...Trenches were long narrow ditches that were dug into the ground where some soldiers lived day and night. Only a small proportion of the army would serve there. The trenches were the domain of the infantry, with the supporting arms of the mortars and machine guns. The trenches were built in the front line or in any sort of dangerous places. But behind them was a mass of supply lines, training establishments, stores, workshops, headquarters and all the other elements of the 1914-1918 system of war, in which the majority of troops were employed. Frontline trenches were usually seven feet deep and six feet wide. The conditions for the soldiers in the war were very risky. Death was a constant companion to those who were serving in the front line...
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...WAR LITERATURE ASSIGNMENT ON PAUL BAUMER’S CHARACTER AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ‘LOST GENERATION’ IN REMARQUE’S NOVEL, ALL QUIET ON THE WEATERN FRONT All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel is about the experiences of ordinary German soldiers during the war. It is based on Remarque’s own experiences at war which enabled him to capture the realism and authenticity needed to exemplify the feelings of a soldier. Through the novel he was able to capture the feeling of seclusion and loneliness among the soldiers. In 1916, he was drafted into the German army to fight in World War I, in which he was badly wounded. In 1926, after the war ended, he published Im Westen Nichts Neues which he later translated into English as All Quiet on the Western Front. The novel has been heralded by critics throughout the world as the greatest war novel of all time. It helped capture every thought that went through a soldier’s mind who belonged to the "lost generation". War changes life. Conditioned by the aggression and lifestyle of being a soldier, young adult Paul Baumer in Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front, over the course of four years, changed from a naive high school graduate to a mature but disillusioned adult. The violence and trauma in the trenches of World War I exposed Paul to the horrors of injuries and infections, the fragile state of life, the terrors of death...
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...All Quiet On The Western Front is a book about a boy named Paul and all his challenging experiences from World War I. The war changed his outlook on all perspectives of life. The war changed him as a person, and not for the good. In All Quiet On The Western Front, it tells the story of a young man, Paul Baumer, and his experiences of World War I. Paul fought voluntarily in the German army at the age of 19. His friend Kemmerich has his leg amputated and is slowly dying, so Paul takes his boot to Muller, as he requested. Paul’s crew gets involved in a gruesome battle with infantrymen. The battle was very terrifying, the men’s bodies were being blown apart and giant rats ate the remains of all the men. After the battle, Paul and...
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...War does not determines who is right, only who is left. In All Quiet on the Western Front, a historical war novel, by Erich Maria Remarque, war is described realistically and losses were revealed. Earth and nature play huge roles among the wars; they both have opposite uses. For example, earth is both protection and danger as they seek refuge in it down within the trenches as the shells explode on the surface of it. As Paul travels through the horror and destruction of war, he realized the comfort brought to him by nature. Earth might not have an significant effect in our lives, however, it has great impacts on soldiers. The earth shields exterior forces and acts as an protection, yet it is a battlefield where soldiers lose their lives. When Paul and his friends were preparing for a bombardment and hiding from possible attack, he realized...
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...No one was prepared for how horrific World War I turned out to be. The war killed thousand of lives. Those who survived the war were torn and scarred from the horrific things they had witnessed. There are many people that expressed their traumatic memories of the war through song, book, or poem. In the book All Quiet On The Western Front it shows the horrors soldiers had to go through from the perspective of a young soldier named Paul. Paul and his fellow soldiers walk on after a hard battle, “It begins to rain. An hour later we reach our lorries and climb in. There is more room now than there was.”(Remarque 25). They had to walk all the way to the front line. Then after fighting, they walked back through pain and mud. In comparison to the...
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...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...
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...“War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.”-Karl Kraus. The novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, displays how the brutality of war continues to affect generations of soldiers. The horrors war can cause are timeless. Remarque shows this by writing about how war causes suffering not only towards the family of soldiers, but to soldiers themselves. He describes how when back home after the war, soldiers feel out of place. He also talks about how war brings out the worst in people and how it affects the mental/emotional health of soldiers. The lives of sons, daughters, parents and friends are lost for the purpose of what? War. The effects these losses can cause are seen when Maria Remarque states, “I must go and see Kemmerich's mother. I cannot write that down. This quaking, sobbing woman who shakes me and cries out on me: "Why are you living then, when he is dead?"--who drowns me in tears and calls out: "What are you there for at all, child, when you --"--who drops into a chair and wails: "Did you see him?...
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...The War’s Effect’s Towards Soldiers World War I was one of the most significant wars in U.S. history. It was significant because it created a gateway for new tactics, weapons, and it carved the way for a whole new style of warfare. In the book All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul Baumer, the main character, and his comrades go through horrifying experiences that affect them both physically and mentally. Throughout the book Paul shows how war is a dehumanizing experience, but he continues to find ways to make him more human by appreciating the little things that he didn’t notice before his previous war experiences. Throughout the war Paul witnesses things that make him more empathetic and compassionate. These specific war experiences have influenced Paul in both negative and positive ways. For example when Paul comes to realize that the Russian prisoners are suffering he suddenly shows sympathy towards them by, “I take out my cigarettes break each one in half and give them to the Russians.” (194) As Paul overlooks the violence and fighting of the war he realizes that the so called “enemy” is just another man fighting for the same reason as he is. Paul now has a new outlook on the war and he is showing a very unexpected sensitive side, which is most definitely him being “human”. During the intensity of the war Paul was holding nothing back while being in battle with the men shooting at them with no feelings or regret. As Paul now looks at the enemy...
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...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...
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...All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, tells the story of Paul Baumer, a German soldier, and his comrades’ experiences in combat during World War I. Paul Baumer, along with a few other men, enlisted in the military after being persuaded by their school master, Kantorek. Although “no one [had] the vaguest idea what [they] were in for” (Remarque 11), the men still decided to join the war. Throughout the story, Paul instantly discovers that the war is not all that it is made out to be. Paul and his comrades struggle to survive on a daily basis. The men realize that the only way for them to stay alive is to develop friendships between one another and stick together. The horrifying images of death and the sacrifices they are required to make cause the soldiers to lose their identity. Through the eyes of the “Lost Generation,” Remarque is able to portray the sacrifices, comradeship, and the brutality of war a typical soldier of World War I endured....
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...During the time of World War I, being a soldier was seen as a very noble thing due to the glorification of war. All Quiet on the Western Front shows life on the battlefield during WWI, as well the effects and influences off the battlefield. The protagonist of the film, Paul Bäumer is a young German soldier who joins the war shortly after finishing high school. Paul and other young soldiers are trained in harsh conditions and learn the basics of combat. Once they enter the war Paul and other soldiers see what life is truly like on the battlefield. When he goes onto the front for the first time he learns of the travesty that is war and it is not how his teacher’s have described it. Many of the soldiers’ die or are wounded and left in the harsh conditions of the hospitals. When Paul goes home for the first time he returns a changed man. His father wants him to wear his uniform because he should be proud that he is a soldier, but Paul refuses to, knowing that war is nothing to be proud of. World War I is known as the first industrial war. New inventions and weapons added to the impersonality of war. Instead of having to fight with the enemy face-to-face, soldiers were able to shoot their rifles or throw poison gas. Because of the impersonality of war, the scene where Paul kills a man while...
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...Meredith Cheyenne Professor Brillman EUH 2030 August 30, 2014 All Quiet on the Western Front All quiet on the western front is said to be the greatest war novel of all time. Written by Erich Remarque, this novel is set in the early 1900’s during World War 1. It is told in the voice of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier who joins the war to fight on the French front. We follow the events of Paul’s life during the war as well as his group of comrades with whom he lives and learns. While Paul and his friends once entered the war with a child-like innocence, they are quickly shaken with the realistic and painful lives that they are living. They learn to understand the brutality of the war that they are in and that maybe “to die for one’s country” is not as sweet an honorable as they once thought. Throughout the book, there is a constant theme of war and the difficulties of it. It is up to the reader to decipher if they consider the novel to be pro- or anti-war. The book begins at suppertime after coming back from the front lines. Out of their company of 150 men to have gone with them, only 80 returned. Paul and his comrades believed that the extra rations that had been prepared should be dispersed among the remaining men. It is here that we first meet some of Paul’s comrades in war. There is Mueller, Kropp, and Katczinsky. Mueller is said to have been the more realistic one of the group. He sees the war for what it really is and his observance seems to foreshadow the loss...
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...effective, but cruel methods of killing opponents. These new technologies wiped out soldiers by the thousands within a matter of minutes, which many soldiers could not handle, ultimately leading to “shell shock” within the soldiers. All Quiet on the Western Front depicts these tragedies vividly, and by depicting the horrors of war, and how these horrors shape men around the war, it proves to be the greatest anti-war novel to ever be written. The greatest war novel of all time must have the most disturbing imagery of the horrors of war, and while walking through desolate woods, ravaged by mortars, Paul and his company stumble upon something truly horrific. In the branches of the trees, they gaze their eyes upon “dead men hanging” and a naked soldier sitting in the fork of a tree, with “only half of him sitting up there, the top half, the legs [were] missing” (Remarque 208). Despite this atrocious sight, Kat found humor in the situation, because he most likely died from a concussion. Here,...
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...Abstract This paper will explain many things about the Animal Liberation Front, including its operational goals; why it is a threat to the United States of America; what actions led to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation declaring it a terrorist organization; what other countries consider it a terrorist organization and why; how it acts like a terrorist organization instead of a peaceful eco-movement; and what can be done to halt or reduce this threat in the future. The Animal Liberation Front is a terrorist group for many reasons, ranging from their operational structure to their belief system. For example, they adopted the classic clandestine cell structure in order to reduce the risk of all of the cells being compromised if one person is picked up (Shorn, 2009). This allows the members of the Animal Liberation Front to continue their operations and reduce their operational risks slightly while still maintaining security. The Animal Liberation Front originally became a threat to the United States in 1976, when it claimed its’ first firebombing, and it has only grown since then. The firebombing and the hundreds of other actions that followed it plainly show that they are a terrorist organization by their targets and how they attack those targets. The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) has also claimed credit for causing millions of dollars in damage in the United States alone (Bourne, 2003). The targets of the ALF have also begun to mutate and become more...
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...feeling many of the soldiers had in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The camaraderie felt between the soldiers was quite evident throughout this piece of work. One connection that was immense throughout the book was the main character and narrator, Paul’s feelings toward Kaczynski (Kat), a fellow soldier and great friend. Paul’s relationship with Kat only seems to grow, creating a special bond as the novel progressed. From comforting Paul after his first hand to hand combat to simply being a friend to rely on, Kat was always by Paul’s side. Kat had an amazing impact on Paul during his time at war and on leave. When Paul was released for his short leave in Chapter 9, Paul couldn’t help but feel like he was out of place once he arrived back home. Paul realized he had changed as a person and was worried about his fellow comrades fighting on the battlefield. He often longed to return to the war so he could be back with his friends. When he arrived back however, he felt different. “I have an uneasy conscience when I look at them, and yet without any good reason” (89). He found his confidence when he was with Kat and felt that is where he belonged, fighting along side him. Kat always had a way of comforting Paul, and even though he did not want to seem childish, Paul looked up to Kat. This bond kept Paul strong and ready for anything. While fighting on the front, Paul resumed an...
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