Quiet on the Western Front

¶ … Quiet on the Western Front

In the book All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator and protagonist of the story, Paul Bomer, joins the German army during World War I. Although still in high school, he is motivated by the country's fervor. It did not take him long to realize that the concept of war by civilians and the actual reality of war experienced by soldiers is completely at odds. War is not a triumph but a horror where boys become men who become animals fighting for their survival.

At the sound of the first droning of the shells we rush back, in one part of our being, a thousand years. By the animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected. It is not conscious; it is far quicker, much more sure, less fallible, than consciousness. One cannot explain it.

In a scene in chapter seven, Bomer is on a pass and talks with his cocky teacher who thinks he knows so much about the war, but actually is an ignorant buffoon. Bomer realizes there is no longer any place he feels right -- at home or the war. He can barely talk with such people, because they are so far removed from the realities.

These individuals back home cannot fathom was this new technologically advanced war is like. Chapters four and six, for example, closely describe the fighting at the front and in the trenches, which was so different than previous wars:

The closeness of the soldiers to the earth and to death is again emphasized when the men take cover in a graveyard. Here the living and the dead intermingle. Corpses and coffins are thrown up from the ground; just as the living are almost dead, the dead seem almost alive again, made to participate in the battle.

However, it is not only the weaponry and the slain that are so atrocious. It is also the lice, rats, starvation, nerve attacks, shell-shock, and bitter weather. The war is enough to drive anyone insane, and it does just that. Men, perhaps not realizing what they are doing, or perhaps merely committing suicide, walk right into the enemy's fire. One night, Bomer explains, one of the recruits has a fit and tries to climb out of the trench. He and his friend Kat have to strike the recruit to calm him down. Their dug-out then takes a light direct hit from a shell, but the men survive. Another recruit tries to escape and jumps out of the trench; he is killed instantly.

The dead do not receive any special consideration by the other soldiers or Remarque in his book. He discusses their death and so-called burial in non-emotional statements. Men are just thrown into a hole, one layer over another. The men have seen so much death, that it becomes trite and passe. In fact, about nine million men are killed, plus those from Russia or about six million. Somewhere about half of the 70 million men and women serving in the war are killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

The brutality and horrors of the war are only one of the major themes in the book. It also addresses the alienation of the soldiers. Although remaining alive to the end of the war, many men return either physically or mentally maimed or both. Spiritually, they are empty shells who can no longer believe in a just world. Remarque comments in the epigraph that his novel is primarily for "a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped the shells, were destroyed by the war."

Author Erich Maria Remarque was 18 years old when he start fighting in WWI, and like Bomer witnessed the horrors of the battles first hand. He wrote his book in 1928, and it became well-known throughout the world as the first novel that realistically portrayed the actualities of present-day war. Anyone who may think there is something worthwhile about war will quickly change his/her mind. This war, with its new types of weapons of destruction, such as tanks, airplanes, guns, much more accurate artillery and, worst of all, poisonous gas, is living hell. He also criticizes the nationalistic spirit. Through Bomer and the other soldiers, who recognize that their real enemies are not across the trenches, but in high offices in their own country. It comes as no surprise that the men in the battles grow apathetic and non-emotional about the death and decay around them. It is bad enough to fight a war truly worth fighting for, but so much worse when fighting for a nationalistic hoax.