...“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...
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...Erich Maria Remarque's life reflects Paul Bäumer's in All Quiet On the Western Front. Erich Maria Remarque uses All Quiet On the Western Front to write about his life. Paul Baumer reflects Erich Maria Remarque throughout the novel. Erich Maria Remarque is influenced by his life when writing All Quiet On the Western Front. Paul Bäumer is influenced to fight for Germany in World War I when "Kantorek had been our school master... I can see him now, as he used to glare at us through his spectacles and say in a moving voice "wont you join up, comrades"'(Remarque 11). Paul is influenced to go to war when his teacher begged and yelled at Paul and his classmates to go and fight, so they did and most of the class went right after they graduated. Erich...
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...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....
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...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...
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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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...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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...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...
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...In "All Quiet on the Western Front", when the kaiser was going to visit, everyone one was excited to see the great emperor of Germany. The Kaiser was talked about being very important, but he had such a minor role in the book. A quote from the book is: At last it leaks out -- the Kaiser is coming to review us. Hence all the inspections… At last the moment arrives. We stand to attention and the Kaiser appears. We are curious to see what he looks like. He stalks along the line, and I am rather disappointed; judging from his pictures I imagined him to be bigger and more powerfully built, and above all to have a thundering voice. He distributes Iron Crosses, speaks to this man and that, Then we march off. (Remarque 168) While the Kaiser was called the emperor of Germany, he didn’t seem that impressive to Paul and his friends....
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...World War One was, and still remains, one of the bloodiest events in the history of mankind. It all started off with the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and from there, domino-like events led to the Great War. On one side, there were the central powers: Germany, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ottoman Empire, etc. The Allies were composed of Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and the United States, that joined toward the end of the conflict. Many other countries participated as colonies of the ones mentioned like ANZAC, making it truly a “world” war. The motivations and reasons to join the war varied. Some countries were in an alliance so they joined to help an ally. Other reasons included excessive nationalism, imperialistic rivalries with another country, or in Britain’s case, defending the neutral country Belgium when it was invaded by Germany....
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...Many of the parents and other adults, such as Kantorek, a schoolmaster, encouraged the kids just like Erich Maria Remarque, a German soldier who served on the western front and wrote the book All Quiet on the Western Front, to enlist in the army. These adults “were convinced that they were acting for the best-in a way that cost them nothing” as Erich states. They viewed it as patriotic and heroic and anyone that did not enlist was looked down upon. The deep-rooted trust in their elders was undermined once they saw the atrocities of war. The rich and power hungry people who would never see the effects of war recruited these kids, whom truly didn’t know what they were getting into until it was too late. This is very similar to how slaves were treated in the transatlantic time period, which would lose their lives for the benefit of capitalist ship and business owners. These countries fighting in World War I were just as willing to ruin the lives of the youth for the...
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...would do after the war ended seemed unimaginable to him. “All at once everything seems to me confused and helpless” (Remarque 87). He could not really see himself doing anything. The reality of the war is horrible. When the French suffer heavy losses from Paul’s troops, they grab all of their provisions and head back to their positions, and realize that their enemy has far better accommodations than they do. “The fellows over there are well looked after, they fare magnificently, as against us, poor starving wretches, with our turnip jam; they can get all the meat they want” (Remarque 118). The...
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...All Quiet on the Western Front, is a novel based on World War I. Author Erich Marie displays the message of how bad war really is compared to the glorification it is given in the time period of the early nineteen hundreds. He supports his idea by explaining the physical and metal impact war has on a young solider. Remarque demonstrates a major theme that stands out. The only way to show how bad war is, is to describe the horror. He wrote this book specifically to persuade people in the opposite direction. He tried to show everyone that war is not a good thing. In the early nineteen hundreds, war was seen as a good thing. Everyone assumed war was the answer because they had not been in the situation of it. Remarque figured he could use all the horrific things that he saw and experienced at war into his writing to inform people. He talked about the physical horror that occurred. Battle wounds, death, and much more. It also mentally affected these soldiers. It scarred them. War is not something you see every day, and this mentally killed their heads....
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...to issue an ultimatum to make Serbia pay for the death. When Serbia rejected the ultimatum, Austria declared war. WW1 is also referred to as the Great War. This poses the question, What were the effects of this great war? The war affected citizens of the world in many different social, economic, and political ways. The war took over people's lives. Because WW1 was a total war, countries devoted all of their energy and resources to the war. By the end of the war, “Europe had lost more men in battle than in all of the wars of the previous three centuries.” (Book p.419). The Great War had cost many people their loved ones, and had taken over their lives. In an excerpt from All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque describes the feelings that the war brought, “I am young, I am twenty...
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...plain to see, theme is the central idea of a novel. All Quiet on the Western Front displays a multitude of strong themes throughout the book; the three most outstanding themes are the dehumanizing effects of war, the futility of war, and the comradeship between soldiers. These three themes combines help mold All Quiet on the Western Front into the greatest war novel of all time War is very gruesome and grotesque, which Remarque gives insight to throughout the book. Death is continuously around the soldiers, and it almost becomes the norm. “Death is working from within” (Remarque 14). The soldiers feel as though they are slowly dying with all their fellow comrades. Death dehumanizes the soldiers in a way that it makes them forget to realize death is a sad thing. The...
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...As opposed to other war stories, which depict war as “an adventure” (Remarque dedication page), Erich Maria Remarque’s, All Quiet on the Western Front exploits the true life changing experiences encountered by soldiers during World War I, who “may have escaped shells, were [nonetheless] destroyed by the war” (dedication page). This novel tells the true, horrifying realities of war and how they not only physically, but also mentally, affected the soldiers who were lucky enough to escape death. Using the thoughts and feelings of narrator Paul Bäumer, Remarque tries to show that the only difference between soldiers and civilians is the attire in which they wear. More often than not those who went off to war were viewed as “riders in … steel helmets [who] resemble[ed] knights …” (Remarque 57), who displayed great bravery and heroism, when in reality, they were “little more than boys” (Remarque 29) who have their entire lives...
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