Preview

Summary: All Quiet On The Western Front

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1049 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Summary: All Quiet On The Western Front
The Effects of World War 1 The negative effects of World War 1 are endless. Despite some of the positive outcomes, the book focuses on the main points of how the soldiers felt emotionally, physically, and mentally. When reading the book, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, one can further understand the true sadness, physical pain, and mental exhaustion that the German soldiers actually went through. This changes our perspective about the war because we can oversee our American bias and understand the pain on both sides. When Paul says, “We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through,” it shows how although there were hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting together, the pain and the suffering was …show more content…
The soldiers experienced such physical, emotional, and mental pain that they became unfit for fighting. It is estimated that almost one third of soldiers that died didn’t die from the war, but from the pain the war caused aside from fighting, such as: famine, emotional sickness, and mental breakdowns. The author, Erich Maria Remarque, shows the reader new perspectives and gives them different ideas to focus on to illustrate the severity of the Effects of World War One. In perception, all of the endless pain was pointless. The war was at a standstill point; such unnecessary harm was caused for what? To prove that one country can kill more than another? To prove that one alliance can outlast another? The main idea is this: The war was a waste of time, money, technology, and life. The book shows how the soldiers suffered, which adds to the idiocy that caused the war to continue. After reading the book, it is apparent that the war only caused harm. The war itself lead to millions of lives being lost, countries being torn apart, an economic downfall- the list is endless. In the end, there is only one final question readers and historians have to ask to understand the war: Was it really worth it all? After reading the book, the answer is no. The mental instability, physical pain, and emotional sadness was not worth

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    All Quiet on the Western Front is by Erich Maria Remarque. This book was an extraordinary war story. Remarque uses excellent words and phrases to describe crucial details of the book. Remarque had first hand experience‚ because he was a German in World War I. So he expresses his opinions through Paul‚ the main character of the book. One of the strongest themes in this book is that war makes man inhuman. From the author's point of view soldiers was often compared to various non­living objects‚ that were inhuman. The soldiers are compared to coins of different provinces that are melted down‚ and now they bear the same stamp(236). Remarque thinks that the soldiers mind state has been changed from when they were school boys‚ the stamp being the…

    • 321 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may happen” said Paul in All Quiet On the Western Front. In this book friends from college are recruited to the army to fight for their country in the Great War. The boys were full of pride until they got to the front and were conquered by fear. The front wasn’t what they expected; everything that was done was for nothing but survival. Like any war the war came to an end but not all the college classmates/friends survived, and many of them didn’t get the chance to visit their families. This was a good book due to its tone, theme, point of view, and plot.…

    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, vivid images of gruesome animal instincts and the innocent animals’ lives ending are illustrated for the reader repeatedly. Remarque indicates that for a soldier’s survival in battle they must cease sanity and rely solely on primitive instinct. This notion of animal instincts leads soldiers to be less like a human being with rational thoughts. The protagonist, Paul Bäumer, believes he is a “human animal,” and similarly, soldiers who survive multiple attacks think the same. Battle has wounded many, and throughout the novel the reader is given a chance…

    • 778 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the story All Quiet On The Western Front, the author Erich Maria Remarque uses the motif of blood and death to display a theme of withering innocence, and how soldiers had to witness horrible events through humanity’s downfall. Erich uses animals to show crude human nature, the story describes to us how “the belly of one horse is ripped open, the guts trail out. He becomes tangled in them and falls, then he stands up again” (63 Remarque). This passage of gruesome death shows decaying innocence by humans forcing innocent creatures of the land, to fight for their own selfish needs and ways. Throughout the story, Paul is thrown again and again into life or death situations, “I grab for my gas-mask.…

    • 245 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, the author uses strong imagery and detailed descriptions to convey the horrors of the Great War and their detrimental effects on soldiers from all fronts. Images such as desperation, starvation, trauma, guilt, and camaraderie create a lasting impression on the reader as they are planted in the shoes of German soldiers, fighting and depending upon each other for survival. These themes were the unfortunate reality of life in the trenches, where rival sides are united in the battle of maintaining sanity and preserving life in any way possible. Specific images that have lingered in my mind after reading the novel are the types of brutal weaponry used in warfare. Trench mortars blew the clothes right…

    • 315 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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.…

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    World War 1 was centered in Europe and began in 1914 and ended in 1918. This war had over 17 million casualties ranking it one of the deadliest conflicts in human history. Remarque is a veteran of War who has been injured five times, the last time quite seriously. Veterans are known to cope with being back from war in many different ways. Writing a book that shows the reality of war is Remarques way of coping. Remarque,using repetition on the emphasis of youth, omissing the real way Kemmerich died when he told Kemmerich’s mother, having Paul die on a regular and quiet day and using pathos to make one feel sympathy, wrote All Quiet on the Western Front as an anti-war novel.…

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    My knowledge of World War One was solely built on the works of European writers, which I had a chance to read in high school and university. The books such as All Quiet on the Western Front by German writer Erich Maria Remarque, Death of a Hero by English poet Richard Aldington, Doctor Zhivago by Russian novelist Boris Pasternak and The Good Soldier Švejk by Czech satirist Jaroslav Hašek shaped my view on the subject, giving me a chance to see the history from many different perspectives. However, only this semester, taking the course with professor Gendal, I finally got an opportunity to learn about American view on this historic event. Among all the books we have read, Company K by William March stood out the most; this book got my full attention from the first page. Company K is an intense…

    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout history, war has been constantly evolving. Over time, it has taken a new less glorious form. World War One was one of the most devastating and transformative events in human history. In Erich Maria Remarque’s book, All Quiet on the Western Front, he depicts the horrors of “the great war” by showing the complete disregard for human life in modern warfare. This war modeled the way that any future war would be fought. It would shape human history by completely changing the game of warfare and people’s opinions of it. Remarque shows, from his point of view, the terrors that happen on a daily basis on the front lines, and away from it, of World War One. World War One changed the perception of war in a big way and opened the eyes of so many people to the horrors of modern warfare.…

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Airman Boots Symbolism

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Imagine being situated in World War One behind the German Frontlines what would should a person do to stay alive and to stay well enough to survive another day in war? Erich Maria Remarque, the author of the realistic war novel All Quiet on the Western Front . All Quiet on the Western Front categorizes itself as “The greatest war novel of all time” so the genre of the book is realistic fiction and a war novel. The book depicts a story of young adults that enlist in the army and fights for the german frontlines while in war many of them die and their friends and family have to grief over their lost. Erich Maria Remarque's novel main focuses is on “affected war on soldier”. “Affected war on soldier” is one of the most important theme in Remarque’s…

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel about a young teenager named Paul Baumer and his friends who enlist in the war. He and his friends in World War I. Paul and many of his friends from school volunteered to join the army after listening to their teacher, Kantorek talk about how honorable it is to fight for your country. When the boys started training, they realized that war was a lot more harsh than they had anticipated. After experiencing about two months of rough training from their cruel trainer, Corporal Himmelstoss, they realized that the talk and rumors about war were completely opposite than the reality of it. They lost their belief that war is glorious or honorable, and they live in constant fear; physical and emotional. Much like actual soldiers, Paul had a difficult time recapturing what his life used to be when on leave back in his hometown. Paul goes through more trauma than any young man should. His friends were killed in war one by one as Paul wondered why he was still alive. He faced many trials; guilt from killing enemies who he believed were just people like he was, losing friends, and losing himself. Paul was injured multiple times at war, and was eventually killed. This book focuses mainly on the struggles of a young man at war and his battle to overcome it.…

    • 1097 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The military life has not treated me well at all, and all of the propaganda about the Germans back home riled me up for a job that I would have never expected. The living conditions here are horrid, and every day I question how I am still living and have enough power left in my body to write this letter. Every day, my friends in my platoon die from either the awful conditions, or they are blown to fractions from enemy shrapnel. Besides the numerous dead bodies, there are large, repulsive rats that feed on the dead bodies of my friends. Since they are so numerous, they’ve gotten bold enough to start stealing our bread.…

    • 399 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    This story is about a nineteen year old soldier named Paul Baumer followed by his friends while at war and it shows how it effects each and every one of them physically and mentally.“We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.”(Remarque 13) World War I was a tragic war with more than 9 million soldiers dead, and roughly 21 million were injured in the end. Germany and France both sent millions of men between the ages 15-50 into the war. Throughout the book and the movie you can see and understand all of the tragic deaths that occurred on both sides of this war. Not only were there millions of deaths by the fighting but also many deaths by other things such as, soldier dying from lack of food, lack of reinforcements, rats running through the trenches, and lastly deadly gases in the air. Any soldier that actually did survive was considered “lucky” to Paul Baumer. “We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life.…

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    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,…

    • 1401 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Soldier's Home Analysis

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages

    World War I was cruel and horrifying, for every one who lives in this world. However, there were some people who had it the worst. It was the soldiers during the war. A lot of soldier who returned from the war, was diagnosed with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). This disorder has a psychological effect on soldiers. This disorder might cause soldiers to act different. They might hurt people that they are close to, or do anything to avoid complications. They might avoid people, ignore or hurt people, to avoid becoming friends. Ernest Hemingway was a soldier, during World War I. Which made him write ‘’Soldier’s Home’’ to show the psychological state of a soldier.…

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays