The Great War was one of the bloodiest wars in history. It resulted in over sixteen million deaths, along with twenty million injured. Its end required the surviving young soldiers who matured during the war, or the “Lost Generation” to start their lives from the ruins the war had left them in. They had no home to return to as they had hardly started their own lives when they enlisted in the army, hence they were left alone, unable to relate to any of the people who hadn’t fought in the war. All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, is about this generation of young men, their experiences in the war, and how they are affected by these experiences. Through the main character, Paul Baumer, Remarque describes the struggles that …show more content…
the Lost Generation faced- the way their innocence is taken away from them and how their life before war seems so foreign to them. However, within a mind scarred by the brutalities of war, still remains a minute piece of his former self. Paul continues to feel human emotions such as sympathy and sorrow, and upholds some of his morals; these feelings make him feel lost and unable to reconnect with his past. Paul has not lost completely lost his sense of humanity, but continues to retain very miniscule pieces of his old self.
This is seen when he does not want to leave his mother as his leave is coming to an end. He says, “Ah! Mother, Mother! You still think I am a child- why can I not put my head in your lap and weep? Why have I always to be strong and self controlled? I would like to weep and be comfortable too…” (183). Paul wants to weep on his mother’s lap and let all the emotions he is feeling out, but he is unable to do so because he does not want to relive his awful experiences. Paul would like to be comforted by his mother, as he did when he was a child. He has retained this part of himself from his childhood, even after his exposure to the war. What Paul goes through here is something that the Lost Generation went through when they returned from the war. They were unable to share their feelings and thoughts because they did not want to live through war all over again. Paul cannot let all his emotions loose for this exact …show more content…
reason. Paul also continues to feel sympathy, one emotion that was a part of his old personality.
As he observes the Russian prisoners and their habits, he explains, “I know nothing of them except that they are prisoners; and that is exactly what troubles me. Their life is obscure and guiltless;- if I could know more of them, what their names are, how they live, what they are waiting for, what their burdens are, then my emotions would have an object and might become sympathy. But as it is I perceive behind them only the suffering of the creature, the awful melancholy of life and the pitilessness of men" (193). Paul feels sorrow looking at the Russian soldiers. He says that if he knew more about them, he would feel sympathy. He expresses that he knows he is capable of feeling sympathy and other human emotions. He still has that part of his old self left with him. This also shows the type of scenes soldiers observed on a daily basis, and how one was affected by them. They were made to go against their human instincts, which would have been to help these Russian prisoners and be able to treat them with a humane and friendly respect. The fact that these young soldiers were forced to abandon their humanity for the war would have led to their feelings of being “lost”. These soldiers were left with the guilt of the actions they had been forced to commit- guilt that they could not move on from. When they returned home, they had forgotten what it felt like to be human and live a normal life.
They did not know what to do with their lives, consequently, leaving them lost. Paul upholds his moral values- he can still differentiate the good and the wrong, and, as mentioned earlier, is still capable of human emotions. He feels guilt when he sees a French soldier and kills him by instinct for self defense. Paul tries to help him by bandaging up his wound and giving him water. As they sit in the shell hole, Paul mentions, “But every gasp lays my heart bare. This dying man has time with him, he has an invisible danger with which he stabs me: time and my thoughts. I would give much if he would but stay alive. It is hard to lie here and have to see and hear him.” (221). Every gasp the man takes reminds Paul of what he has done. He feels guilty and is willing to do whatever it takes to save him. He takes care of the man, hoping that he would able to save him. As Paul sees the man suffer, he says, “Again and again I fetch water for the dying man…” (221). He then continues to say, “Then I unbutton his tunic in order to bandage him if it is possible” (220). Paul does not want this man to die, but tries to keep him alive by bringing him water and bandaging his wound. This shows that the morals he had grown up with still remain with him- he knows that what he has done is not right and that it is wrong to kill. He wants to undo what he has done and is doing everything in his ability to right his wrongs. The guilt that Paul feels is similar to the feelings the Lost Generation felt when they were forced to witness the deaths of those that were dying because of them. Paul is a representation of the Lost Generation. He expresses the same behavior and emotions of hopelessness and isolation. Despite of what war has done to him, a piece of his former self remains with him. He still shows some emotions that he once expressed...but cannot connect with his
“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another (263).” Powerful changes result from horrifying experiences. Paul Baumer, the protagonists of Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front utters these words signifying the loss of his humanity and the reduction to a numbed creature, devoid of emotion. Paul’s character originates in the novel as a young adult, out for an adventure, and eager to serve his country. He never realizes the terrible pressures that war imposes on soldiers, and at the conclusion of the book the empty shell resembling Paul stands testament to this. Not only does Paul lose himself throughout the course of the war, but he loses each of his 20 classmates who volunteered with him, further emphasizing the terrible consequences of warfare. The heavy psychological demands of life in the trenches and the harsh reality of war strip Paul of his humanity and leave him with a body devoid of all sentiment and feeling.
Between the years of 1914 to 1918, the whole of Europe was locked in arms, not only for pride but mostly for survival. The years of war brought devastation upon all societies. Men were massacred in droves, food stuff dwindled, and at times an end seemed non-existent. The foundation of the first Great War, one can muse, began as a nationalistic race between rival nations. By the onset of 1914, once the Archduke Frendinad had been assassinated in Saravejo, the march for war became not just a nationalistic opinion, but now a frenzy to fight. In battle, unlike previous wars, new weaponry caused drastic alterations in strategy. No longer will armies stand to face their rivals on the plains. Now the war will be fought in trenches, hidden underground from the new, highly accurate artillery. In many respects, World War I was a war of artillery, gas, and mechanization. Except as new weapons were becoming essential for battle, the leaders, on all sides, appeared too inept to fight this new style of warfare. Generals, or any leader for that matter higher in the chain of command, sent their troops in massive assaults. Regardless of their losses there were no deviations from the main ideology of sending massive waves of men and shells to take a position. On an individual level, the scene of repeated assaults and mayhem of the front line did little to foster hope for their superiors or even for the naiveté of their fellow countrymen who were not fighting. I submit that in times of sheer madness and destitution, as during World War I, men banded together to form make-shift families for support and companionship when all seemed lost; as exemplified in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front.
Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front gives you detail and insight into the long, destructive “Great War”. Quickly, romantic illusions about combat are disintegrate. Enthusiastic teenage boys convinced to fight for their country by their patriotic teachers came back feeling part of a lost generation . This novel teaches us what a terrifying and painful experience World War I was for those fighting in the trenches on the front.
Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel All Quiet on the Western Front is based on World War I; it portrays themes involving suffering, comradeship, chance and dehumanization. The novel is narrated by Paul, a young soldier in the German military, who fights on the western front during The Great War. Like many German soldiers, Paul and his fellow friends join the war after listening to the patriotic language of the older generation and particularly Kantorek, a high school history teacher. After being exposed to unbelievable scenes on the front, Paul and his fellow friends realize that war is not as glorifying and heroic as the older generation has made it sound. Paul and his co-soldiers continuously see horrors of war leading them to become hardened, robot-like objects with one goal: the will to survive.
Paul believes that he was tricked into joining the army and fighting in the war. This makes him very bitter towards the people who lied to him. This is why he lost his respect and trust towards the society. Teachers and parents were the big catalysts for the ki...
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.
Erich Maria Remarque's classic war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, deals with the many ways in which World War I affected people's lives, both the lives of soldiers on the front lines and the lives of people on the homefront. One of the most profound effects the war had was the way it made the soldiers see human life. Constant killing and death became a part of a soldier's daily life, and soldiers fighting on all sides of the war became accustomed to it. The atrocities and frequent deaths that the soldiers dealt with desensitized them to the reality of the vast quantities of people dying daily. The title character of the novel, Paul Bäumer, and his friends experience the devaluation of human life firsthand, and from these experiences they become stronger and learn to live as if every day were their last.
People who have actually been through war know how horrible it is. Society on the other hand, while it believes it knows the horrors of war, can never understand or sympathize with a soldier’s situation. The only people who can understand war is those who have been through it so they can often feel alone if they are out of the military. Paul cannot even give a straight answer to his own father about his dad’s inquiries about war. Paul’s dad does not understand that people who have been in the war can in no way truly express the horrible things that that have seen and experienced. Nor can Paul fit in with the society who does not understand him. Paul and so many others were brought into the war so young that they know of nothing else other than war. Paul held these views on society as he said, “We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered;-the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall in to ruin.
All our senses are assaulted: we see newly dead soldiers and long-dead corpses tossed up together in a cemetery (Chapter 4); we hear the unearthly screaming of the wounded horses (Chapter 4); we see and smell three layers of bodies, swelling up and belching gases, dumped into a huge shell hole (Chapter 6); and we can almost touch the naked bodies hanging in trees and the limbs lying around the battlefield (Chapter 9). The crying of the horses is especially terrible. Horses have nothing to do with making war. Their bodies gleam beautifully as they parade along--until the shells strike them. To Paul, their dying cries represent all of nature accusing Man, the great destroyer.
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.
From sunrise to sunset, day after day, war demolishes men, cities, and hope. War has an effect on soldiers like nothing else, and sticks with them for life. The damage to a generation of men on both sides of the war was inestimable. Both the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, and the poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” by Alan Seeger, demonstrate the theme of a lost generation of men, mentally and physically, in war through diction, repetition, and personification.
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.
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.
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.