Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
All quiet on the western front critiques
All quiet on the western front analysis paper
Comparing all quiet on the western front
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: All quiet on the western front critiques
War, it is one of the most sickening, terrifying and downright gruesome events that have happened throughout history. One of the most devastating wars of all time would be that of the First World War. Trench Warfare became the main method of fighting and basically became a living hell for those who fought. The grime, dead bodies piling up, rats that thrived in the pits, disease, malnutrition, and just unbearable conditions, the trenches basically became a hell on Earth. The novel All Quiet on the Western Front, which was written by Erich Maria Remarque, provides almost a journal into the center of these conditions, exploring just how dark and depressing they were. Erich had been a German soldier towards the end of WWI and had experienced the pure terror that is war first hand. He fought in the trenches out on the Western Front which would have easily provide him with a view of the mental bonds and issues that build up and between a group of soldiers. The novel provides one of the earliest looks in to these mental issues such as PTSD that would become more widely recognized in later years. Remarque’s All Quiet On the Western Front vividly portrays the mindset of a soldier and the complete deterioration that occurs when one is in combat for days on end.
First to understand more about the novel and its author, Erich Maria Remarque, it would be helpful to learn about his life. Erich was born on June 22, 1898 ("Erich Maria Remarque-Peace Center Osnabrück.") in the town of Osnabruck Germany. He was born into a poor family to his father, Peter Maria Kramer, and mother, Anna Marie Kramer (Liukkonen). His father was a bookbinder while Erich was a kid (Liukkonen). He also had two other siblings and his family as a whole moved at least el...
... middle of paper ...
...n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2014. .
Liukkonen, Petri. "Prose & Poetry- Erich Maria Remarque." Firstworldwar.com. N.p., 22 Aug. 2009. Web. 25 Feb. 2014. .
"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)." Helpguide.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. .
Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. Trans. A. W. Wheen. Boston: Little, Brown, and, 1929. Print.
Robertson, William. "Erich Maria Remarque." Remarque.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2014. .
Taylor, Marvin J. "The Life and Writings of Erich Maria Remarque." Nyu.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2014. .
All Quiet On the Western Front By 1929, the example of Remarque's altered text of All Quiet on the Western Front, as Hemingway pointed out, gave further proof of greater intolerance in America than in England. Aldington's experience with Death of a Hero, however, would prove the exception. This war novel is actually an anti-war novel, tracing the lives and losses of a young group of soldiers caught in the brutality of World War I. Gripping, realistic, and searing with a vision inconsistent with post-war German character, this book caused Remarque to receive death threats and to leave Germany to live and work in Hollywood. (All Quiet on the Western Front) The differences between the English and American versions of Remarque's novel are instructive. Remarque originally had trouble publishing Im Westen nichts Neues in Berlin. It was rejected by the prominent and conservative Fischer Verlag before being accepted by the liberal house of Ullstein Verlag. It was the grim reality of Paul Baumer's victimization in the war, the disillusioned antiwar sentiments and pacifism of the characters that proved problematic for German leftists and nationalists alike, not the matter-of-fact language of the soldiers. But A. W. Wheen's translation for Putnam's English edition, retaining such words as shit, fart, piss-a-bed, turd, and masturbate had to be converted for Little, Brown's American edition. Skit became swine, piss-a-bed became wet-a-bed, cow-skit became cow dung, and the comical simile like a fart on a curtain pole became like a wild boar. Masturbate and turd dropped out of the American edition completely. (Firda, Richard Arthur 1993) Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they ...
“All’s Quiet on the Western Front” includes a series of vignettes and scenes that portray the senselessness and futility of war from the point of view of young German soldiers in the trenches in the Great War who found no glory on the battlefield, meeting only death and disillusionment.
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.
In the history of modern western civilization, there have been few incidents of war, famine, and other calamities that severely affected the modern European society. The First World War was one such incident which served as a reflection of modern European society in its industrial age, altering mankind’s perception of war into catastrophic levels of carnage and violence. As a transition to modern warfare, the experiences of the Great War were entirely new and unfamiliar. In this anomalous environment, a range of first hand accounts have emerged, detailing the events and experiences of the authors. For instance, both the works of Ernst Junger and Erich Maria Remarque emphasize the frightening and inhumane nature of war to some degree – more explicit in Jünger’s than in Remarque’s – but the sense of glorification, heroism, and nationalism in Jünger’s The Storm of Steel is absent in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead, they are replaced by psychological damage caused by the war – the internalization of loss and pain, coupled with a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness with the past and the future. As such, the accounts of Jünger and Remarque reveal the similar experiences of extreme violence and danger of World War I shared by soldiers but draw from their experiences differing ideologies and perception of war.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a powerful novel that communicates many messages concerning war’s hidden horrors and gives insight into the unique experiences of soldiers. Remarque uses a wide array of language techniques and writing concepts to expose readers to truth of the simultaneously corrupt yet complex affair that is war. It is an important, genuine novel – the type that needs to exist to end dreadful human affairs, such as
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.
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 feelings. 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 les for a short rest at the beginning of the novel. After Baumer 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 taut 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 betrayed. " 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.
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
Many of Remarque’s ideas expressed in All Quiet on the Western Front were not completely new. Remarque emphasized things that portrayed the magnitude of issues soldiers face, and how the physical body and senses affects their emotional well-being. The ideas in All Quiet in the Western Front of not knowing the difference between sleep and death, seeing gruesome sights of people, and frustration towards people who cannot sympathize with soldiers, are also shown in Siegfried Sassoon’s “The Dug-Out”, Giuseppe Ungaretti’s “Vigil”, and Sassoon's’ “Suicide in the Trenches”.
Imagine being in an ongoing battle where friends and others are dying. All that is heard are bullets being shot, it smells like gas is near, and hearts race as the times goes by. This is similar to what war is like. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator, Paul Baumer, and his friends encounter the ideals of suffering, death, pain, and despair. There is a huge change in these men; at the beginning of the novel they are enthusiastic about going into the war. After they see what war is really like, they do not feel the same way about it. During the war the men experience many feelings especially the loss of loved ones. These feelings are shown through their first experience at training camp, during the actual battles, and in the hospital.
Many pieces of work display the assets that go along with war, and the works done by Erich Remarque in All Quiet On The Western Front and Francis Duggan with the poem Of the Horrors of War easily portrays the similarities and differences between the outlooks on war. All Quiet On The Western Front and Of the Horrors of War show the comparisons through skepticism and retribution, but displays the differences through the desire for peace. Disbelief and skepticism is evident in both works for there is mistrust between comrades and authority. In All Quiet On The Western Front, Tjaden holds a “special grudge against Himmelstoss, because of the way he educated him in the barracks… is still reserved and suspicious”, and the way he put another bedwetter with him
War can be as damaging to the human body as it is to the mind. In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, this idea that war causes psychological disorders is represented throughout the book through the main character, Paul Baumer. This book follows the lives of young soldiers in World War I. Together, these men create powerful bonds. They go through terrifying experiences that continue to strengthen their bonds, but also destroy their mental state. Through Paul’s eyes, Remarque shows the devastation that war has on the mind.
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.
After watching the video about the wealth inequality across the United State, it does make me wonder how this is possible and why we weren’t aware of this. You would think that with all the access to the media (internet, television, radio, magazines and newspapers) we have today, we would be more aware on how does Americans live their everyday lives.
All Quiet on the Western Front. New York: Ballantine Books, 1984.