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…
In the first chapter, right away it is revealed that the book is told in first person point of view. The narrator, along with other men fighting in the war, is resting and is five miles away from the line of fighting. They had been fighting for the last fourteen days; one hundred fifty men went, but only eighty survived. He mentions how when they are fighting, they barely get any sleep and that the war wouldn’t be as bad if they had more time to rest. Certain charaters are then introduced: Albert Kropp, Müller, Leer, (and the narrator) Paul Baümer. They are all nineteen-year-old volunteers for the war and were from the same class. Additionally, there are Tjaden, Haie Westhus, Detering, and Stanislaus Katczinsky. During meal time, the cook had prepared food for 150 men, but when the cook realizes that only 80 remained after the rest died in battle, the second company is delighted to have more to eat.…
In this part of the book the group starts finally seeing some action happening around them, there are patrol helicopters flying overhead in the desert, and they constantly have to take cover. One day they are behind some rocks and hear gunfire, they begin to engage the enemies in combat, yet they notice the sound of the guns they are using are the sound an MP5, a sub-machine gun, and that the Bzadians don't use those guns, they use ones from their own technology. This enemy makes them surrender, and it turns out that they are friendly, and are part of the British military. They then decide that when they go to sneak in to the enemy base, they will use the two British soldiers as prisoners, because the group has been worked with with lots of make-up and body…
“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.…
Nationalism can be defined as having a sense of belonging and loyalty to ones country or nation state. Of all the European nations, France was the first to sport the idea of nationalism. Many countries became influenced by the French's ideas of nationalism. As a result nationalism had spread throughout out Europe by the nineteenth and twentieth century. One result that nationalism had on Europe was, the wanting of unification. The people of nation states wanted their country to belong to. This wanting lea d to the unifying of Italy and Germany. Soon nationalism had increased the people's confidence, and a feeling of imperialism ran through the unified countries. Unified countries such as France, Germany, Russia wanted to extend their empires. But this Imperialism in Europe led to many conflicts between countries. All this Conflict eventually resulted in the beginning of World War I The causes of World War I were the intense nationalism that dominated Europe throughout the 19th and into the 20th century, and the establishment of large armies in Europe after 1871. Imperialism created a rivalry between nations and empires. The build up of armies and navies created fear between nations. France feared Germany, Germany feared Russia, Austria-Hungary and Russia rivalled around Balkans, Britain feared German's expanding navy, Slovakia wanted to free Slavian land from Astria-Hungary's oppression. Italy was jealous of French and English colonies in Africa. Ottoman Empire struggled to survive in a hostile climate. Germany signed a secret alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy, thus creating a Triple Alliance. France and Russia signed an Entente agreement which was later signed by Britain, thus creating Triple Entante. Then Europe was divided into hostile camps. During this time nationalism had caused a glorified view of the war. These views showed how inexperienced the people of Europe were in warfare. In Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, we can…
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.…
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…
He is deployed to the Western Front where he then experiences the physical and mental stressors of the war. Paul has a very close group of friends throughout the novel. These friends were also persuaded by their school teacher to enlist in the Army. Though real war tragedies take place, some get badly injured and unfortunately some lose their lives at a very young age in this treacherous war.…
| Paul has lost so much throughout the war, and his generation of people has decresed infinitly. They are losing man after man, and those who aren’t lost will not come back. He has suffered so much loss he has become used to it. The men who have been fighting and survived, have still lost their lives. They were so young coming into the war that they couldn’t get their lives started, and now it is too late to begin. It will be hard for them to adapt to life after war, this is all they have ever known.…
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…
Remarque, Erich Maria, and A. W. Wheen. All Quiet on the Western Front;. Boston: Little, Brown, and, 1929. Print.…
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…
All Quiet on the Western Front is a very dramatic movie about how WWI affected a young group of soldiers. The war affected the soldier’s whole self; it affected them emotionally, physically, and mentally.…
The common theme throughout the entirety of All Quiet on The Western Front is the effects the war has on the characters.Remarque uses this theme throughout the book to effectively portray the mood and tone of the war novel. Paul Baumer is one of the prime victims that shows the change that happens to soldiers when they are traumatized at war. Erich Maria Remarque did…
At the beginning of the story, Paul was a 19 year old who really didn't know what he was getting into, he didn't know that it was going…