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Perception of war
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In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul, the main character is a nineteen-year-old man who voluntarily joins the German army to fight in World War I against the French. Paul went into the war full of nationalism and ready to fight for his country. Soon after entering training, Paul began to realize that there is way more to war than just fighting for his country. Because it contains evidence of dehumanization and disconnectedness with the world, Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front reveals soldiers who are blindsided by the effects war has on them.
Throughout the novel, Paul, the main character faces many adversities that cause him to become less human. There are many instances where Paul and his fellow soldiers
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In the novel, the men have this sense of alienation that completely takes over them. They feel as though after the war, their life has become meaningless and unimportant, “A sense of alienation becomes overwhelming . . . The young soldiers feel cut off from their now- meaningless prewar existence, unable to visualize a future after the war . . .” (Armitage). Paul finds it difficult to imagine a life without war and to remember how he felt before the war. He feels uncomfortable wearing the attire any other normal man would wear on a daily basis. He feels as though he cannot live a normal life with a suit on, “I feel awkward. The suit is rather tight and short; I have grown in the army. Collar and tie give me some trouble” (Remarque 149.) Paul finds it difficult to speak with his family now since he has returned from war, “These requests all lead to Baumer’s alienation from life at home. . .As the war’s madness increases, home fades into alienation for Baumer” (Schileper). “Some men may even begin to doubt the purpose of their mission, question the reason they are fighting and distrust the justifications of their leaders . . .the more cold- blooded they become in their own thoughts and actions”
Everyone knows what war is. It's a nation taking all of its men, resources, weapons and most of its money and bearing all malignantly towards another nation. War is about death, destruction, disease, loss, pain, suffering and hate. I often think to myself why grown and intelligent individuals cannot resolve matters any better than to take up arms and crawl around, wrestle and fight like animals. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque puts all of these aspects of war into a vivid story which tells the horrors of World War 1 through a soldier's eyes. The idea that he conveys most throughout this book is the idea of destruction, the destruction of bodies, minds and innocence.
Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel All Quiet on the Western Front is based on World War I; it portrays themes involving suffering, comradeship, chance and dehumanization. The novel is narrated by Paul, a young soldier in the German military, who fights on the western front during The Great War. Like many German soldiers, Paul and his fellow friends join the war after listening to the patriotic language of the older generation and particularly Kantorek, a high school history teacher. After being exposed to unbelievable scenes on the front, Paul and his fellow friends realize that war is not as glorifying and heroic as the older generation has made it sound. Paul and his co-soldiers continuously see horrors of war leading them to become hardened, robot-like objects with one goal: the will to survive.
In the novel, when Paul goes on leave if shows how his mindset changes because of war. He was once excited about the idea, but it changes after some time. ‘They are different men here, men I cannot properly understand, whom I envy and despise.” (169). During leave, Paul noticed that people back home have a whole different idea of war. He also seems a bit jumpy while on leave. “After I have been startled a couple of times in the street by the screaming of the tramcars.”(165). This displays the
War destroys Paul and his friends. Those who physically survive the bombing, the bullets and bayonets are annihilated by physical attacks on their sanity.
While soldiers are often perceived as glorious heroes in romantic literature, this is not always true as the trauma of fighting in war has many detrimental side effects. In Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front, the story of a young German soldier is told as he adapts to the harsh life of a World War I soldier. Fighting along the Western Front, nineteen year old Paul Baumer and his comrades begin to experience some of the hardest things that war has to offer. Paul’s old self gradually begins to deteriorate as he is awakened to the harsh reality of World War 1, depriving him from his childhood, numbing all normal human emotions and distancing the future, reducing the quality of his life. At the age of nineteen, Paul naively enlists in World War 1, blind to the fact he has now taken away his own childhood.
To truly understand the life of a soldier, one must go through the struggles of wartime combat. The reality of participating in war is that there is not only a physical aspect that changes a soldier, but mental aspects too. The Things They Carried and All Quiet On The Western Front both portray a number of similar topics. O’brien and Remarque interpret the speculation of wartime in dramatic yet necessary measures as betrayal of youth, the transformation of man to animal, and the horrors of war.
The soldiers forget about the past, with good food and rest. Paul contemplates why they forget things so quickly; he thinks that habit helps eradicate memory. When one good thing happens, everything else is forgotten. The men turn into “wags” and “loafers” while resting. They cannot burden themselves with the emotions from the consequences
The front is draining Paul of his humanity. It is a “mysterious whirlpool” which sucks him, his humanity “slowly, inescapably, irresistibly into itself” (55). He is being pulled towards the fighting and the front, and consequently away from his humanity and identity as a civilian. However, his humanity is not fully gone. Paul feels that he is in the “still water away from its centre”, not yet inside the whirlpool (55). Inevitably, it will pull him in, but he is not yet completely lost to the front.
Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that takes you through the life of a soldier in World War I. Remarque is accurately able to portray the episodes soldiers go through. All Quiet on the Western Front shows the change in attitudes of the men before and during the war. This novel is able to show the great change war has evolved to be. From lining your men up and charging in the eighteenth century, to digging and “living” in the trenches with rapid-fire machine guns, bombs, and flame-throwers being exposed in your trench a short five meters away. Remarque makes one actually feel the fun and then the tragedy of warfare. At the beginning of the novel Remarque gives you nationalist feelings through pride of Paul and the rest of the boys. However at the end of the war Remarque shows how pointless war really is. This is felt when everyone starts to die as the war progresses.
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.
World War I had a great effect on the lives of Paul Baumer and the young men of his generation. These boys’ lives were dramatically changed by the war, and “even though they may have escaped its shells, [they] were destroyed by the war” (preface). In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer and the rest of his generation feel separated from the other men, lose their innocence, and experience comradeship as a result of the war.
Remarque describes Paul’s expectation of war and the reality of war by stating how Paul always thought fighting in a war is a honorable and noble thing to do so ("Mrs. Jernigan's Class Discussion." ). The reality of it turned out to be horrible. He realized it was all just a cliche. He watched his comrades die in pain. Paul grew up to be a compassionate young man, then he became a person who is unable to mourn the deceased, and unable to express his feelings, nor be around his family. “Paul’s experience is intended to represent the experience of a whole generation of men, the so-called lost generation…” (SparkNotes).
All Quiet on the Western Front is the story of Paul Baumer’s service as a soldier in the German army during World War I. Paul and his classmates enlist together, share experiences together, grow together, share disillusionment over the loss of their youth, and the friends even experience the horrors of death-- together. Though the book is a novel, it gives the reader insights into the realities of war. In this genre, the author is free to develop the characters in a way that brings the reader into the life of Paul Baumer and his comrades. The novel frees the author from recounting only cold, sterile facts. This approach allows the reader to experience what might have been only irrelevant facts if presented in a textbook.
We are yet again reminded of how little the soldiers knew of the real world and just how far removed they were from it. “We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers—we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals”. (Remarque, 56) This is not the only reference we find to the men resorting to crude, almost inhumane acts; not to mention behaviors that seem totally contrary to the human spirit. The war has and will forever change the lives of these men-those who survive, at least. When Paul returns home he thumbs through his old books, yet, their magic and interest is forever lost. Pensively he tries to reconnect with these relics of his youth. “Words, Words, Words-they do no reach me…nevermore.” One particularly immature scene is found when Paul and Albert are recovering in the Catholic Hospital in Cologne. The prayers of the sisters prove utterly disruptive with the door open; what better way to get our way, they say, than to shatter a bottle in the hall for attention. “‘Heathen,’ she [the sister] chirps but shuts the door all the same. We have won.”(Remarque,
All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that greatly helps in the understanding the effects war. The novel best shows the attitudes of the soldiers before the war and during the war. Before the war there are high morals and growing nationalist feel gs. During the war however, the soldiers discover the trauma of war. They discover that it is a waste of time and their hopes and dreams of their life fly further and further away. The remains of Paul Baumer's company had moved behind the German front l es for a short rest at the beginning of the novel. After Behm became Paul's first dead schoolmate, Paul viewed the older generation bitterly, particularly Kantorek, the teacher who convinced Paul and his classmates to join the military. " While they tau t that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already that death-throes are stronger.... And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through."(P. 13) Paul felt completely etrayed. " We will make ourselves comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted. Life is short." (P 139) Views of death and becoming more comfortable with their destiny in the r became more apparent throughout the novel. Paul loses faith in the war in each passing day. * Through out the novel it was evident that the war scarred the soldiers permanently mentally. Everyone was scared to go to war when it started.