More handpicked essays just for you.
All quiet on the western front embodies the horror of war
All quiet on the western front embodies the horror of war
All quiet on the western front embodies the horror of war
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Literature based around any subject will differ from author to author. When it is written about a controversial subject such as war, writing styles can be skewed and unique depending on the author’s standpoint and personal experiences. This stands true for Erich Maria Remarque and Ernest Hemmingway. They both wrote about World War One, yet in completely different styles. While Remarque is blunt, concise, and unemotional, Hemmingway writes ironically, emotionally, and sardonically.
Remarque writes from German soldier Paul Baumer’s point of view. Baumer is indifferent as to what happens in the selected passage from All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. This could be because Paul tries to spend as little time as possible
…show more content…
Instead, they are replaced by weapons or merely actions themselves, “a blow from a spade cleaves through his face. . . . a bayonet jabs into his back” (116). Baumer is possibly attempting to take the humans on his side of the war away from the inhumane scene. He knows the men behind the weapons and actions, and Baumer finds out that many of his fellow German soldiers do not fully agree with the war. Therefore, he does not enjoy dissing his side of the war effort, and instead blames it on the weapons. Baumer seems used to seeing the deaths and brutal killings that take place on the front, “We have lost all feeling for one another.” He is stoic in his descriptions. Also, a majority of the time, Remarque writes in brief, concise sentences. Remarque wastes little time describing the horrifying acts. He hurriedly jumps from one scene to the next. This is because Baumer only cares about keeping himself alive during his time on the front. His thoughts are rushed. However, when reading this …show more content…
Chapter VI of In Our Time is written in third person. Rather than an “oh well” attitude, Hemmingway remains optimistic, “Things were getting forward in the town. It was going well.” This positivity is ironic in nature, because the author describes the numerous dead just beforehand. Nick speaks sarcastically to Rinaldi, saying they have “made a separate piece.” Nick and Rinaldi are fighting for opposing countries, and Nick suggests that they may as well be acquaintances before they die. Hemmingway dwells on one scene for a larger time span than Remarque. For instance, the entire passage describes Nick, Rinaldi, and their surroundings, “His face was sweaty and dirty. The sun shone on his face. The day was very hot.” A reader of Hemmingway must delve into his words to grasp the plot. He writes with strong imagery. It is unchallenging to picture the “bedstead [hanging] twisted towards the street” or “Rinaldi, big-backed, his equipment sprawling.” Hemmingway draws the reader in, first with imagery, then with his wit. To summarize, Hemmingway’s writing is dramatic and
As with any genre, all novels termed ‘war stories’ share certain elements in common. The place and time settings of the novels, obviously, take in at least some aspect of at least one war or conflict. The characters tend to either be soldiers or are at least immediately affected by the military. An ever present sense of doom with punctuated moments of peace is almost a standard of the war novel. Beyond the basic similarities, however, each of these battle books stands apart as an individual. Charles Yale Harrison’s World War I novel, Generals Die in Bed is, in essence, quite different than Colin McDougall’s Execution. Coming years earlier, Generals can almost be seen to hold the wisdom one would expect see in an older sibling, while Execution suffers the growing pains that the younger child inevitably feels.
So said German World War I Veteran, Erich Maria Remarque, in his book All Quiet on The Western Front. War is an extremely complex and corrupt affair that many can’t even begin to comprehend. This juxtaposing quote perfectly depicts how Remarque’s detailed and personal novel allows the reader inside the mind of a soldier, giving unique insight on war. The novel follows the events narrator Paul Bäumer encounters whilst at war and shows Bäumer’s reflective thoughts on these events. This form of narration is a large part of what makes the book so effective. The book conveys many strong messages about war but the most prominent ones in the story line are:
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.
In the beginning Baumer enters the war as a recruit and begins to see the reality of war. During training he has to remake the officer’s bed 14 times. The entire training course was marching, which does not help them at all fighting in the trenches. “I have remade his bed fourteen times in one morning. Each time he had some fault to find and pulled it to pieces” (26). Here Baumer describes how his commanding officer makes him do over a simple task over and over for absolutely no reason.
Remarque uses a variety of techniques to display the gruesome effects that war has not only on soldiers, but on the nation as a whole. One technique that Remarque uses is imagery. One example that shows the imagery that Remarque displays occurs in chapter six when Paul Baumer talks about 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 shows how horrible the opposing sides treated one another's prisoners.
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.
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.
One of the worst things about war is the severity of carnage that it bestows upon mankind. Men are killed by the millions in the worst ways imaginable. Bodies are blown apart, limbs are cracked and torn and flesh is melted away from the bone. Dying eyes watch as internal organs are spilled of empty cavities, naked torso are hung in trees and men are forced to run on stumps when their feet are blown off. Along with the horrific deaths that accompany war, the injuries often outnumber dead men. As Paul Baumer witnessed in the hospital, the injuries were terrifying and often led to death. His turmoil is expressed in the lines, “Day after day goes by with pain and fear, groans and death gurgles. Even the death room I no use anymore; it is too small.” The men who make it through the war take with them mental and physical scarification from their experiences.
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.
Remarque also tried to teach his audience. Written within a decade of the end of the war, the book calls on those who forfeited their youth to the war not to allow time to hide what had happened. Time may heal all wounds, but the cause of those wounds must not be forgotten, nor allowed to repeat itself. The author is however, pragmatic enough to realize that all will not learn the lesson; nevertheless, those who are willing to learn it will discover that the story has been told before, and without their intervention, it is doomed to be told again. Works Cited Remarque, Erich Maria.
The two classic war novels ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ by Erich Maria Remarque and ‘Catch 22’ by Joseph Heller both provide a graphic insight into the life of soldiers serving their country in the historic world wars. One distinct theme of interest found in both books, is the way in which war has physically and mentally re-shaped the characters. Remarque creates the character Paul Baümer, a young soldier who exposes anxiety and PTSD (commonly known as Shellshock) through his accounts of WW1’s German army. ‘Catch 22’ however, is written in the third person and omnisciently explores insanity and bureaucracy in an American Bombardier Squadron through its utter lack of logic. The two novels use their structure, characters, symbolism and setting to make a spectacle of the way war re-shapes the soldiers.
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.
In the novel, All Quiet On The Western Front, the author Erich Maria Remarque, uses figurative language and imagery to represent a soldier lifestyle in war. He introduces the main character Paul Bäumer alongside his fellow classmates in German army of World War I. The novel explain from the perspective of one incredibly observant young soldier, Paul Bäumer, who confesses details on the experience of life on the Western Front. This novel is best known for its horror image of trench warfare, and seek to have a determination of war. Through this novel, the author allow us to witness Paul’s perspective as identity, patriotism, morality, and dreams.
From his own appalling experiences, Remarque is able to put his own occurrences on paper so that the audience is able to understand the horrific events that went down during his deployment. Soldiers all suffer from pain that was inflicted during war, Remarque himself “was wounded no fewer than five times” and definitely played a big role in the book (History.com). Characters in the book, including Kemmerich, endured “a flesh wound in his thigh; a good blighty… [and] Kemmerich will never come out of this [hospital] again” and is lying on his deathbed (Remarque 10-14).The pain that Remarque dealt with clearly was displayed throughout the novel in order for the gallery of readers to enhance their knowledge on World War I and the soldier experience.Just about every soldier experiences some amount of post-trauma after the war and can cause the soldier to act out of shape. In 1918, after Erich was back home in Germany, he “suffered postwar trauma and disillusionment” which was caused by many of his personal regrets (cliffsnotes.com). Mental pain gets to every fighter in someway and can take a major toll on the soldiers
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.