Imagine being drafted into World War I as soon as you finish high school. You’d go from hearing the chirping of birds and people laughing everyday to constantly hearing bombs, guns, and the sound of soldiers dying everywhere. This is how it was in the movie, “All Quiet on the Western Front” 1979. This movie goes over one major subject which is World War I. The author created this movie to show people the harsh realities of war compared to what everyone believed it was. While analyzing this film, I will be discussing the plot and setting, the major themes, and my evaluation. I will also give a summarization and discuss how it’s related to to our classroom discussions.
“All Quiet on the Western Front” 1979 is a remake of the original one which
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was made in 1930. It’s narrated by the main character, Paul Baumer, who is 19 years old and resides in Germany. During their time in school, Paul and his classmates have all been told about how patriotic it would be fighting in the war and Paul’s own father is jealous because they’d all be named heroes by the time they come back from war. These speeches from their teacher and their parents has an effect on them all and as a result, they join the German army right after they finish school and fight in what would be named World War I. They are first sent out to training with leader, Corporal Himmelstoss. There, they realize that the war isn’t all it was made out to be. After fighting for a couple of weeks, Paul’s friends and the members of his group are starting to die off. He had to watch most of them die a slow, painful death while the fortunate ones died on impact. The men are only protected by their deep trenches and when signalled, they are supposed to run out through an area named No Mans Land and kill any French men. The only thing protecting both trenches are fields of barbed wire. No Mans Land is made of deep holes and rotting corpses of soldiers who have died while charging to the enemies area. Soldiers are forced to dodge the dead soldiers and heavy fire and they have to dive into the holes made my landmines in order to protect themselves. Later in the film, the group is unexpectedly attacked by the French. Many of Paul’s friends die and he himself is wounded. His wounds send him to the hospital and when he recovers, he is given 2 weeks of leave. During this time he goes home to see his family and former teacher and learns from his sister that his mom is dying of cancer. No one in his town has experienced the horrors of war so he feels like he has no one to talk to or relate to about his traumatizing experiences. Paul also visits the home of Kemmerich, one of his first friends to die. There he lies, swears on his life, and tells his mother that her son’s death was quick and painless when in reality, he suffered in a hospital bed until he passed away. When Paul comes back, he’s united with his friends who tell him he’s a fool for coming back but they’re glad he’s there. During a night battle, Paul becomes separated from his group and is forced to hide in a hole in the middle of No Mans Land. While he is hiding, a French soldier jumped into the same hole causing Paul to stab him so he wouldn’t kill him first. The man does not die quickly and Paul is forced to spend the night with him. During this time, Paul feels extremely guilty and even tries to help patch up the soldier. He believes that if the war wasn’t going on that they could’ve been friends. Eventually he dies and Paul looks through his wallet and sees that he has a wife and child back home. Just before the end of the movie, Katczinsky, an experienced soldier who was like a mentor to the group, is wounded and Paul carries him over a long distance and even has a smoke with him. When they reach the hospital, Paul realizes that he’s been dead for less than 10 minutes and that the back of his head is bleeding severely. At the end of the film, Paul is writing a letter to his friend who was wounded in the war and sent to the hospital, He describes that his friend and himself are the only 2 left out of their graduating class. Out of the 20 people they graduated with, 13 died, 4 went missing, and 1 was at the madhouse, leaving Paul alone at the battlefield and his friend alone in the hospital. When he finished the letter, he walks through the trench and checks upon the soldiers who are much younger than him. He has became a mentor to them similar to how Kat was the mentor of Paul’s group. While he is walking, Paul sees a bird and begins to draw it, sending the watcher back to the beginning of the film when Paul was drawing a bird on the windowsill of his classroom instead of paying attention. The bird flew away and Paul stood up fully to see where it went. By doing so, he exposed himself above the trench. The shot of a gun is heard which ends up killing Paul and ends the film. The main reason the author has created film was to show the watcher how war actually is like. They wanted them to understand that it’s way worse than what people think it is. This movie all takes place in Germany. There are many issues this movie goes into. The main issue this movie talks about is World War I and how it draws people apart instead of uniting them as one. There was one part of the film where the soldiers in Paul’s group questioned why they were fighting when they didn’t even have anything against the French. Paul especially thinks about how war makes enemies out of people that haven’t even met. Another issue this movie briefly discusses is how inexperience leads to death.
In a scene of the film, the group has to stay above the trench because there’s poisonous gas down in it. One of the soldiers accidentally drops his gas mask down there and instead of staying up where the fresh air was, he lunged down to go get it causing him to breathe some of the poisonous gas in and chokes him. If he knew any better, he wouldn’t have went down to get it and risk death. Additionally, a lot of the soldiers on the German side die which leads them to bring in reinforcements. The new soldiers, however, are even younger than the new adults who just came out of school. These new soldiers seem to be 13-15 year olds. Their young ages make them very inexperienced on the battlefields which will result in them dying …show more content…
soon. The last issue covered in this film is how the minds of the world are finding and designing new ways to kill people. There are a lot of weapons soldiers used in the battle of World War I. Those included machine guns, tanks, artillery, and poisonous gas. This is a terrible thought to think about because instead of finding new ways to avoid war and keep peace, people want to find and make weapons that can kill the most people. There are a lot of themes that are included in this 1979 film. Some of them are death, nationalism, and the effect of war on soldiers. Death is inevitable. Especially to the soldiers fighting in World War I. Death has played a big part since the beginning of the movie. Everyone around Paul is injured and dying. Most of the soldiers knew they weren’t going to live to see the end of war. The most played thought going through everyone’s head is, “Is this the day I’m going to die?”. Usually when people go off to war, nationalism is increased.
This was the same in the movie. Everyone was proud of their country and believed they were going to win the war. Teachers everywhere were telling their students how great it was to join the war and fight for their country and how they should be loyal to it. Paul’s teacher was not excluded from this and he was one of the main reasons why Paul and a majority of his classmates decided to serve. Paul’s dad was even jealous at the thought that his son and his friends would be labeled heroes when they came back from the war. A little bit of militarism was tied into the nationalism too. Civilians held the military on a high pedestal and kids looked up to
them.
At the beginning of chapter seven, the Second Company is taken further back to a depot for reinforcements, and the men rest. Himmelstoss wants to get on good terms with the boys and shows them kindness. Paul starts to respect him after seeing how he carried Haie Westhus when he was hit in the back. Tjaden is won over too after he learns that Himmelstoss will provide extra rations from his job as sergeant cook.
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.
use nature as the judge to condemn war, along with shocking imagery, so that his
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.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a historical novel written by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel focuses on a young German soldier and the predicaments he encounters during his life on the front. The novel displays a powerful image to all of its readers and tends to have a long lasting effect on the way that they interpret war. All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that encourages nations to consider the horrible hostilities that war brings on humans before entering into global conflicts. From his graphic imagery and his detailed description of character relationships, Remarque depicts the brutality of the war at the front.
In the novel All quiet on the western front by Erich Maria Remarque one of the major themes he illustrates is the effects of war on a soldier 's humanity. Paul the protagonist is a German soldier who is forced into war with his comrades that go through dehumanizing violence. War is a very horrid situation that causes soldiers like Paul to lose their innocence by stripping them from happiness and joy in life. The symbols Remarque uses to enhance this theme is Paul 's books and the potato pancakes to depict the great scar war has seared on him taking all his connections to life. Through these symbols they deepen the theme by visually depicting war’s impact on Paul. Paul’s books represent the shadow war that is casted upon Paul and his loss of innocence. This symbol helps the theme by depicting how the war locked his heart to old values by taking his innocence. The last symbol that helps the theme are the potato pancakes. The potato pancakes symbolize love and sacrifice by Paul’s mother that reveal Paul emotional state damaged by the war with his lack of happiness and gratitude.
“All Quiet on the Western Front” is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, published in 1928 about Paul Baumer, a 19 year old student, who is persuaded by his schoolmaster to join the Imperial German Army. He goes to the western front where he and his comrades witnesses the horror and brutality of war through a series of deadly, meaningless battles that left an entire generation traumatized. The book was adapted to a movie in 1930 as well as 1979. Having recently viewed the latter, I would strongly recommend that anyone read the novel rather than watch the 1979 film. To clarify, I am not immediately against a film remake just because it is not the original; at times it is interesting to see how a book is interpreted, however books are often difficult to make into a film and unfortunately, “All Quiet on the Western Front” was no exception. Not only was the film an poor adaptation, but it also was not visually appealing, the acting was somewhat poor, the wrong parts were emphasized and the atmosphere of the movie was inferior to that of the novel.
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.
All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Delbert Mann, is based on the novel written by Erich Maria Remarque. It tells the story of a German schoolboy, Paul Baumer, and a group of his classmates, who journey from fantasies of heroic glory to the real horror of actual soldiering. Their journey is a coming of age tale that centers on the consternation of war and emphasizes the moral, spiritual, emotional, and physical deterioration suffered by the young soldiers.
The story of several schoolmates who symbolize a generation destroyed by the dehumanisation of the First World War, All Quiet on the Western Front tells of the men who died, and the tragically changed lives of those who survived. Remarque follows the story of Paul Bäumer, a young infantryman, from his last days of school to his death three years later. Whereas the journey motif is typically used to portray a positive character development, that of Paul is deliberately the opposite. In what has been dubbed the greatest antiwar novel of all time, Remarque depicts the way in which Paul is snatched away from humanity by the brutality of war. However while Paul and his comrades become separated from society, and begin to rely on their basic survival instincts, in their own surroundings they still show humane qualities such as compassion, camaraderie, support and remorse. Paul’s transformation from human to soldier begins in training camp, and is reinforced by the trauma at the front. His return home further alienates him from society, and Paul begins to feel safe at the front with his friends. Nonetheless throughout the novel suffering and mortality bare Paul’s true side, and he momentarily regains his former self. Bäumer, the German word for tree, is an early indication that Paul must remain firmly rooted in reality to survive the brutality of 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.