All Quiet On The Western Front Effects Of War

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Recommended: Literary impacts of world war 1

Unlike most writers, the author of All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque portrays war as it really is; full of visions with fear, butchery, and meaningless deaths instead of an abundance of romanticized and glory descriptions. Remarque includes the terror and savagery of war, showing the physical and mental toll taken on the soldiers. The only way for them to survive was to disconnect themselves from their emotions and the events happening around them.
The worst part of the war is the fact that even the soldiers who survived the war are broken by it. Remarque describes that generation as men who “may have escaped the shells, [but] were destroyed by the war.” After experiencing the war, they were shell-shocked or had PTSD so returning to life was abnormal. …show more content…

As Albert points out, “Kat and Detering and Haie will go back to their jobs… but we never had any. How will we ever get used to one after this” (86). Now that they have fought in the war, they will never emotionally be the same again. This puts the entire generation of young fighters at a disadvantage because it will be harder for them to move on from the war. Without a passion or love to anchor themselves to, their personality could be lost. In addition to fighting, the juveniles watched their surrounding friends be shoot down from around them. Seeing someone die and knowing that it could of easily of been you takes a toll on a person’s mental state. That is why many men distanced themselves from emotions like sadness; it was the only way for them to survive. Muller asks Kemmerich “[w]ill you be taking [the boots] with you” (16), for that exact reason. Logically, since Kemmerich can no longer use the boots Muller should get them to replace his raggedy pair. But at the same time, it feels insensitive to ask a dying man for his belongings before he gets to die in peace. Since Muller is

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