Essay about All Quiet On The Western Front By Erich Maria Remarque

‘Opposites attract’ is an old adage that society generally considers true. But when people are constantly told to make friends or find others with similar interests, do opposites really attract? People tend to expect from others what they can expect of themselves. In the world today, this is how friendships form. Although some may believe that friends do not hold enough power to influence individuals, it is not uncommon that the people one surrounds themselves with are the type of people they want to be. The friends people make reflect the type of person they are because friends have the power to influence others. Friends are capable of influencing those around them by either supporting or troubling them. In All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, Remarque believes that friendship is powerful because of the affects that it has on people when friends support them unconditionally. When the main character, Paul, is taking cover due to heavy gunfire and bombs, he reflects on what his friends mean to him. He says that his comrades’ “voices are the strongest. I am no longer a shuddering speck of existence- I belong to them and they to me…These voices, these words that have saved me and will stand by me” (Remarque 101). Even during an attack, the voices of Paul’s friends bring him back to sanity and remind him that he has value and worth. That they will get through the war because they have each other. Friends are valuable because they will always be there to…