...All Quiet on the Western Front Sometimes people go through traumatizing experiences that make them question their morals. Has this happened to you? In Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, he demonstrates how humanity exists through Paul’s traumatizing experiences through fighting in the war against the French and Russians, lack of rations during the war, and guilt of starving Russian soldiers. In this novel, Eric shows how common humanity exists by demonstrating Paul’s traumatizing experiences during fighting. An example is when killed the Frenchman Gerard Duval. “I have killed the Frenchman printer, Gerard Duval” (Remarque page 225). Paul goes into a sad stage after killing the man and seeing Gerard’s wife and daughter in...
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...All quiet on the western front is a historical fiction novel, by Erich Remarque, that describes the life of German soldiers during World War I, and it illustrates themes including effects of war on soldiers. “This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by war” (epigraph of the novel). The book is about the story of a German soldier who joins the German army in world war I. The plot consists of daily routines of soldiers in the trenches. This soldier had to lay wire, guard supplies, fight in many battles, and watch his friends fall. Paul baumer is the novel's narrator, who encouraged by his teacher, joined the German army with other classmates after World War I began. Throughout the book, Paul's personality continues to conflict with the way the war forces him to be. Originally, paul was a compassionate young man. However, because of the war and the anxiety, he learns to remove his feelings from his mind. The other characters are not well crafted in this book, as the reader does not learn about much of the characters except Paul. The setting is in the western front of Germany in World War I. The life in the trenches are well described. Specific scenes and the physical environment in this book are not as specific and described as other books. The author...
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...German author Erich Maria Remarque based All Quiet on the Western Front on his own experiences as a Germany Army soldier in WWI. The imagery Remarque uses is very vivid and realistic, and it helps bring to life the intense action and emotion of the novel. One time that imagery shows is when, in the middle of the daily destruction of war, however, there exists beauty. One day, Paul sees beautiful and fragile butterflies and he says. ''The grasses sway their tall spears, the white butterflies flutter around and float on the soft warm wind of the late summer.''This is contrasted with the ominous, or evil looking, observation balloons overhead. The author uses these images as a way to demonstrate that even in war, a soldier seeks a sense of order...
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...He seems to only view the facts as being important, and feelings and emotional attachments hold him back. When Kemmerich is lying in the bed dying, Paul and Müler only think about the boots that they could have once Kemmerich passes. “We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important to us. And good boots are scarce.” (pg 21) When Paul leaves the hospital after Kemmerich’s death, he seems to lose his sense of humanity and becomes more animalistic. Another moment of Paul’s future is when they are fighting, after the battle Paul states that they seem lost. They are still children and yet they have seen and experienced more than the average man at a much older age. Paul and his small group of comrades realized that they have no hope for their future and they have no idea what they could do after the war. They are stuck in the middle of being a child and an adult. “We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men… I believe we are lost.” (pg 123) When Paul returns home because he is on leave, the world is so much different then he remembered. Paul realizes while on leave that even when the war is over, he will not be able to interact with the regular world, since he has lost that feeling and emotion. Even in his home does Paul feel as if he is not meant to be there, as if there is no hope for him to go back to the way things were before the war. “I stand there dumb as before a judge… Words- they do not reach...
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...Throughout the compelling war story “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Paul Baumer tells the true horrific tales of World War 1. Baumer was a student along with his many other friends. They had plans for their future and dreams of having a family. As Paul and his fellow students enroll in the army their life takes a pause. They must leave their old life behind and create a new one, as a soldier. As they first joined the army they become under the control of Corporal Himmelstoss. Himmelstoss was harsh, he made his soldiers perform exhausting, grating, and even pointless activities. This showed the young men the war isn't righteous, it's challenging and terrifying. Paul grew up with another soldier who recently got his leg amputated and is...
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...amputated and soon after died from infection. They were forced to “disconnect” from their emotions and take their former comrades high quality boots after he died. One of the major ways these young men coped with the unbearable circumstance of war was mentally removing themselves from their current situation by remembering things from their youth and their previous lives back at home. They were constantly reminding themselves of their youth and reminiscing on the good days before the war. They would frequently talk about and miss the quietness back at home. World War I was one of the loudest wars of all time. This “Industrialized” war with the use on artillery and machine guns bring an unignorable sound to the battlefield that was not experienced at this level ever before. The never ended bombs going off, one after the other. The terrifying whistling of the bullets flying by your face constantly. The ever deafening howling of the incoming artillery. All these sounds coming together in a never ended torture to the solders in the trenches. They would constantly think and talk to one another about the quietness back home and ever long for the peace again. Another tool these young men relied on was using food to temporally take their mind off the unimaginable terrors of the war. These men would often go days without food and when they got it, it was not your five start meals. The men even got into a fight with one of the chiefs because the chief didn’t want to give them their food...
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...Paul’s character begins the war and the novel, Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, as a child, barely out of school, and is sent into the most traumatizing event anyone during his time went through; The Great War, which stripped his innocence and turned him into a broken man. So, although his life was not doomed since the beginning, his mindset, personality, and purity were all doomed to be erased since the moment he entered battle. Throughout the war, he is subjected to the loss of his friends, the mind shattering effects of shells bursting mere meters from him, and the horrifying experience of not only killing men, but brutally maiming one and listening to his final breaths, torturing himself over the hours that he is trying to keep the man alive. Each of these elements of combat pushing him past the point of humanity, thereby stripping him of his “character”. This also happens to many other soldiers in the book, as, although it is not as in depth, it is shown that the other soldiers in Paul’s regiment are going through the same or similar events as Paul. This shows that, no matter who the book was following, the soldier still would have lost their innocence, making each and every person in the army doomed from the start. Over the course of the Great War, over two million German soldiers were killed, of the eleven million sent to fight, making the odds for Paul and his friends not very promising. However, amongst all of the deaths of his friends, brothers in arms, and...
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...Paul Baumer of Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” doesn’t discover his identity, he creates it through a series of life-altering decisions. His evolution from 19 year old student to soldier, then to killer, and ultimately to a victim of war, can be attributed to each seemingly insignificant choice he makes. The first decision Paul makes that will change the trajectory of his life and the way he perceives himself is volunteering to join the army. The act of joining the military gives Paul the steadfast and resolute identity of soldier, a role in his community that suggests honour as opposed to shame. Baumer expresses that “At that time everyone’s parents were ready with the word ‘coward’”, implying that the threat of ostracization pushed the boys towards their new, society-approved identities of heros. Through sharing traumatic experiences with their fellow classmates, often in close-quarters, the group of young men develop their own distinct identities within the larger ‘umbrella-identity’ of soldier. John makes the hasty decision to kill an enemy soldier with his own knife, a choice that will permanently reshape the way he views himself from that moment forward. He realizes quickly that he has committed an irreversible act, stating: “This is the first time I have killed with my own hand, whom I can see close at hand, whose death is my doing.” John considers his friends who have killed on the battlefield, quickly finding that he, too, will become one of...
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...All Quiet on the Western Front: Removing of War From Nature “Here the trees show gay and golden, the berries of the rowan stand red among the leaves, country roads run white out to the sky line, and the canteens hum like beehives with rumours of peace” (295). All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, takes place in the late 1920’s, located in Berlin. The book was published in 1928, although many speculations were pointed towards the book. Once word got around of the anti-war book, a controversial storm started brewing. There was a prohibition of the book’s production, and many countries banned the book from entering its borders. Thus being an anti-war novel, the true horrors of war quickly spread like wildfire, giving people a...
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... War is a life changer. In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul Bäumer engaged in what would be the fight for his country and life. Paul was a 19 year old boy who was persuaded to join the German Army shortly after World War 1 by his schoolteacher. Unknowingly, he and his schoolmates have signed up for their own deaths. During the war, they matured both physically and mentally with concise thoughts and actions, eventually feeling disconnected and out-of-place when entering society. Through its gruesome and emotional moments, Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front portrays the grim reality and rare glories of war. The inevitable constituent of war is death. With deaths from both sides of a battle, families are broken apart and friendships are broken. War changes people from innocent individuals to killing machines. Many are deprived of their sense of feeling for others, which restrains their ability to connect with the outside world, since it becomes a challenge to connect with people in a personal level. As Remarque stated, “even though they may have escaped shells, [they] were destroyed by the war”. Fortunately for Paul Bäumer, only his mental state suffered through the conflicts, but many of his close friends have died in the line of duty, leaving him a shell of what he once was. Their deaths were not in vain however; they voluntarily and bravely fought for a cause, which was for their own country, Germany. Consequently, when Paul returned for a...
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... The novel All Quiet On The Western Front was written by Erich Remarque about a young adult whose generation was essentially obliterated. After being in the frontlines for the Central Powers in World War I, Remarque saw how destroyed his generation was and wrote a work of realistic fiction that was based on his own experiences of fighting on the side of the germans. Soon, Remarque created a resounding story dealing with how the war had destroyed a generation of children. Remarque is far from accusing and does an excellent job of not exaggerating the horror of war. An example of this is when the boys are talking about how Kemmerich's “…leg is amputated. He looks ghastly, yellow, and wan,” (7). That is, sadly, just how the war was; it was gruesome and risky. World War I was just over 100 years ago, and one of the last wars where amputation was a common practice. People forget this happened, that often people got amputated to be saved. Remarque has given us straight up facts of what the conditions were, and doesn’t accuse war of anything. The author also strays from exaggeration how the war was. Some of the appeal to the novel is being able to vicariously live through Paul, without much more detail than “someone shot him point blank in the stomach with a Verey light,” (124). While, vague statements can be exaggerated, it gets difficult when talking of a heavy topic, such as war. So Remarque has done a great job of what he set out to do. Furthermore, Remarque doesn’t embellish...
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...War contains major events that lead to the diminishing of one’s mind through the gas, guns, fighting, and death. Author Erich Maria Remarque uses All Quiet on the Western Front to represent and portray the horrific reality of the harrowing injuries during the war and the psychological impact, but also the brotherhood that emerges through the fighting. While on the rigorous terrain, the soldiers undergo major injuries that thwart them from fighting and sometimes surviving the attacks of enemies. Experiencing the execrable environment of the front, “[their] eyes [were] burnt, [their] hands [were] torn… [and] [their] elbows [were] raw” while trying to overcome the enemy (Remarque 133). Remarque depicts the appearance of the soldiers during the...
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...All Quiet on the Western Front How Was Erich Maria Remarque Life? Erich Maria Remarque was born in Germany in June 22nd and died at the age of 72 in September 25th. Remarque participated in the First World War. He was sent to war when he was only 18 years old, and during his participation in World War l he was constantly moving. Erich went to the Western Front, Reserves, Field Depot of the 2nd Guards Reserve Division at Hem-Lenglet and to the 2nd Company. It was the 31st of July 1917, when Remarque got an injury by shrapnel; which can be fragments of a bomb or pieces of metal. The shrapnel lead to severe injuries in his left leg, neck and right arm. After his incident he was sent to a Hospital in Germany, where he spend the rest of the war days. Remarque had many kinds of different of jobs throughout his life; Erich was a teacher, writer, librarian, journalist, businessman and editor. His job as a teacher was after he returned from the First World War, in a primary school in now the country of Bentheim. He also worked as a writer; while working as a write, he wrote multiple famous works where All Quiet on the Western Front stands. Erich Maria Remarque first wife was Jutta Zambona. They were both cheating on each other until they got finally divorced. However they have to re-married because at that time they were living in Switzerland and if they would of not marry each other again they would have been forced to leave the county and they would have been sent to Germany. Remarque...
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...One way Paul and his friends keep their minds off the war is to scour the area for food and supplies. On the way to set up barbed wire around the trenches, Kat and Paul notice a couple of geese off the side of the road. Kat swears that they will return to cook the geese as soon as they can (52). When they return, they nab the geese and prepare a delicious feast to share with each other. As Paul sits with his best friend by the fire, he realizes that they “have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have” (93). They have such a deep bond they need not even speak to understand each other. Just being together brings Paul back to...
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...All Quiet on the Western Front Chapter 8/9 Other Characters 1) “I think it is more of a kind of fever,” says Albert on page 206 “No one in particular wants it, and then all at once there it is. We didn’t want the war, the others say the same thing – and yet half the world is in it all the same.” What are Albert’s feelings toward the war and toward the kaiser? Albert never wanted to be part of the war, but it just happened. The war is a fight, but it also symbolizes people becoming famous through the war. On page 206 Kat says generals use the war as a way to become more famous than the emperors. No one wants to be part of a war, yet half the world is in it. On page 203 Albert wonders whether there would have been a war or not after the kaiser had said no. Albert has started thinking about all of this once the kaiser came because it made him think about the person who created this war he is currently battling in. 2) Tjaden says on page 202 “So that is the All-Highest! And everyone, bar nobody, has to stand up stiff in front of him!” He meditates: “Hindenburg too, he has to stand up stiff to him, eh?” Why does Tjaden say this to the kaiser and what is Tjaden’s reaction to the kaiser? When Tjaden sees the emperor he is not pleased at all. He doesn’t think anyone should respect him because he doesn’t look powerful at all. The Hinderburgs were a very wealthy family so when Tjaden uses the personification on page 202, “Hinderburg too, he has to stand up stiff to him...
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