...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...
Words: 1912 - Pages: 8
...because of all the death that has happened but also the generation we lost in the process. World War I happened between the years 1914 through 1918; this involved all of the countries of the world even though some were neutral. Inside of the fight of the war the soldiers suffered greatly through the trenches. All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque gives us an account of the war from a soldier's perspective of World War I. The narrator of All Quiet on the Western Front is Paul Baumer. Paul Baumer is a young World War I German soldier who decided to join the army with some of classmates when Germany needed soldiers. His father is indeed proud of his son’s war efforts...
Words: 437 - Pages: 2
...Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front captures the suffering caused by war. The novel is well written and articulate, truly showing the horrors of war. Reading the book, I was amazed by the detail and portrayal of Paul’s experience. The book was surprising at times, inciting emotion and realization. Remarque succeeds in exposing war for what it is: a violent and unnecessary event. The chapter in which Albert and Paul are in the hospital is the most memorable part of the book. Remarque’s writing reflects the pain felt throughout the chapter. Once in the hospital, Albert and Paul become friends with some of the other patients. The companionship between the injured soldiers is portrayed through the scenes in the hospital....
Words: 320 - Pages: 2
...Destruction of War on Soldiers The novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque is one of the best books featuring the atmosphere of World War I, including trench warfare. It illustrates how young men were forced to participate in the battle even when they do not fully comprehend what they are fighting for. The novel does not directly decide who is right or wrong, but only who is left when it is over. It provides a wonderful insight about the tribulations and trials encountered by common soldiers. The author accurately accounts the people who did the fighting and their reactions. The main character of the story is a volunteer soldier named Paul along with his fellow soldiers. They argued about the real purpose of war and they have strong worries on what the war has done to them and what will happen to them after it ends. This paper aims to explore on the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Remarque and its attitude towards WW1. Generally, the book provides a clear picture about the horror of war and what it is really like to be in the battlefield. It elaborates the gruesome war based on the perspectives of German soldiers. Its author presented an amazing imagery about the war including the details such as, how soldiers lost their legs after being amputated along with all the pain they experienced. Furthermore, it also demonstrates how the soldiers missed their families while on the battlefield, and how they yearned for love. Having a cigarette and plenty...
Words: 915 - Pages: 4
...Remarque’s anti-war novel tapped into the global sorrow and sense of nationalism created by World War I. His inspiration stemmed from his own time spent as a German soldier. War novels before All Quiet on the Western Front tended to romanticize war, as well as emphasize patriotism, nationalism, and glory. Remarque refutes this tradition by exposing its meaningless violence of war. “While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded dying. While they taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger” (64). Dying for one’s country is the greatest sense of nationalism, however this novel argues that there is never a just cause for war. Remarque characterizes Paul Baumer as an expression of his own political standpoint of opposition to nationalism, a major “ism” of the twentieth century. Nationalism played a valuable role in the twentieth century and is arguably one of the main causes of World War I. Although nationalism can serve for unifying a country, it can also cause intense pride and competition between countries. In the early 1900s, nationalism created a fierce competition and rivalry between Europe’s powers. These powers were the nations of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, and France. In order to advance and be the greatest nation, competition both militarily and economically broke out. Germany, especially, took advantage of this immense since of nationalism, by seducing young...
Words: 636 - Pages: 3
...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...
Words: 628 - Pages: 3
...the war novel All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul Baumer is a very significant character. Paul is a character that conveys Remarque’s experiences and point of view to the readers. Paul and his friends are faced with the intensity of the war, which causes them to disconnect their feelings and lose their emotions. Soon, Pauls lifestyle is shaped to be around war. The war diminished Paul and turned his life into constant suffering. Paul’s character undergoes a changes throughout the novel, when he is induced with the horror and anxiety of the war. Paul Baumer is a character representative of all soldiers because he faces the same difficulties a typical soldier would face. In the war, Paul had seen his close friends...
Words: 901 - Pages: 4
...“Human Animals”: Dehumanization Through Words in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front “We cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others, even when we cause it.” – James Carroll War ruins men. It is a beast, which destroys their bodies, minds, and morals. Facing the all too personal horrors of war, Erich Maria Remarque places his protagonist, Paul, and his comrades into situations where detachment is one of the few ways out, leading to their eventual regression. They begin to lose themselves into an abyss of shockingly unaffected and detached behaviour in order to cope with the war and the loss of their comrades. Through the use of the first person point of view, recurring motifs, and strong characterisation, Remarque explores the isolation brought about by this dehumanization on the front lines of the First World War in All Quiet on the Western Front. In choosing to use the first person point of view, Remarque allows the reader to identify more closely with, as well as understand more clearly, Paul’s evolving detachment from the world around him. From the novel’s opening it is Paul’s thoughts which set the tone. Paul first appears to be an optimist who does not dwell on the deaths of those whom he does not know. Despite the fact they left one hundred and fifty men strong and returned with only eighty, Paul describes the day as “wonderfully good”, after all “the mail has come, and almost every man has a few letters...
Words: 1301 - Pages: 6
...All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, written in 1929, is in the perspective of a German soldier named Paul. This novel is based on World War I and follows Paul and his unit throughout the war. In the novel, it showed four different types of themes such as, universal brotherhood, comradeship, horror of war, and questioning of authority. After the end of World War I, most still thought that war was a good idea, but little did they know the horrific experience of the soldier and the large numbers of deaths from the war. Remarque using the four themes, made this novel to convey that fighting in war was not a good idea in hopes of preventing future war. Horrors of war is used to back up the main idea not to fight wars. Remarque shows the central idea when Kemmerich’s leg was amputated. Kemmerich was struck in battle with an intense injury and you can tell from descriptions that he is not doing too well. Kemmerich painfully and slowly died in the end. Another way the author makes the main idea more prominent was bombardments, a continuous attack with bomb, shells or other missiles. There was a lot of shots that hit and weakened the German army in this, like when Kat dies from the shrapnel splinter in his head, many other people died...
Words: 749 - Pages: 3
...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....
Words: 427 - Pages: 2
...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...
Words: 1317 - Pages: 6
...Over the course of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Bäumer struggles to find the purpose that the war has taken away from him. Before enlisting, Paul was a dedicated author who knew what he was meant to do in life: to finish his book. However, the war took that part of his life away from him. He eventually finds what he must do; Paul feels that it is important for him to try to stop war. This comes to a head after he kills a French soldier and realizes that the French “are poor devils like [Paul and his friends]”, and that they are really quite similar. Throughout this entire process, nature is used to advance these realizations and everything that Paul must go through in order to come to them. When Paul is going out to the front with his regiment, he begins to ponder over his life in the war. To him, “the front is a mysterious whirlpool… [which pulls him] slowly, irresistibly,...
Words: 521 - Pages: 3
...Destiny Boynton Guss, P.3 English 10 VADA H 7 March 2017 All Quiet on the Western Front Essay Throughout the book, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the book shows us Remarque’s thoughts on war through the main character Paul. In the book Paul is put through many traumatizing situations that ends up having a great effect on him, which changes his personality throughout the book. War pressures Paul into acting a certain way he was not used to back at home, which slowly breaks down Paul’s self being all through the book. This shows us the effects war has on people’s thoughts and actions in the military, which is an important reason why Remarque believes war to be unfortunate. Paul’s emotions were constantly changing,...
Words: 835 - Pages: 4
...troops were capable of meeting the promised outcome. These situations are the foundation for the perception that the public held about the concept of war that differed from what the young men on the front actually faced. Prior to World War I, the Napoleonic Wars took place almost 100 years prior from 1792 to 1815. Only stories existed about the horrors of battle with those who fought long dead. Without an oral history of what the troops experienced on the battled field the public perceived service and death in combat as the ultimate sacrifice to support ones county. This also dovetailed into the perception that society was only going to get better with the improvement in science and technology (Meyers). In Rupert Brooke’s “Peace” he wrote “And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping” and “Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move” (Brooke). These phrases in his poem established that young men at home were ignorant of what was going on around them and ignoring their duty to country if they did not serve. Once overseas the young faced the realities of war. Robert Graves, an Englishman that served in the trenches of World War I, provides details of what he experienced in the trenches in his autobiography Good-Bye To All That. After his arrival at the front, he describes one of his first trips through the trenches. During his stroll to wake up the other officers he...
Words: 1398 - Pages: 6
...“The sound of the gunfire from the front penetrates into our refuge. The glow of the fire lights up our faces, shadows dance on the wall. Sometimes a heavy crash leans to shivers.” (Remarque 94) Winston Churchill may have been thinking about how life was a constant living hell for the soldiers that fought in World War I when he said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” That is exactly what the soldiers did in Erich Maria Remarque’s novel and Lewis Milestones selfsame named movie, All Quiet on the Western Front. The brutalities of war not only destroyed these men physically, but mentally. These soldiers lost their sense of humanity and could not experience reality like they did before they went to war. When the author says, “We reach the zone where the front begins and become instant human animals.” (Remarque 56) he wants the readers to realize that the second the soldiers were on the front they lost all sense of humanity. They lived in conditions that were mucky, fetid, and infested with disease. The English Oxford Dictionary defines an animal as “A person without human attributes or civilizing influences, especially someone who is very cruel, violent, or repulsive.” The author chose the word animal because an animal does...
Words: 1262 - Pages: 6
