Caught up in a battlefield of bloodshed and hostility, 10 million teenage boys died in World War I, one of the deadliest wars history has known. Referred to as “the lost generation”, the surviving soldiers returned home with a different vision of the world. War drastically altered their once-happy lives, changing their values and beliefs along the way. Too experienced to fit in with children and too innocent to join elder men, the soldiers found themselves incapable of appreciating life, for their youth had been destroyed. Incapacitated of viewing a future or remembering a past, soldiers soon only believed in war. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque depicts his gruesome experience of the war through the despairing narration …show more content…
Remarque emphasizes soldiers’ despondent reflections of their broken past and changing beliefs and values on the ethics of killing through the use of situational irony and juxtaposition to depict how war drastically affects a soldier’s moral compass by permanently distorting their vision of death and the future. To begin, by applying situational irony, Remarque portrays the soldiers’ lack of belief in a future, and how despite their young age, they seek nothing from life — instead they run from it, unable to view life beyond the war. While sitting in their bunks after an encounter with their commanding officer, Paul and his fellow soldiers discuss what their futures hold in store for themselves. However, they are unable to imagine a profession or life after the war. Alongside Paul’s melancholy notions, Albert, one of Paul’s friends, bitterly admits, “‘The war has ruined us for everything.’ He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first …show more content…
When Paul is sent again to the front, a battle is begun against the French. While throwing grenades at the enemy, Paul reflects, “We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down—now, for the first time in three days we can see his face, now for the first time in three days we can oppose him; we feel a mad anger. No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves, to save ourselves and to be revenged” (Remarque 113). Paul feels a “mad anger” for his passing friends and more importantly, himself. When Paul refers to death, he does not only mean the fate of his old classmates; he alludes to his own youth and his grip on reality, both stolen from him, and he wants revenge. However, it is not upon the French or British that he inflicts his wrath upon; his retribution is meant for the one who reaped the deaths of his friends. By personifying “Death,” he presents a physical enemy other than the French and British, yet far deadlier, in the literal sense. Paul claims that the