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 …show more content…
Nature was the only beauty Paul found in war, even though all around him looms death and despair. Nature reminds him of the animalistic-like attitudes the soldiers possessed while in combat. Paul no longer sees the beauty in nature, only the corruption the war has caused, along with the twisted image of war nature. Detering, for example, finds a cherry tree in a garden; that evening, Detering was nowhere to be found. Paul questions why Detering brought back the cherry branches, in which he admitted to having an orchard of cherry trees at home. Nature seemed to “turn” on Detering in the fact that it overwhelmed him with homesickness and loneliness; he was caught by the military police, and was sent to military court. Detering let nature lead him away from his duties as a comrade, to meander towards Germany, and was helpless; he was never given a chance. The monotonous rainfall sets a gloomy mood as, “It falls on our heads and on the heads of the dead up in the line, and on the body of the little recruit with the wound that is so much too big for his hip; it falls on Kemmerich’s grave; it falls in our hearts” (74). The rain serves as a cleanse to the soldier’s anguish, and emotions towards the deaths around …show more content…
In autumn, everything dies; the trees lose their once vibrant green colour, and is replaced by a deeper, darker orange. The atmosphere and world around him is changing, but he seems to stay the same. Paul is alone, and frustrated on how the world still carries on, but he’s not. He is one the few “old hands” left, and he soon begins to feel empty. His beloved friends have passed on throughout his time on the war front, he’s yearning to feel some sort of life again. What’s ironic, is that in the beginning of the book Paul and his friends would cherish the sun and the green-ness of the world around them, however, towards the end of the book everything dies away, like Paul’s spirit and friends. The tone of the book goes from hopeful, to broken. Paul is so broken on the inside, the dying background behind him seems to mirror his feelings and thoughts. “But perhaps all this that i think is mere melancholy and dismay, which will fly away as the dust, when i stand once again beneath the poplars and listen to the rustling of their leaves. It cannot be that it has gone, the yearning that made our blood unquiet, the unknown, the perplexing, the oncoming things, the thousand faces of the future, the melodies from dreams and from books, the whispers and divinations of women; it cannot be that this has vanished in bombardment, in despair, in brothels” ( 294-295). Paul is flooded by so many feelings from