All Quiet On The Western Front: A Literary Analysis

During the last year of World War I, Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier, envisions his future after the war when he "Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing anymore. I am so alone and so without hope that I can confront them without fear"( Remarque 295). These final despondent thoughts that occurred after Bäumer’s death, is manifested in All Quiet on the Western Front, a war novel written by German soldier, Erich Maria Remarque. Remarque explicates the German soldiers’ physical and psychological stress throughout the war, and the disengagement from pre-war life felt by many of these comrades upon returning to their neighborhood from the trenches, where they faced drenching conditions and abundance

of famines. Remarque tries to explain why these soldiers felt stabbed in the back by the government and society. Throughout the novel, Remarque creates an atmosphere of inhumanity and horror and expounds on the ideas of comradeship in the face of death in the face of bleak hopelessness. Remarque, through characterization and imagery, shows how war has destroyed an entire generation of young men, leaving them “lost” physically and psychologically, thus unable to readjust to their past lives.

Remarque through characterization, uses Paul Bäumer to represent a whole generation of men who are known to history as the "lost generation,", who are no longer able to retain a place in life and relate to previous generation. From the beginning, Bäumer portrays the difference between his generation and that of his parents or his older comrades. These people had a more calm and secure life before war. However in Paul’s generation, no one had a life like that of their elders. He testifies, “Our knowledge of life is limited to death” ( Remarque 264). The author uses Paul’s thoughts to explain the loss of hope the soldiers are facing. Paul believes that his life is focused on only the war. He claims that after the war, he won't be able to readjust to his past life, and will fear the memory of his comrade’s death. Paul is trying to explain how his high hopes and dreams were ultimately destroyed by the horrors and brutality of the war. When Paul goes home during his leave from the war, he regrets what it has done to his soul. When he enters his childhood neighborhood, he starts to realize that he will never return to his pre-war life. A terrible gulf exists between his present and his past and also between himself and his parents. He sees his past, as "a vast inapprehensible melancholy. . . . They [memories] are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us. . . . And even if these scenes of our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do. . . . I believe we are lost.” (Remarque 121) During his leave, he looks at books and childhood papers, he then starts to realize that he can never find his way back to that earlier Paul. Too much has happened at the front for him to believe in human beings or compassion. The author uses the characterization of Paul to show how even with his parents he realizes that life will never be the same. This spontaneous memory of his childhood conflicts with Paul’s ability to readjust to his life, where he is still devastated by the brutality of the war. Remarque tries to exemplify that teenage soldiers who battled in World War 1 will never be the same again. They were horrified by the war and thus lost themselves and for some, their lives. Paul, before his ultimate death, explains that "the generation that grew up before us,though it has passed these years with us already had a home and a calling... the generation that has grown up after us will be strange and push us aside"( Remarque 294). In this quote, he has started to lose interest in civilian life. He remembers the noises of men crying for help when wounded and the calm silence of the dead. Mixed with the sounds of shelling and gunfire causes him to realize that war is their life, and that his memory will limit the way they live. As a result, Remarque uses characterization to illustrate the difference in the previous and future generations, and how Paul, the narrator, is part of the lost generation
Remarque uses imagery to display the gruesome effects that war has on soldiers, as they start to feel hopeless and trapped, and from a “loss generation”.

From the beginning, Paul has felt constant fear of death, horror, suffering and hopelessness. Hoping there is a future, Paul and his friends often predict what the future might give. One of these prediction includes Paul’s prediction of what the French do to the German prisoners who carry bayonets that obtain a saw on their blunt edges: "Some of our men were found whose noses were cut off and their eyes poked out with their own saw bayonets. Their mouths and noses were stuffed with sawdust so that they suffocated" (Remarque 103). Remarque uses this imagery to attack the horrible way the opposing sides treated their prisoners. This description makes one think of how devastating and inconsolable the war was and how it changes a person perspective of war. The comrades start to lose their interest in everything but war after being surrounded by constant fear of death and suffering. Smothering throughout the novel, the war gradually changes the attitudes and thoughts of the soldiers toward going home. The loss of generation emerged by being through persistent isolation, violence and disillusionment of the German soldier during World War I. Paul elaborates on the fear everyone gets when hearing the suffering cries of the injured horses at the front : "We can bear almost anything. But now the sweat breaks out on us. We must get

up and run no matter where, but where these cries can no longer be heard" (Remarque 63-64). The soldiers can face hearing the loud bombs and shells going off continuously at the front in a small disease rotted trench, but they cannot bear the cries of the horses and become paranoid. Middle in the novel, Paul starts to have thoughts about running to safety away from the trenches and almost risks his life just to escape the horses. Remarque shows the brutal events and tragedies that occur in all wars through the imagery of senses and is graphic only to portray the true events that occurred. Later in the novel, Paul starts remembers his life at home when he had goals and when he strived for doing good in school to get a job. His high hopes and dreams were destroyed by the war when he remeber when "We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war." (88) The imagery of the young generation, being ruined by the loud guns and explosions of war, led them to focus on war and nothing else. Even if the soldiers survived the trenches, the things they have seen and done there have permanently transformed them. The soldier experiences the jarring effects of this transformation most clearly when he briefly returns to his home village on leave. The village has not changed, yet they feels completely out of place there. Their old interests in literature and art, represented by the shelves of books in his childhood room, now seem childish and unreal. The author uses the imagery of “ the first bomb, the first explosion”, to show the deep thoughts the soldiers face when seeing the horrors of the war. With this melancholy memory of the trenches, or the memory of seeing their comrades die in battle, can have a huge effect on their post-war life, which they are not capable to return too.
All Quiet on the Western Front uses imagery of the brutality and horror that prevailed during World War I and the character of the German Soldier, Paul Baumer, to divulge that when the soldiers face persistent isolation, terror and disillusionment, they start to form a “loss generation”, where they are no longer able to retain a place in civilian life.

Remarque expounds the idea of soldiers losing interest in civilian life, through the perspective of Paul Baumer, who listens to his comrades talk about their war stories and memories in the rat infested trenches. Gradually throughout the novel, Paul, after his melancholy experiences at the front, starts to disbelieve in human beings or compassion, where he starts to realize at the end of the novel, to "Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing anymore. I am so alone and so without hope that I can confront them without fear"( Remarque 295). This incentive quote greatly represents Paul loss of hope, as a result of war. Paul tries to express that the war has taken away everything he believed him, and left him with nothing but fear and hopelessness. Does the brutality and the horror of war, strip away a person’s humanity, or does the horror help retain vestiges of a person old self ? Paul’s loss of hope is similar to Eliezer in Night, where he loses faith in God and is exposed to the corrupt, inhumane society around him, during the Holocaust. This transformation from pre-war and post-war

can dramatically change a person's perspective on society as seen in both novels. In Night, Eliezer before the holocaust, is willing to do anything to learn about Jewish mysticism. However as the novel progress, he starts to lose faith in God and humanity. This can best reflect to Paul Baumer, in All Quiet on the Western Front, who believed in patriotism, but latter, felt stabbed back by society and lost faith in humanity.