ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
All Quiet on the Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque is a first hand experience account of the war. The horror of the war and Remarque's own terrifying experiences and memories would certainly have effected what he wrote.
All Quiet on the Western Front was published in March 1929, London. The late publication of the novel may have been due to the grief and trauma that Remarque experienced in the war. All Quite on the Western Front was written for the millions of men who fought for their countries. Remarque's intent, is to recount the pain and misery that the soldiers experienced during the war and to acknowledge their remarkable courage. Remarque does not mention any specific country or nationality in his book, in order for all soldiers to be identified as a whole, they all had the same goals and experienced the same fears, regardless of their nationality.
“ A generation of men… who were destroyed by war” Remarque's comment would have been prompted by his own experiences of war and how he, like all soldiers were a generation destroyed by patriarchy, they fought for the love of their country. “Even though they have escaped its shells, (they) were destroyed by war.” Remarque means that they may have escaped the battle physically, but emotionally they are unable to escape the horror and the lasting effects of the brutality of war.
Paul and Kat were two characters in the novel that represented the typical 20th century soldier. They dealt with malnourished and dealt with disease and death everyday, like most soldiers they had to come to terms with life at war and in the trenches.
The soldiers changed a great deal, each day they had to become stronger and stronger as the war became more brutal.
Comrade companionship is the one thing that kept the soldiers from falling completely apart. They strongly relied on one another to help them when injured, mentally and physically. They helped eachother by cooperating and sharing food. The soldier’s minds were re-adjusted due to the war and they knew that fate was in their own hands and the hands of their comrades. Paul felt truly at home on the front. He was seen as somewhat of a hero. He had a very difficult time readjusting when he was injured and sent home.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a book written by Erich Maria Remarque. It was a book written to reflect the human cost of war. It shows us how war has a hidden face that most people do not see until it is too late. In the novel, he describes a group of young men who at first think war is glorious. But as the war drags on, the group discovers how war is not all it is set out to be. As the war went on, they saw their friends either die or be permanently wounded. Then the end comes when there was only one person left.
Life for the soldiers in the beginning is a dramatic one as they are ordered up to the frontline to wire fences. The frontline makes Paul feel immediately different as described here. "As if something is inside us, in our blood, has been switched on." The front makes Paul more aware and switched on as if his senses and reactions are sharpened. I think Paul and his friends are frightened when they are near the front line. After they wire the fences and they are heading to the barracks their group start to be fired at by the enemy. They manage to get through the shelling unscathed but they hear a horse that has been shot. The horse makes a terrible noise of anguish and is in terrible pain and it has been shot as the author describes here. "The belly of one of the horses has been ripped open and it guts are trailing out." This shows that there are not just human casualties of war; the innocent lives of animals can be affected as much as humans who fight in wars. Detering-one soldier in Pauls group-says." It is the most despicable thing of all to drag animals into a war." I agree with Detering, as animals had no choice about going to war. On the way back to the trucks that would take them back to the barracks Paul Baumers company are hit again by heavy shelling and they have to take cover in a military graveyard. The shells blow huge holes in the graveyard and create large...
“We did not break down, but adapted ourselves” These soldiers know that modern warfare is extremely complicated and demands knowledge and experience. They learn how the differentiate shell sounds, when to take cover, when it’s safe to take off your gas mask, how to tell shrapnel from high explosives. It is shown through the naive and inexperienced recruits that not knowing and applying this knowledge is fatal. Some soldiers call on their innermost animal instincts to allow them to kill mercilessly on the field, using the assistance of a metaphor Remarque writes “We are dead men with no feelings, who are able by some trick to keep on running and keep on killing.” Granted war is a barbaric affair, ironically sometimes the worst of conditions can bring out the best in people. This is through the form of comrade and mate ship. On the field fellow soldiers would provide mutual support for each other and create extremely tight bonds. This is shown in All Quiet on the Western Front through Paul and his tight nit platoon. Paul’s unique experience with mate ship is how especially close he is with his friend Kat. This is expressed in the recounting of when they stole and cooked a goose together. Remarque writes “We don't talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have.” This shows how mate ship was
On June, 17th 1775 began a fight between the British and the Americans, it took place on Breed’s HIll. In Charlestown Peninsula, North side of Boston Harbor, this battle was the bloodest of the Revoltionary in America. The British Commander, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, Major General William Howe. There were about 2,400 troops being lead by Major general Howe.
War can destroy a young man mentally and physically. One might say that nothing good comes out of war, but in Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, there is one positive characteristic: comradeship. Paul and his friends give Himmelstoss a beating in which he deserves due to his training tactics. This starts the brotherhood of this tiny group. As explosions and gunfire sound off a young recruit in his first battle is gun-shy and seeks reassurance in Paul's chest and arms, and Paul gently tells him that he will get used to it. The relationship between Paul and Kat is only found during war, in which nothing can break them apart. The comradeship between soldiers at war is what keeps them alive, that being the only good quality to come out of war.
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, is a classic anti-war novel about the personal struggles and experiences encountered by a group of young German soldiers as they fight to survive the horrors of World War One. Remarque demonstrates, through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier, how the war destroyed an entire generation of men by making them incapable of reintegrating into society because they could no longer relate to older generations, only to fellow soldiers.
The new technological advances of weapons add to the cruelty and tragedy of World War 1. This ultimately is why Remarque focuses on the losses suffered by Paul and his fellow soldiers. In addition, the observations made by Remarque are not unique to war and are exemplified by the struggles soldiers, like Paul, face physically and
Paul and his company were once aspiring youth just graduating school thinking about having a wonderful life. Sometimes things don’t always play out the way you want. The effects of war on a soldier is another big theme in the novel. Paul describes how they have changed and how death doesn’t affect them anymore. “We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defen...
The next morning, Kat and Albert see Paul off on his train. He travels through the villages and cities, observing the scenery. When he arrives at his hometown, Paul is flooded with memories from his surroundings; he recognizes the landmarks of his home, such as the square watch-tower and the great mottled lime tree. He starts to feel like an outsider as if he didn’t belong in the civilized
When Paul is about to go on his leave, he visits with his fellow soldiers and thinks to himself, “I will be away for six weeks - that is lucky, of course, but what may happen before I get back? Shall I meet all these fellows again?” (Remarque 152). Paul is fearing that his comrades will die in the war as he is on leave. Remarque utilizes this fear to show Paul’s true comradery with his friends and to show that a soldier has far more to worry about than himself in the war; a soldier always has friends to worry about. On top of that, Paul is worried about his mother and even says, “...how can it be that I must part from you...we have so much to say, and we shall never say it” (Remarque 184). Paul understands that he will most likely die in the war, and therefore, he dreads leaving his mother. Remarque adds this detail in to express how war often causes far more grief than ever thought of before. He uses it to show that war takes away much more than a man’s body, that it also takes away a man’s mind, and destroys his family with grief. With only a few ties to reality, Paul must fight through the cloudedness in his mind as well as the war.
Throughout their lives, people must deal with the horrific and violent side of humanity. The side of humanity is shown through the act of war. This is shown in Erich Remarque’s novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front”. War is by far the most horrible thing that the human race has to go through. The participants in the war suffer irreversible damage by the atrocities they witness and the things they go through.
After entering the war in young adulthood, the soldiers lost their innocence. Paul’s generation is called the Lost Generation because they have lost their childhood while in the war. When Paul visits home on leave he realizes that he will never be the same person who enlisted in the army. His pre-war life contains a boy who is now dead to him. While home on leave Paul says “I used to live in this room before I was a soldier” (170).
Remarque also tried to teach his audience. Written within a decade of the end of the war, the book calls on those who forfeited their youth to the war not to allow time to hide what had happened. Time may heal all wounds, but the cause of those wounds must not be forgotten, nor allowed to repeat itself. The author is; however, pragmatic enough to realize that all will not learn the lesson; nevertheless, those who are willing to learn it will discover that the story has been told before, and without their intervention, it is doomed to be told again.
Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. New York. Little, Brown and Company. 1957. Book.
Morality has been a subject of many philosophical discussions that has prompted varied responses from different philosophers. One of the most famous approaches to morality is that of Immanuel Kant in his writing Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals. Kant in this work argues that the reason for doing a particular action or the drive to do good things is a fundamental basis of defining moral quality in a person. To him, an action could be considered morally right only if the motivation behind doing that action was out of ‘goodwill’. When he defines these moral rules, he characterizes them in the form of imperatives – the hypothetical imperative and categorical imperative. While hypothetical imperatives deal with motivations and actions that lead to a particular end, categorical imperatives are a product of rational behavior in human beings. Kant considers such categorical imperatives to be the moral basis for life.