they were mentally destroyed by the dangers and chaos of war. Paul expresses that “he has been crushed without knowing it” and “does not belong anymore, it is a foreign world” (Remarque 168). The generation of men who fought in the war are “pushed aside,” (Remarque 249) as an unpleasant reminder of a war that society would like to disregard. After surviving such dreadful…
Paul Baumer is one of the many young men who share this fate. Throughout the novel, he expresses his disillusionment with the ordinary life on numerous occasions: he does not feel home at the house of his family, his civilian clothes “feel[s] awkward”, and, overall, he thinks that people who have not been through war cannot understand him (Remarque 164). He is longing for home and his ordinary life; however “a sense of strangeness will not leave [him], [he] cannot feel at home among these things”, he thinks that there is “a veil, between” him, his sister, and his mother. The reason for that is not that they stopped loving each other after he went to the war; the reason is that despite the fact that they love him and sympathize with him, they cannot understand the reality of the war (Remarque 160). Other people want to hear about his and German army exploits and treat him as props who is at war to bring glory to the nation. They speak convincing words about glory, fame, and progress, and youth like Paul believes them, at first; however, after they see their friends dying and other terrors that war brings it all loses its meaning. Paul admits that sometimes he is jealous of people who just live their civilian lives; however, on…
War is often viewed as one of the most dangerous and brutal events ever created. It utterly destroys the humanity and mental state of soldiers fighting in the war. In All Quiet on the Western Front, a world renowned war novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the epigraph states that this novel “will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.” Staying true to this quote, Remarque tells of the horrors of World War I and fittingly describes the effects that war has on humans through the eyes of the protagonist, Paul Bäumer. In his epigraph Remarque says, “this book is to be neither an accusation, nor a confession, and least of all an adventure.” Except for a few notable exceptions,…
Living around a person that was in war might be difficult. Maybe because we don’t understand what is going on with their minds. We think that it might go away fast but when we read All Quiet we understand that the men in the war go through a lot. We read how Paul’s psyche gets messed up by having to go through the war. He thinks the opposite way than he should. The wrong things he things of the as any simple thing. And the right…