Analysis Of All Quiet On The Western Front By Paul Baümer

In World War One close to four million soldiers were mobilized from America. Out of those soldiers only 116,708 soldiers died in action. 204,000 were wounded in action, and only 757 american civilians died because of military action. The only reason that there were that few casualties was because of the luckiness of getting in the war late. The novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a novel on the subject about World War One. It shows how an entire age of people were wiped out in one of the bloodiest, and gruesomest battles that America was in. In the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” on of the characters were Paul Baümer. The book showed many people change in attitude, and in the sense of their entire soul was changed in one way or another. This essay is about how one character “Paul Baümer” went from a happy wide eyed young man ready to serve his country, to a shattered disillusioned shell of his former self.

One quote to help support this is “lads of eighteen [...] ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, [...] of culture, of progress--to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, [...]was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. [...] the first death we saw shattered this belief.” (Remarque 6). This shows us in the book that when he first entered the war that he was innocent and a little immature. It also shows that they may have been scarred for life since they had never seen a death before. Another quote from the book to support the fact that they were immature and could also easily be influenced is “We couldn't blame Kantorek for this. Where would the world be if one brought every man to book? There were thousands [...] all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best[...].”(Remarque