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Conflicts in all quiet on the western front
All quiet on the western front critical essay
Conflicts in all quiet on the western front
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Summary
All Quiet on the Western Front (1979) depicts the experiences of a youthful German soldier (Paul Baumer) during World War I. The eye-opening story is told in a first-person narrative through Paul Baumer’s perspective focusing on a soldier’s life. During the beginning of the film the story fluctuates between battle scenes and times of goodwill in the young man’s life. The film, adapted from Erich Maria Remarques novel “All Quiet on The Western Front” starts on the battlefield then jumps back to young boys in a class room being indoctrinated into enlisting into the war. The youthful German patriots are eager to enlist their services and fight for the “Fatherland” upon graduation, but the horrors of war quickly change the principled views
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of Paul and his friends. The film starts with a war-torn battlefield and bombs being set off while the German soldiers are hunkered down in the trenches. The narrator of the story (Paul Baumer) begins introducing his comrades in the trench with him and a little of who they are, connecting the viewer to each one of the characters and making them and their dreams real. He claims the battle being fought with the French is over a “hundred yards of earth” and it is a seesaw battle between the two sides. They attack their trench and they attack theirs. Katczinski (Kat) is the oldest of their group, he forages for food and keeps their spirits up. The rest of their group are made up of old and new friends who are not only comrades in arms but have become a family unit. The small group is focused on finding food, enjoying what they can in times of war, and survival. The storyline then slips back in time to a class room full of boys and a teacher impressing the importance of them joining the war. The idealistic youth graduate from school and enlist in the army. The viewer is shown what the groups basic training would have looked like during the time at training camp. Their training leader, Corporal Himmelstoss, trains without compassion and promises his group that they will remember what he teaches them. He trains his group rigorously without remorse or empathy. Due to Paul’s empathic nature he receives the brunt of Corporal Himmelstoss’s displeasure. The scene changes with the boys graduating basic training and being sent to the front lines by train. While waiting for the train to unload the reality of war sets in even more while they watch all the wounded being carted off the train. Upon arrival at their destination they are met by Katczinski (Kat), who informs them to forget everything they just learned at the basic training camp.
Kat continues to baptize his new recruits into the harshness of war while on their first patrol. He gives them advice with an uncomplicated understanding on how to stay alive during their patrols and while in the heat of battle. While on patrol they get their first real introduction to the bombing and unnecessary killing. The movie narration tells of the reality of a soldier’s life. They dealt with a scarcity of food, new weaponry, gas, rats, and death always hanging over their …show more content…
heads. Further into the movie Paul and one of his comrades (Kropp) are shot and sent to a Catholic hospital where he claims was a stroke of luck since they would be treated better. Paul watches hopelessness enter his friend’s eyes as he recovers and Kropp must endure an amputated leg. Paul is sent home on a short leave and while with his father and his father’s friends he is reminded of the ignorance that initially leads to war. Paul comes to realize he gains no pleasure from his previous life and that the sounds and the sights he has endured during war has changed him and he is not the same man he was when he left. When Paul returns to his unit he feels like he has returned home to his family. After almost four years of fighting the German troops are tired from lack of nutritious food and constant artillery bombardments. Kat becomes wounded in his shin and while Paul carries him back to camp is hit by shrapnel and dies. The story ends with Paul in the trenches writing to the last remaining friend of his group shortly before he meets his end as well. Reflection I do not generally like to watch the horror of war movies and I felt I was transported into the trenches with those youthful troops.
The film, told in the first-person narrative draws the viewer effectively into the time and place. While watching the movie the viewer experiences a roller coaster ride of emotions; heart ache, joy, loss, laughter, and despair. The movie, adapted from the book, shows the madness, chaos and inevitable loss of war through Paul’s eyes. They did not just suffer physical trauma they had to endure psychological trauma as well. The seemingly endless bombs and ammunition going off would have been deafening to their ears. The heat and smell of fallen soldiers laying around would have been off putting to their sense of smell. The blood on their hands from friends and foe. Every sense would have been effected from the war they fought in. Paul portrays this when he kills a Frenchman in a bomb crater and must endure his dyeing moans by covering his ears and trying to wipe the blood from his hands. Throughout the movie I kept remembering the teacher impressing upon the boys their duty to serve and how many lives were lost through his inadvertent
urging. Paul and his unit are brought to life during the movie with the descriptive characterization of everyone with their little quirks and personalities. It was heart wrenching to watch their trauma unfold, knowing that it is a reality for all soldiers worldwide. The scenes fluctuating back and forth between past and present added realism to the story and draws a viewer into the characters’ lives. Basic training seemed rather harsh and merciless at times as well as redundant. Himmelstoss, portrayed as a coward later in the movie, seemed to enjoy being a bully and throwing his weight around needlessly. Although the soldiers did find laughter among the chaos that is depicted throughout the movie. I found it rather sad that towards the end of the movie Kat makes the comment to Paul that the recruits are getting younger and younger, with one stating he was sixteen. It is core twisting to imagine sending any of my boys off to war let alone my fifteen and sixteen-year-old. While watching the movie I was surprised by several things, for instance the age of the boys fighting, the rat infestation that they had to deal with, the actual footage of what trench life was like. Although the battle scenes are accurately depicted with the barbed wire, battlefields, bayonets, grenades, and sharpened shovels the one that surprised me the most was the flame blowers. Even though I do not care for any of them the flame blowers seemed extremely excessive and massively cruel. To imagine anyone being burned alive is gut wrenching. The movie pulls on the heart strings and lets a viewer be exposed to what World War I looked like through a young impressionable German boy’s eyes. I found it fortuitous that several times Paul asks Kat what is the purpose of the war and why are they still fighting it, showing that among the blood of fallen comrades, victory is pointless when so many lives were lost.
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 go 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 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. Training camp was the first actuality of what war was going to be like for the men. They thought that it would be fun, and they could take pride in defending their country. Their teacher, Kantorek, told them that they should all enroll in the war. Because of this, almost all of the men in the class enrolled. It was in training camp that they met their cruel corporal, Himelstoss.&nbs most by him. They have to lie down in the mud and practice shooting and jumping up. Also, these three men must remake Himelstoss’ bed fourteen times, until it is perfect. Himelstoss puts the young men through so much horror that they yearn for their revenge. Himelstoss is humiliated when he goes to tell on Tjaden, and Tjaden only receives an easy punishment. Training camp is as death and destruction. Training camp is just a glimpse of what war really is. The men do not gain full knowledge of war until they go to the front line. The front line is the most brutal part of the war. The front line is the place in which the battles are fought. Battles can only be described in one word- chaos. Men are running around trying to protect themselves while shooting is in the trench with an unknown man from the other side. This battle begins with shells bursting as they hit the ground and machine guns that rattle as they are being fired. In order to ensure his survival, Paul must kill the other man. First, Paul stabs the man, but he struggles for his life. He dies shortly after, and Paul discovers who he has killed. The man is Gerald Duval, a printer.&n Having to deal with killing others is one of the horrors of war. The men who are killed and the people who kill them could have been friends, if only they were on the same side. The other important battle leaves both Paul and Kropp with injuries.
use nature as the judge to condemn war, along with shocking imagery, so that his
During training Paul and his schoolmates come across Colonel Himmelstoss who teaches them the survival skills needed in the front. During training Himmelstoss tortures the recruits but is indirectly teaching them to become hard, pitiless, vicious, and tough soldiers. Althou...
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.
“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.
Life for the soldiers in the beginning is a dramatic one as they are ordered up to the frontline to wire fences. The frontline makes Paul feel immediately different as described here. "As if something is inside us, in our blood, has been switched on." The front makes Paul more aware and switched on as if his senses and reactions are sharpened. I think Paul and his friends are frightened when they are near the front line. After they wire the fences and they are heading to the barracks their group start to be fired at by the enemy. They manage to get through the shelling unscathed but they hear a horse that has been shot. The horse makes a terrible noise of anguish and is in terrible pain and it has been shot as the author describes here. "The belly of one of the horses has been ripped open and it guts are trailing out." This shows that there are not just human casualties of war; the innocent lives of animals can be affected as much as humans who fight in wars. Detering-one soldier in Pauls group-says." It is the most despicable thing of all to drag animals into a war." I agree with Detering, as animals had no choice about going to war. On the way back to the trucks that would take them back to the barracks Paul Baumers company are hit again by heavy shelling and they have to take cover in a military graveyard. The shells blow huge holes in the graveyard and create large...
Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel set in World War I, centers around the changes wrought by the war on one young German soldier. During his time in the war, Remarque's protagonist, Paul Baumer, changes from a rather innocent Romantic to a hardened and somewhat caustic veteran. More importantly, during the course of this metamorphosis, Baumer disaffiliates himself from those societal icons-parents, elders, school, religion-that had been the foundation of his pre-enlistment days. This rejection comes about as a result of Baumer's realization that the pre-enlistment society simply does not understand the reality of the Great War. His new society, then, becomes the Company, his fellow trench soldiers, because that is a group which does understand the truth as Baumer has experienced it.
Even when the novel begins, all Paul has known is death, horror, fear, distress, and despair. He describes the other soldiers in his company, including his German school mates with whom he enlisted after constant lecturing from their school master, Kantorek. The pressures of nationalism and bravery had forced even the most reluctant students to enlist. However weeks of essential training caused any appeal the military may have held for them to be lost. Corporal Himmelstoss, the boys’ instructor, callously victimizes them with constant bed remaking, sweeping snow, softening stiff boot leather and crawling through the mud. While this seems to be somewhat cruel treatment, it was in fact beneficial for the soldiers.
All Quiet on the Western Front follows the story of a young soldier named Paul who was enlisted at a young age to fight for his country. Remarque, being a German veteran from the Great War was compelled to write this novel to show the reality of war unlike other authors who write a story about war witho...
All Quiet on the Western Front tries to explain the purpose of war and its uselessness. It is a story of an almost obliterated generation that fought for nothing but the principle of hate. Change the name, and it could have been the tale of a Frenchman, an Englishman, or an American. It is perhaps the most tragic generation our human records tell of. It bears the overwhelming accent of simple truth that makes one wonder why war still exists.
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.
Historically, American students are taught from a single perspective, that being the American perspective. This approach to history (the single perspective) dehumanizes the enemy and glorifies the Americans. We tend to forget that those on the opposing side are also human. The author's main theme centers not only on the loss of innocence experienced by Paul and his comrades, but the loss of an entire generation to the war. Paul may be German, but he may just as easily be French, English, or American.... ...
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.