All Quiet On The Western Front Thesis

Improved Essays
“This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure. Death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a beginning generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war”(Remarque). Taking place in World War two, a young man loses everything he held dear to him by becoming a soldier. In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Erich demonstrates how the war can force soldiers to grow up by destroying their identity, youth, and innocence. In order to be a good soldier, a person must become like everyone else. Remarque writes about how Paul and his comrades went to enlist eager to fight for their country, …show more content…
“We see men living with their skulls blown open... we see men without mouths, without jaws, without faces… on every yard there lies a dead man”(Remarque page 134-135). The war has inflicted so much trauma that some soldiers try putting themselves out of their misery, so they don’t have to live in a never ending nightmare. When they fight, they become inhuman not caring about the causalities and the aftermath. “We have become wild beasts”(Remarque page 113). Paul and all the other soldiers have murdered others because they’re fighting for their country, but the enemy is fighting for the same cause, it is a never ending cycle of death and sorrow. In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque the author displays how a man’s identity, youth, and innocence is abolished in the war. From shellings and bombardments, to playing skat and going home, Paul and his comrades have had their lives vanish before their eyes. War is more than just an event that reoccurs over time, it is a bloodbath of innocent people who don’t deserve what ultimately will come, death. To this day, World War Two had one of the highest death counts in history. This is just one of thousands of stories explaining how war has affected the lives of

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    He says, “I do not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world,” and “No one feels it with his whole essence.” (Document A). He feels an emotional detachment to his surroundings, and his inability to live life normally, his disassociation. His mental health was sacrificed for the good of the war, no doubt just like the rest of the soldiers. However, witnessing the terrible events of the war can be just as bad, like Mary Borden in her novel The Forbidden Zone, where she was a nurse working in a field hospital in France.…

    • 1284 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Their cold-heartedness is contrasted with the reaction of the new recruits who cried and trembled out of fear . In the next quote after Paul sees this awful sight and he describes what he thinks him and many others have become.…

    • 281 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is an anti-war novel expressing the views of an average World War I soldier named Paul. Erich Maria Remarque uses an assortment of voice elements to create tone. In the passage on the preceding page, Paul describes his surroundings on the front. The tone of the excerpt is presented to be emotionless and overwhelming.…

    • 557 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    For Paul and his friends, the only good thing about the war is that it brings them together. The people in Paul’s company are company consider themselves comrades…

    • 237 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front demonstrates how total war creates internal struggle within those who must fight in it. On the battlefield, Paul must force himself into compliance with basic…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After experiencing the war, nothing is the same as what it once is, books which Paul read many times are no longer valuable to him, his own house has an eerie strangeness to it. Going from having to be on guard at any mosoldierst and living with constant anxiety and stress, to going back to a time when Paul still had his youth, his innocence, and is carefree, is a big change. The experience of war will take away Paul’s and his fellow soldier’s curiosity and aptitude for fun and learning for the rest of their lives. The soldier’s relationships with their environment and peers will never be the same after the…

    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Paige Sherlock English 2 First Analytical Essay Topic 3 Changing a Global Perspective All Quiet on the Western Front, an international bestseller, was named the greatest war novel of all time for a multitude of reasons. These reasons do not include his ability to tell an enticing story or describe key points in great detail, but because it changed the perspective of millions of people all over the world and their concept of war. In Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, he shattered the idea of war everyday citizens had by telling the story of a platoons journey in gruesome detail and unveiling the truth about the horrors of war.…

    • 966 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Great War Dbq

    • 1639 Words
    • 7 Pages

    When Paul gets separated from his company, he finds himself behind an abandoned trench and hides until all of the shooting is over. When an enemy soldier stumbles into the trench, he follows his instincts and stabs him. Paul says to himself, “forgive me comrade, how could you be my enemy?” (Document B). Paul now realizes that this soldier is just like him and is not actually his enemy.…

    • 1639 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The war experiences, as narrated by Paul, reveals that these were dangerous moments, whereby anybody would have possibly gone mad, deserted duty or even died. Death is the most obvious effect of war, and all frontline soldiers like Paul were constantly exposed to it. For instance, Paul describes one of the scenes when he was exposed to death during an air raid in a cemetery. In Paul’s account, the air raid in the cemetery had been reduced to a mass of wreckage with corpses thrown everywhere. Paul proceeds to say that the corpses had been killed the second time, but is grateful for every corpse that was sprung as they saved a soldier from death (Remarque, 2004, p. 71).…

    • 986 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The horror of war is not only felt by the soldiers, but the civilians who also experience its horrors although not perhaps to its fullest extent. War does not distinguish between civilian or soldier, its horrors spread and cause physical and mental detriment. In the novel, All Quiet on…

    • 1461 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A soldier is barraged with emotions during a war, that he must avoid in order to survive. War has forced a soldier to become detached, as he must always stay neutral in order to get through the battle. As the soldier observes innocent creatures being destroyed and watches death occur, he must not let this affect him as he has to block it out. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque uses horses and butterflies to represent how war forces soldiers to conceal their emotions, which protects him from the brutal experiences of war.…

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Paul recruited in the army with his classmates from their persuading teacher, Kantorek. They all believed they would fight in the army to serve…

    • 1391 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Savage Deterioration of Man Charles Yale Harrison’s remorseless novel Generals Die in Bed strips war of it’s heroic mirage and examines it, rather, as brutalizing. The myths about war’s glory are destroyed by showing the sheer agony of the soldiers’ experiences in the trenches through factors such as abusive officers, lice and starvation. The aftermath of such hardship results in the psychological and emotional ramifications of desperation, barbarism and insanity on the common soldiers. The final chapter, “Vengeance,” highlights these influences revealing the significant transformation of soldiers to shells of men that they once were. Philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes believed that men, when forced out of civilization and into the environment of war, would eventually deteriorate from their honourable and brave manners.…

    • 1291 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After experiencing the death of his comrades and the destruction of land, Paul felt mentally injured/handicapped. He does not see a future for him without war; yet, he cannot remember his life before it. The longer he stayed, the more he hated the war and all it stood for. All these feelings reflect the author’s views on war and how he perceived the people who endured…

    • 1393 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    One soldier says to Paul "If your father came over with them, you wouldn't hesitate to fling a bomb at him". This is showing how that because Paul is so focused on Killing anyone who comes from the opposition's side so that he can survive he wouldn't notice if he knew them or not. Paul, along with the other German soldiers are made to become mindless puppets. They have no knowledge of who they are killing and why. War has striped Paul and the other soldiers of knowing who they are, and of individual actions.…

    • 980 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays