Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

Death is everywhere, it is in your home and in the streets, it can happen to everyone and anyone, death has no discrimination. Death is a general at war. “All Quiet on the Western Front” embraces the brutality and carnage of war by showing the innocence of young men who are destroyed, the pain they experience, and the suffering theses young men endure. Soldiers are changed the moment they enter the battlefield. In the novel, Paul and his classmates joined the war as soldiers. They are convinced that killing other people is the right thing to do. Paul expressed that “all at once everything seems to me confused and hopeless” (Remarque 87). At a young age like Paul, war isn’t a good environment to be in. They lose themselves and their way. They are threatened with death at every turn and can’t get out of the situation. “I am young, i am twenty years old; Yet I know nothing of life, but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow” (Remarque 263). Paul saw the true colors of war and he has to suffer the consequences. Soldiers are shown a world full of violence and it causes a new perspective on life. Their youth is diminished and their lives will never be the …show more content…
“We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run with their two feet cut off” (Remarque 134). Soldiers witness the pain their comrades receive. At every turn, they lose a friend and must continue with the pain and thought of being next. They get a glimpse of dead bodies every day. “Their condition is hopeless, they choke to death with haemorrhages and suffocation” (Remarque 131). These young men are dying slow and painful deaths. The fellow soldiers feel useless because they can not do anything. Hearing cries from the wounded from sunrise to sunset in constant distress. Witnessing the pain of others, Remarque shows that the death of soldiers are not mourned or grieved because death is unvaried in