All Quiet On The Western Front By Erich Maria Remarque Analysis

Improved Essays
“Because he could not see, and was mad with pain, he failed to keep under cover, and so was shot down before anyone could go and fetch him in” (12). During an attack, Behm got shot in the eye and was unconscious. Behm was left for dead by his fellow troops because they were confused. Later that day, he screamed for help from his troops but he got shot again and this time he died. This is chapter one and Remarque already establishes his imagery. Remarque uses many literary devices in All Quiet on the Western Front such as symbolism, metaphors, and imagery. “We must look out for our bread. The dirty rats have become much more numerous lately because the trenches are no longer in good condition” (101-102). The rats symbolize death. The hungry …show more content…
Remarque’s symbols in the book are rats, books, and geese. The rats represent death, the books represent loss of innocence, and the geese represent comradeship. He used many metaphors also. Some include beasts/robots to themselves, fever to war, and the hospital to war. Remarque compares themselves to beasts/robots because they are trained to kill the opposition. He compares the war to a fever because nobody wants either one, but yet they can come at any point of time. The third example is the hospital and the war. He compares them to each other because some people die in each place every day from the war. The third example for a literary device Remarque uses is imagery. One example is when soldiers do not know when they are going to die, the second is when Paul kills a person for the first time, and the third is the poppler flashback. Anything can happen in war and soldiers pray to whoever they believe in that they will not die. Towards the end of the novel, Paul kills a person and feels bad for doing so. The third example is the poppler flashback. Paul would reminiscence any time he could because he absolutely hated the

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
  • Improved Essays

    This image demonstrates the brutality and harshness through imagery. The reader can just imagine a field full of death due to the imagery in this line. This poem also states that the soldiers were, “Raged at his breast, gulped and died”( 14). This quote demonstrates the brutality of death by using words such as raged and gulped. This creates strong sensory for the reader.…

    • 787 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The first main instance is in chapter 6. In Chapter 6, Paul and a few others comes across a few soldiers whose noses are cut off by the enemy’s and eyes poked out with bayonets. Their mouths and even their noses are stuffed with some sawdust so they suffocate to death (if not already dead). This constant view of death that causes the soldiers to fight back like insensible animals. They used spades to butcher the enemy faces and jab bayonets into the backs of enemy’s who was too slow to get away from the bloodbath.…

    • 281 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Even though he is finally home, out of danger, Remarque doesn’t give Paul the same sense of security that was present before wartime. While he is taking in his home once again, the narrator says that he is “not myself”, and that there is “a veil between” him and his family (160). Remarque has used the war to change Paul emotionally, in the same way that it has for every single one of the other veterans involved. Later on, sitting in his bedroom, the changes make themselves apparent again. He reminisces about his childhood, when he was fascinated with books and the universes they contained, but trying to read them now, he says that “images float through my mind”, but instead of whisking him to an alternate world, “they do not grip me, they are mere shadows and memories” (172).…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    All Quiet on the Western Front Trench Diorama and Artifacts Essay Most of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front takes place in the trenches of Eastern France over several years. The story is told through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier, initially a naive young man misled by older leadership and authority figures into joining the war. The model is a representation of the vivid depiction of the trenches and the lives of the soldiers living in them that Remarque gives the reader in chapter 6; a midpoint of the novel when Paul has returned to the frontline. Included in the collage is a small collection of relevant items from the description of the trench.…

    • 1253 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Remarque’s novel shows the sacrifices soldiers made, the sense of comradeship developed among the soldiers, and the brutalities of World War I. Remarque used many of his own experiences in combat as a guide to writing this novel. The main character, Paul Baumer, and his comrades enlist in the German army of World War I after being persuaded by their school master, Kantorek. The soldiers quickly realize that the war is nothing like what they thought it would be. Through the years of vivid horror, the men are changed for the worst. The war has turned the soldiers into savage, heartless creatures.…

    • 505 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Change In the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front”, Erich Remarque shows that the war forced change. It is a recurring theme in the novel for things to be different than they used to be. Whether it was a change in men or relationships, the author showed how the soldiers were forced to adapt to the reality of the war. The war robs men of their previous selves by ripping away everything that they once were.…

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    On the other hand, Remarque uses a different situation to convey the same idea with ambiguity through Paul’s statements about life. To elaborate, Paul ponders the causes of the war while guarding Russian prisoners, noting “I am frightened: I dare think this way no more. This way lies the abyss” (Remarque 194). Since “abyss” means a ‘bottomless pit’, Paul feels that his examination of the war’s intentions will lead him nowhere. Paul, making an effort to think of opposing soldiers as enemies rather than ordinary people, thus represents the idea of unlikely enemies.…

    • 409 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    (Remarque 172-173). Reading quotes like this one provoke thought and emotion in the reader’s mind. Think about the thoughts and emotions that the soldiers felt as they witnessed an atrocity like in the above quote. Something as traumatic as such could cause the soldiers to develop post traumatic stress disorder. Post traumatic stress disorder is a semi-treatable condition that Paul and his friends would have had to cope with because of their time spent fighting in World War One.…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    War has many heart wrenching impacts on the soldiers, this is demonstrated in Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet On The Western Front. The novel is set during World War I. It follows a young German soldier and his fellow comrades, depicting the cruelty of the war. The novel illustrates how the soldiers were treated and the profound impacts that war had on them. The impacts they faced were not just physical, but also psychological.…

    • 801 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    By the end of the book, after the majority of the years of battling Paul has no longing to continue battling. He feels as if he doesn't ha anything to go home to, and his whole era has been wiped…

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved 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

    Remarque puts emphasis on this through the motif of nationalism since it is inevitable to be seen in times of war. The novel portrays this as the young men try to figure out who the real enemy is and in doing so, wonder what they are fighting for. It is expressed when after viciously stabbing the Frenchman, Bäumer says, "Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother just like Kat and Albert” (Remarque 223). Within these words it becomes obvious that Paul is questioning what he is fighting for.…

    • 1358 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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.…

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Annotated Bibliography Broome, Barbara A. “Perseverance.” Journal Of Cultural Diversity, vol. 19, no. 3, 2012, pp.71. Academic Search Complete. http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=19&sid= e28117c3-d519-4ac1-9590 Erich Maria Remarque shows a great deal of perseverance in his writing of All Quiet on the Western Front.…

    • 1666 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays