Category: All Quiet on The Western Front

A comparative analysis of Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front (Western Front),1928” and John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath (Grapes), 1939” provokes the audience to reconsider their understanding of morality. Set during WWI, Remarque explores the demoralizing corruptions of war by mirroring his personal experiences at the Western Front. Steinbeck’s Grapes, set during the 1930 American Dust Bowl, is constructed through the Joad family’s tribulations, considering their dehumanization in a period of societal crisis. Despite the difference in context, both texts thoroughly explore means of combating dehumanization in times of disaster, with companionship presenting at the crux of survival. In doing so, both composers explore society’s reliance on companionship as a coping mechanism against the exploitation of an inferior class through stratified power.

Both Western Front and Grapes explore the impacts of dehumanization of an inferior class in the presence of corruptive exploitation. In Western Front, Remarque establishes his opposition to war through the first-person perspective of the protagonist, reflecting on his own experiences in WWI. His encounters mirror this stance in the novel, essentially recounting the horrific reality behind the glorified war heroes. The use of emotive language in Chapter 1 “…the first death we saw shattered this belief…” provokes the audience to empathize with the cruelty against Paul, augmenting the psychological impacts of corruption. As he later weeps “…you are poor devils like us…you could be my brother” after killing his enemy, the psychological trauma as a result of corrupt propaganda is exhibited through Paul’s metaphorical outburst. His realization contrasts the prior romanticized conceptions of war, conveying a sense of injustice and betrayal, thereby engendering the hypocritical corruption by superiors in a stratified society. By conveying a text-to-world connection, this corruption prompts a deeper understanding of historical events by readers. Subsequently, Remarque engages readers to gain a deeper insight into their judgment of changing human ethics. The differing context of Steinbeck’s Grapes results in the same theme of dehumanization by corruptive power being conveyed through dialogue instead. A realistic portrayal of the Oklahomans through their southern dialect provides authenticity to the characters, which consequently allows the audience to sympathize with the characters’ hardships. When Ma Joad recounts “…them people…Made me feel ashamed…An’ now I ain’t ashamed…Why, I feel like people again” in chapter 22, she creates a comparison between two separate times, similar to Western Front, though contrastingly characterizing the past with the dehumanizing encounters of hardship. Referring to the disingenuous landowners as “the people” and relating it to her shameful transformation, Ma Joad emotionally deliberates the exploitation of her people as inferiors, which also evokes empathy from the audience. This is furthered through a biblical connotation in Chapter 2 “crushed its hard skull-like head” where man’s violence toward insects parallels the landowners’ treatment towards farmers. Both Western Front and Grapes explore the dehumanizing impacts of corrupt stratification in separate periods of disaster through a differing sense of intimacy to emphasize the composer’s values regarding the actuality of turpitude.

The similar ruinous contexts of both Western Front and Grapes are continuously emphasized through threats against the protagonists’ survival. Through the metaphor of the protagonist as “human animals,” in Western Front, Remarque illustrates the psychological transformation Paul and his comrades undergo to survive the front. Their transformation into beasts implies the sacrifice of thought and human qualities, instead relying wholly on animalistic instincts. This is evident through Paul’s dialogue, “You were only an idea to me before, an abstraction” as he weeps for an enemy he killed. Remarque’s metaphor urges the audience to comprehend the psychological devastation that wreaks on a soldier’s humanity, acknowledging the disintegration of humanity as a mechanism of survival, which is further shown through the repetition of “Meyer is dead, Max is dead, Beyer is dead…” The evident suppression of human emotions as a necessity of survival confronts the audience as ethical beings, challenging their perception of emotional adversity in different contexts. Steinbeck’s Grapes, in contrast, challenges the reader to reconsider their judgment of what comprises adversity. The composer develops this through the biblical allusion “to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall…For man…walks up the stairs of his concepts.” The highly stylized linguistics, grandeur, and repetition in the biblical allusion appeals to the morality of the audience. While the language illustrates its significance, the content is evocative of the biblical parable: man builds himself through toil. Steinbeck’s commentary on coping with struggle through a realistic recounting of survival based on the acknowledgment of dignity greatly influences the audience’s perception of coping mechanisms. This philosophy of survival greatly clashes with the morals of the Western Front, which Remarque explains as a transforming agent. However, the contrasting approaches in representing struggle enable each text to challenge various morals.

The significance of companionship in portraying human connections during disaster is engendered in both Western Front and Grapes. By delving into the featured bond of mankind in a time of war, Remarque didactically exhibits the interdependence of soldiers, prompting the audience toward an understanding of basic morals. The accumulative imagery in Chapter 5, “two men, two-minute sparks of life; outside…the circle of death. We sit on the edge of it crouching in danger…” emphasizes Paul and his comrade’s irrefutable relationship; their bond is idolized by Paul, signifying the criticality of intimacy. This is emphasized through a passionate tone and dialogue as Paul utters “more complete communion with one another than even lovers have,” analogizing their comradeship to the acknowledged intimacy of lovers. The comparison allows the audience to comprehend the consequential unity from desperation, injecting a sense of poignant pathos. Remarque imparts a sense of reverence regarding camaraderie by eulogizing this solidarity during hardship. The intimate dialogue used to represent companionship in the Western Front heavily contradicts the broad, impersonal mechanism in Grapes. By interspersing intercalary chapters through his narrative, Steinbeck communicates various interpretations in his general descriptions of situations in Grapes. The impartiality of this abstraction reinstates a bond between audience and text, which – though dissimilarly from the Western Front – spurs a sense of connection between the fictional and real world. The parallel structure of “…twenty families became one family…loss of home became one loss” in chapter 17 exemplifies an utter allegiance, prompting the audience to empathize with the richness of companionship. It represents the importance of coalescing between communities to cope with the shared hardships – a concept mirrored in reality. Further on, the aphorism, “children were the children of all” emphasizes the sanctity of communing generations through toil, by connoting the biblical allusion in its prose. The aphorism imparts this fellowship as a moral, compelling the audience to reconsider its significance. The mechanism of companionship throughout disaster is represented contrastingly by Western Front and Grapes, regarding interpersonal and intertextual connections with the audience, hence explicating morals

As fiction mirrors reality, it has the power to challenge the reader as a moral being. Western Front and Grapes explore the dehumanization in separate periods of adversity. Through differing techniques, they exemplify the overarching companionship developed in each narrative as a mechanism of survival. The composers consequently explore society’s reliance on companionship as a coping mechanism against the exploitation of an inferior class through stratified power to challenge the audience as moral beings.

The senselessness of war affects even the best of people and turns them into people you wouldn’t be able to recognize. In the novel, All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the main character Paul Baumer gets sent to fight in the German war where they did not have the best fighting technology. This led to many tragic incidents taking place and Paul being severely affected by them. Throughout the novel, Paul starts questioning if war is really necessary. Paul begins to believe war is senseless like when he is forced to kill a French soldier who jumped into his shell hole, and when Paul witnesses all of his friends die, and how leaders create wars, yet they do not fight in them.

Paul first starts realizing war is senseless when he is forced to kill a French soldier named Gerard Duval. Pauls’s mental health is getting worse when he says, “My state is getting worse, I can no longer control my thoughts” (222). After Paul has his interaction with the French soldier, he has a conversation with his best friends about how war is senseless. In this conversation, they all agree that powerful leaders create wars that they don’t fight themselves and that’s what makes war senseless. After Paul kills the French soldier, he feels emotions he’s never felt before but then is brought back to the reality of war, “With one bound the lust to live flares up again and everything that has filled my thoughts goes down before it” (226). Paul realizes he cant hold onto such harsh emotions from something he was forced to do. He feels as though he cannot let something that he was forced to take over him and control his emotions. Paul concludes that war is senseless because of the terrible emotions he feels.

Paul’s most important things in the war were his friends who turned into family, but when they all started dying, Paul realized how much they impacted his life. Paul’s close friend Muller died after being shot in the stomach and Paul received two items that impacted him, “Before he died he handed over his pocket-book to me, and bequeathed me his boots-the same that he once inherited from Kemmerich” (279). Paul receives belongings that once were passed on through his friends, and they hold a sentimental value that can never be replaced. The boots once belonged to Paul’s friend Kemmerich, who died early on in the war but then got passed down to Muller. Paul’s best friend Kat, dies in Paul’s arms which causes a lot of trauma for him. Kat has been hit in the head by a fragment of an exploding shell, “There is just one little hole. It must have been a very tiny, stray splinter. But it has sufficed. Kat is dead” (291). Paul was trying to save Kat by carrying him on his back to safety. When Paul laid Kat down on the ground, he realized that Kat had died in his arms. Soldiers are truly affected by war when horrific tragedies occur such as death and that is what proves war is senseless.

A frequent theme in the novel is how leaders create wars that they do not fight in. Paul reveals his thoughts on this topic; “How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is” (263). Paul feels extremely lonely now that all of his friends have died, so he has retreated to thinking about all of the horrific incidents he’s been in. Once Paul analyzes the different situations he’s been in over time and notices what a toll it has taken over his mental well-being. An instance where Paul recognizes that leaders create wars, but don’t fight them is when “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. I see how people are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring” (263). Many soldiers in war don’t know what they are getting themselves into, only after they have experienced dreadful conditions. When leaders create wars, they make soldiers fight for them, although these soldiers don’t exactly know what they are fighting for. Paul reflects on the situations he’s been in for the last couple of months and he concludes that war is full of innocent people getting killed and wounded fighting for things they do not know on.

Overall, the novel All Quiet On The Western Front reveals how senseless war is. In many ways, this novel proves that war is senseless when Paul is forced to kill someone who jumped into the same shell hole as him when Paul watches his closest friends die in the line of war, and how leaders make wars that they force soldiers to fight in.

Joseph Sciuto once declared, “Humanity, the earth with its streams and gardens, animals, and innocence are the real victims of war.” The war affects all manners of life, especially the innocent ones, by corrupting and transmogrifying them into a dehumanized, soulless body with a complete lack of their original character. In his semi-autobiographical novel, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul accompanied by his comrades traverses through the many obstacles that the war administered upon them, encountering many deaths mentally and physically along the way. Paul soon realizes the destruction war causes and inflicts upon everything around him and how his comrades exist as mentally destroyed soldiers due to the war. Through the use of death and nature imagery, Erich Maria Remarque conveys the theme of the absolute mental and physical destructiveness of war to reveal how, in reality, war destroys all men, regardless of whether they survive or perish.

Remarque initially expresses the theme of the physical and mental destructiveness of war through the use of death imagery. For instance, while amid the front, Paul notices all the devastation and suffering around him and details this anguish by stating,

“We see a dark group, bearers with stretchers, and larger black clumps moving about. Those are the wounded horses. But not all of them. Some gallop away in the distance, fall, and then run on farther. The belly of one is ripped open, the guts trail out. He becomes tangled in them and falls, then he stands up again” (Remarque, 63).

Remarque gives the ghastly image of the physical and mental destructiveness of war to reveal how war not only affects men but also animals. The idea of animals, who never possessed a choice to join the fight, becoming affected by the carnage of war shows how battle attracts and tortures all living things, especially the innocent. Warfare mentally corrupts and dehumanizes soldiers as shown when Paul refers to the enemy as “a dark group” rather than individual people. Additionally, as Paul slowly makes his way to the front, he notices many structures and communicates what he sees, “On the way we pass a shelled school-house. Stacked up against its longer side is a high double wall of yellow, unpolished, brand-new coffins. They still smell of resin, pine, and the forest. There are at least a hundred” (99). The use of death imagery and descriptions of coffins around Paul helps reveal the physical and mental destructiveness of war where the coffins act as already ready and prepared which indicates how the military officials expect a multitude of deaths. The coffins smelling like pine and forest also imply the recent construction, suggesting the idea that all other coffins were quickly used up as the destructiveness of war results in a large death toll. Likewise, the schoolhouse, symbolic of life and childhood, existing as destroyed due to the shelling shows how war affects soldiers’ minds as war corrupts the personality and lives of soldiers, dehumanizing them. Moreover, soon after Kat dies of a stray splinter, Paul reflects upon warfare’s implications within his life and how the war “can[‘t] take nothing from me, they [war] can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear” (295). Paul realizes how much the war takes away from him: his friends, his comrades, his sense of a normal life, and his humanity. This death imagery within Paul’s mind of feeling completely detached and desolate reveals how mentally destructive war acts upon soldiers by stealing their humanity and personal treasures. As a result, the soldier’s mind becomes dead with no more real physical purpose in life, leading to Paul not fearing the war, foreshadowing his death. Therefore, death imagery manifests the theme of the mental and physical destructiveness of war, implementing the idea of war affecting soldier’s lives in more ways than just physically.

Furthermore, Remarque utilizes nature imagery to illustrate the theme of the mental and physical destructiveness of war. For example, as Kemmerich lies on the brink of death, Paul details the aspects of his dying body by stating,

“Kemmerich nods. I cannot bear to look at his hands, they are like wax. Under the nails is the dirt of the trenches, it shows through blue-black like poison. It strikes me that these nails will continue to grow like lean fantastic cellar plants long after Kemmerich breathes no more. I see the picture before me. They twist themselves into corkscrews and grow and grow, and with them the hair on the decaying skull, just like grass in good soil, just like grass, how can it be possible” (15)?

The dirt under Kemmerich’s nail reminds Paul of the front and symbolizes how the front never leaves a soldier’s life. Describing Kemmerich’s hands as similar to wax represents his hands melting, manifesting the idea of Kemmerich slowly dying. This image of nature proves the physical and mental destructiveness of war as the soldiers’ minds remain infested with thoughts of the war which they can not get away from, and the physical destruction on the body as shown with Kemmerich indicating similarities with a decaying skull. Furthermore, as Paul remains amid war, firing and bombing sounds arise which trigger him to recognize the importance of the earth to a soldier by stating, “

“To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often forever” (55).

The image of the earth protecting the soldiers by shielding them from the destructiveness of war parallels the idea of a mother protecting their children. However, this protection and safety only lasts a brief amount of time until the soldiers must return to the war and leave the warm embrace of the earth. The war petrifies the soldiers, mentally destroying them into seeking refuge from an inanimate object that they see as a meaningful figure in their life, whom they can not live without. Lastly, as Paul reaches a shelter of reserves, only to turn back again into the horrors of combat, he describes the corrupted earth by stating,

“The brown earth, the torn, blasted earth, with a greasy shine under the sun’s rays; the earth is the background of this restless, gloomy world of automatons, our gasping is the scratching of a quill, our lips are dry, our heads are debauched with stupor–thus we stagger forward, and into our pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing image of the brown earth with the greasy sun and the convulsed and dead soldiers, who lie there–it can’t be helped–who cry and clutch at our legs as we spring away over them” (115-116).

The image of the blasted earth and fatigued soldiers reveals how the war affects not only the men but also the setting and atmosphere around them. By depicting the earth as “brown earth with the greasy sun”, Remarque utilizes how brown symbolizes decay and the greasy sun represents the blood staining the earth which exemplifies the morality of war. Also, the soldiers who remain expressed as convulsing and soul-shattering imply that they suffered before their fatal death, mentally affecting the surviving fighters around them. Thus, nature imagery effectively proves the theme of the physical and mental destructiveness of war, evincing the idea that war affects more than just the soldier.

Throughout the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque utilizes death and nature imagery to solidify the theme of the complete physical and mental destructive properties of war to acknowledge how even those who survived still suffered from the war. By using nature and death to illustrate the destructiveness of war, Remarque creates powerful images regarding the absolute tragedies of battle. Warfare pollutes soldiers’ minds by dehumanizing and corrupting them, even after the war ends. Remarque emphasizes this mental and physical brutality administered upon all soldiers with a great structure in deathly detail by showing how innocent men fight other innocent men. The result of this brutality causes a loss of morality and the soldiers lose all of what makes them their individual. Thus, the warfare causing the fighting of men leads to pointless deaths and endless tragedies, all for nothing.

Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a profound proclamation against war, highlighting its significance in the annihilating impacts on humans. The people of war gave hints of romanticized ideas of being in the front throughout the story for its benefits of obtaining rations of food, and that the conditions were “… excellent”(Remarque, 167). The novel portrays the fact about nationalism and honor, disregarding the real horror of the front by the people; though, it also considers the power given to soldiers. The war was illustrated as an act of sacrifice of the old people of the younger generation; whereas, the young joined the war due to pressure from individuals whom they consider as the respective authority. These youth trusted these individuals to be their superior, and light and guide them to maturity rather than giving them up for their hypocritical beliefs towards their fatherland. The Irony of war reveals that people do not see the truth of war as they claim it to be; whereas, the war is far from what the soldiers experienced.

Kropp received a letter from their old teacher, Kantorek proudly calls them “Iron Youth”, but the men had been exposed to the reality of the front, “Yes, that’s the way they think, these hundred thousand Kantoreks! Iron Youth! Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? Youth? That is long ago. We are old folk”(Remarque 18).

The men took cover in a graveyard, “A wounded man? I yell to him— no answer— a dead man…”, and Paul “merely crawls still farther under the coffin” to be protected “though Death himself lies in it”(67).

Paul’s German master stopped him as he was out and spoke, “So you come from the front? What is the spirit like out there? Excellent, eh? Excellent?”, as the German master proceeded to put cigarettes in his pocket, “Now, shove ahead a bit out there with your everlasting trench warfare— Smash through the johnnies and then there will be peace”(Remarque 167).

Detering packed his bags and went back home, “Anyone might have known that his flight was only homesickness and a momentary aberration. But what does a court-martial a hundred miles behind the front line know about it?”, yet he was caught, “We have heard nothing more of Detering”(277).

The ideology of war had been romanticized and glorified by people, but Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front portrays a different point of view of the people in the front. Remarque’s book tells tragedies that were overlooked by many. Many glorified war as it is a way to defend and bring “peace” to their country. Similarly, Germany, whose people were blinded by propaganda, fought a war that devastated millions of people. This is the risk that people, those who were pressured or blinded by lies, took to serve their country.

In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Fronts, by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul, a German soldier, is drafted into the war and witnesses many traumatic instances of war. Throughout the book, Remarque demonstrates the mental trauma and emotional stress involved in warfare that Paul experiences to convey the significant impact of war on the mental stability of soldiers. Remarque utilizes similes in his writing to express the stressful effects of war on the mental conditions of soldiers introduced in All Quiet on the Western Front.

The mental effects on a WWI soldier can be devastating, as seen in All Quiet on the Western Front, which portrays the war with emphasis on the overwhelming fear, violence, and stress a soldier faces, sometimes completely ruining his sanity and leaving lasting effects on his mental health. After enduring a violent, traumatic encounter in the front lines, Paul highlights how mental damage is permanent and devastating. He explains that soldiers “forget nothing really” and that “when they are past, sink in us like a stone, they are too grievous for us to be able to reflect on them

at once,” further analyzing that if they’d had reflected on the traumas of war, they “should have been destroyed ages ago.” Paul also states that “terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks–but it kills if a man thinks about it.” This quote uses multiple analogies to compare the stressful, traumatic experiences of war to those of a stone sinking. Additionally, the quote shows Paul’s realization of the inevitability of mental trauma. Paul notices that the emotional damage of war can be suppressed and ignored but never completely forgotten since it causes permanent pain. However, his understanding that such realization can be dreadful and even more stressful makes him wonder when his horrors of war will finally overwhelm him and reveal the reality of war, during which soldiers are subject to intense physical pain and primal, instinctive fear at every moment of the war. The traumatic thoughts of death and witnessing brutal murders of comrades and enemies instill intense fear into all soldiers, inevitably creating excessive stress and anxiety. (Page 138)

In another instance in All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque is seen using a simile as he describes the inevitable mental stress and trauma that the soldiers endured as a result of the fear and pain involved in the reality of war. In a quote, Paul describes the many conflicting emotions that he develops from the war. He feels “forlorn like children,” but also “experienced like old men.” He describes himself as “crude and sorrowful and superficial” believing he is “lost” (Page 123). As well as containing two different similes, the quote strongly portrays Paul’s suffering as he compares his feelings of pitiful sadness and loneliness to that of a child and his experience in the war to that of an old man. This comparison demonstrates Paul’s unstable mental condition and reveals the many negative, conflicting emotions that he feels as a result of stress from the war. Furthermore, the quote displays Paul’s realization as he accepts the mental toll that has been put on him from the stress of the war.

At the beginning of the 20th century, European countries suffered a great loss of their population and wealth as well as the breakdown of the government and economy for years. The book All Quiet on the Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque is a collection of tragic stories of the German soldiers who faced the harsh battle fronts and life during the First World War. Throughout the novel, the author records the harsh experiences the soldiers underwent on the battlefield, especially the PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) that affected most of the returning veterans of the war. Along with the stress and trauma from the battles, soldiers who were once guaranteed promising futures were too far from being able to adapt to society along with other citizens. Not only that, they were disillusioned by the horrors of the war and overwhelmed by propaganda and censorship. Given such financial and human costs of the battles, the detriments of World War I outweigh its benefits; the PTSD spread among soldiers, while misleading propaganda and censorship of the public gave the government power to unify society’s support towards war.

Propaganda and censorship were used to spread biased and incomplete information about enemy countries to eliminate dissent in the public and to recruit many young soldiers, eager to fight for their country. Once the war was over; however, disillusionment that war was not the heroic or victorious experience they were promised hit them hard. Remarque writes, “The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief” (Remarque 12). The soldiers believed the country that they were fighting for would support and save them, but when unable to save their comrade, the soldiers realized the likelihood of their not being saved was high. When they saw their first death, that fear that their lives were in danger took over as they came to understand that the “greater insight and [a] more humane wisdom” they believed in and followed would not be able to ensure everyone’s lives. Remarque addresses the disillusionment soldiers felt during battles when their lives were at stake. To their dismay, the wartime propaganda was full of half-truths or lies and demonized enemy countries to recruit more soldiers and eliminate dissent. Eventually, soldiers began to recognize the ones they were fighting against were the same as them. In one paragraph, Remarque writes a soldier realizing, as he lies next to the man he stabbed, that he is simply another man reeled in by his country’s propaganda for recruitment. “… for the first time, I see you are a man like me… Forgive me, comrade… Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony… If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother…” (Remarque 223) The French man shows companionship to Paul while discussing the costs of the war. As both of them joined the war through enlistment, they suffered the traumatic experiences of the war they were fighting, contrary to what the government and country leaders had promised through war propaganda. Because of these experiences, the soldiers have come to fear death, fear for their futures, and worry for their families and no longer see importance or honor in dying for their country. They both come to see that they are not enemies but rather comrades, forced to do as their country wills them, which in most cases is biased and heavily disadvantaged the people who were fighting in the wars. Without their title of “soldier” or their obligation to fight for their country, the two men are more alike than different, and their similarities bring them together. An example of censorship and propaganda seen in history is Joseph Stalin’s control over the Soviet Union. People under the rule of the tyrannical leader, Stalin, were restricted from thinking for themselves, defining what held importance to them, interacting with people, not of the USSR, and carrying beliefs contrary to that of the government despite whatever disillusioned society Stalin claimed. The society was blindsided by these false hopes that Stalin had created. One of the great changes he proposed to achieve during his regime was to better the government, but he did so through brutal force and economic seizure. The Soviet government wished for its people to believe that they were doing everything in their power to improve working and living conditions while rebuilding the tarnished image of Russia as a country that backed out of the Great War. To achieve this goal, Stalin seized total control of all governmental and economic aspects of Russian society. He created and slathered a benevolent image of his ruling all over society, standing up for those people who can not act upon their wishes to better the country. Using means of terror and brainwashing to rid of any biases against him, he exploited his power to censor everything he saw as a threat. After seeing the countless horrors in battles, the soldiers coming home to their families broke the false realities of war, but even after the war ended, soldiers faced many challenges in adjusting to society due to PTSD.

After the war had ended, the veterans of the war who returned home to their families were unable to readjust and adapt to daily life due often to PTSD. “‘The war has ruined us for everything.’ [Kropp] is right. We are not youth any longer… We are fleeing… From our life. We … had begun to love life and the world, and we had to shoot it to pieces… We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.” (Remarque 87-88) Being able to proudly fight for their country, the soldiers went into war, considering it as a way of “giving back,” but as time went on, the war became a grim and dire existence not only to the people fighting, but also to the whole country. The war had “ruined us for everything,” and the soldiers knew and dreaded the fact that they could not go back to their lives before the war, and despite that they were “fleeing…from [our] their life. The “love life and [the] world” they knew of before no longer exist in their minds, and they came to think “We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.” From the exhaustion and pain they experienced in fighting battles, the war gave them such a transformative experience both mentally and physically. Wilfred Owen addresses the horrors soldiers felt while fighting the war in his poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est.” This kind of revelation of war conditions was not understood by the general public until years after the wars and was a shock to people who weren’t originally aware of all the suffrage. Owen states, “If, in some smothering dreams, you too could pace… And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,/His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;…” Agonizing dreams suffocate the soldiers post battles and Owen interprets the trauma of seeing the passing of fellow soldiers as he “watch(es) the white eyes writhing in his face… like a devil’s sick of sin…” Creating vivid sensory through sibilance and diction such as “sick of sin” and describing the soldier’s faces as having “white… writhing” eyes emphasizes the PTSD soldiers experience from witnessing hundreds of deaths every passing day. Later in the stanza, Owen writes, “Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud/Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues… you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory…” This juxtaposes someone believing in “glory” and “victory” versus the true “vile incurable sores” that come to the soldiers. Owen’s use of figurative language to exemplify the trauma and stress caused by the war shows just how heavy and agonizing the war experiences were. From these stanzas, Owen denounces the evils of the war which conclusively reveals the true weight of PTSD on the veterans of the war.

Along with the mental toll the war had on the soldiers fighting, there was just as much physical toll on them. From the trenches to the no man’s land, soldiers were in constant exposure to dangerous weaponry. Some people support and claim that the war led to many revolutionary technological and industrial developments after the war, as it paved the way for newer technological innovations. Though the technology created during the WWI was indeed much more advanced and useful on the battlefield than the traditional horse and sword, they were, in another sense, killing machines. While admittedly, the technology introduced during WWI proved to be useful as some of the machinery and transportation across no man’s land, with it has come mass terror, the ability to kill mercilessly within minutes, and the exploitation of the public money to create such technologies. In a quote by Elliot White Spring, a British soldier describing his view of tanks after the war in “Fed Up” in Great Stories of War. (pg. 28) “Now that awesome roar was all around them and dark, ghostly shapes seemed to be moving through the foggy mantle shrouding… huge, terrible, dark monsters, sprouting flame and smoke, were upon them… blasting machine gun positions into cratered ruins draped with mangled bodies of German soldiers.” Tanks are strong and effective in overrunning the German trenches and are overwhelming giants. They caused mass destruction, obliterating and bogging down the battlefield. Also, not only was it costly to produce, it destroyed everything it went over, which led to “cratered ruins draped with mangled bodies of German soldiers.” Another innovation used to terrorize soldiers during the war was poison gas, and in the poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” Wilfred Owen addresses the horrors soldiers felt while amidst poisonous gas. Owen states, “Gas! Gas! Quick boys! -An ecstasy of fumbling/Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling/And floundering like a man in fire or lime…/…As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. This stanza conveys the frenzy, delusional experience of asphyxiation by describing the nightmarish poisonous gas that deprived them of air whenever one bomb was thrown into the field. Most used as a weapon of terror, Owen describes the effects of poison gas, which strangled and suffocated the soldier who wasn’t quick to put on his gas mask. Though poison gas took only around 4% of the casualties, it was most effective in contributing to severe PTSD and asphyxiation. Because it was often subject to changing wind patterns, the poisonous gas used in battlefields often spread further/away from the intended area, causing death to those without protection. As much as the technology of WWI provided soldiers with protection and weapons to attack successfully, the drawbacks that came along with it were far more severe and significant than its benefits.

Detriments such as PTSD tyrannical government through propaganda and censorship, and disillusionment outweigh the benefits of WWI as they were much more significant and impactful to the countries both during the war and postwar. Through the use of propaganda/censorship governments and leaders effectively brought their countries to war, thus creating a lost generation of veterans suffering from great shell-shock and PTSD. Subsequently, the war costs not only taken a toll on the economy but he t also caused discrepancies between the government and the general public.

In the Myth of Sisyphus, Camus argues that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” (123), who is condemned by the gods to repeatedly roll a boulder up and down a hill for eternity. Camus uses the Greek legend as a metaphor for the individual’s continuous struggle against the absurdity of life. According to Camus, one must accept the absurdity and in doing so will gain individual clarity and happiness. However, as Remarque presents it, happiness cannot possibly be achieved in this way. Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front depicts the young German soldier Paul Baumer’s endless struggles in World War I, from his training to his death on the battlefield. Despite Baumer, acknowledging his new reality of war on the front, he does not gain the same clarity or happiness Camus speaks of. But instead concludes that life is meaningless. Remarque attributes this to the romanticized picture of war in society back home, the dehumanization the soldiers undergo, and the destructive mindset taught during training. One could argue that soldiers can retain happiness through the intense bonds of loyalty and friendship. However, apart from these relationships, there is still evidence of unhappiness in the soldier’s lives due to the lack of mental separation from the war.

The soldier’s experience upon returning home from World War I, specifically Baumer’s, highlights the repercussions of romanticizing war for not only the citizens but also the soldiers within the society. Baumer experiences the misconceptions firsthand when running into his German master along the street; “You look well, Paul, and fit. Naturally it’s worse here. Naturally. The best for our soldiers every time” (Remarque 166). Even though Baumer’s view of the war has changed since enlisting, he soon realizes the rest of society still has the notion of nationalism and glory when it comes to the war. This misconception that soldiers are being fed the best and the war experience is nothing but empowering, sets the standards for all soldiers. However, these standards set in place only prevent soldiers like Baumer from connecting with their families and society. Even within his own home Baumer expresses to his family that “a sense of strangeness will not leave” and there “is a distance, a veil between us” (Remarque 160). For soldiers, it is nearly impossible to leave the war behind, but now due to the romanticization, it becomes harder than ever for the soldiers to assimilate back into society. Baumer argues that he “would like to be here too and forget the war; but also it repels me, it is so narrow, how can that fill a man’s life” (Remarque 169). Baumer’s disconnect from his society and confusion as to what could give him purpose further illustrate the soldier’s unhappiness and inability to obtain clarity.

All Quiet on the Western Front is set among soldiers fighting on the front, one of Remarque’s main points is how the dehumanization of war can cause soldiers to discount the simplicities of life including happiness. As opposed to heroes, the soldiers are described and treated as nothing more than replaceable and generic. While at the hospital “The doctor passes by Kemmerich’s bed without once looking at him” (Remarque 27). Being treated with care and precision is thought to be a basic human right among many. However, in this instance, Kemmerich is not even given the bare minimum of treatment since he is considered no longer useful in the war. This further continues with Baumer confronting the doctor; “How should I know anything about it, I’ve amputated five legs today” (Remarque 32). To the doctor, death has become normalized in a way that he is unable to express any emotions towards Kemmerich or Baumer, who is experiencing this grief for the first time. As Kemmerich begins to die, the argument of who will get his boots arises and without hesitation Muller claims them. Baumer states that the men “have lost all sense of other considerations because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important for us” (Remarque 21). Like other soldiers, the war has shaped these men’s perspectives from valuing emotions to completely disregarding them. Unfortunately, Remarque illustrates that nearly all soldiers undergo this dehumanization. After years of being in the war, Baumer claims that “It has transformed us into unthinking animals to give us the weapon of instinct- it has reinforced us with dullness” (Remarque 273-274). Remarque emphasizes how the only way for soldiers to survive is to detach themselves from their minds and humanity. However, without these how are soldiers supposed to come by emotions let alone happiness?

Towards the beginning of the novel, Remarque introduces the idea that the mindset taught during the war contributes just as much to the soldier’s inability to obtain happiness. The front line is depicted by Baumer as “a matter of habit” (Remarque 138) which is defined as a settled tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up. Remarque chooses this description to highlight the relationship between the soldiers and the front line. Apart from the soldier’s instinct, the relationship was based on the information passed down from previous soldiers and higher commands. To survive soldiers are instructed to suppress their emotions and accept the conditions of their lives. In doing so, the front line becomes a “matter of habit”. One in which soldiers find it nearly impossible to forget and separate from. This relationship of habit also prevents the soldiers from progressing. Baumer illustrates this when stating “We had no definite plans for our future. Our thoughts of a career and occupation were as yet of too unpractical a character to furnish any scheme of life” (Remarque 21). By only focusing on the war, the soldiers are unable to move forward with their lives and obtain happiness apart from their traumatic experiences. In addition to suppressing emotions, the soldiers became “hard, suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough- and that was good; for these attributes were just what we lacked” (Remarque 26). This made killing easier and more impersonal, but it also came with a price. Soldiers had to change their personalities to fit the custom and in doing so also lost a part of their identity. Not only was this form of thinking destructive but it also caused a lot of mental unhappiness for the soldiers.

One could argue that the soldiers obtain happiness through the intense bonds of loyalty and friendship that form as a result of the shared experience of war. Baumer elaborates on his experience with Kat stating, “We don’t talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have” (Remarque 94). Unlike the other people back home, Kat has gone through the same devastating dehumanization and traumatic experiences Baumer has. Thus, he does not feel the pressure to maintain the standards of a soldier, nor does he have to control his emotions. With soldiers, Baumer does not have to discuss the front. However, people in the rest of the society such as Baumer’s father are “curious in a way” (Remarque 165) that he finds “stupid and distressing” (Remarque 165). Unable to discuss his war experiences, Baumer soon discovers a disconnect with both his family members and society. But it is within this soldier-to-soldier relationship that men such as Baumer and Kat can find happiness and clarity. On the other hand, one could conclude that apart from these moments of communion with fellow soldiers, there is still evidence of unhappiness in the soldiers’ lives due to the lack of mental separation from the war. After returning to his hometown, Baumer depicts the front as a curse that “reaches so far that we never pass beyond it” (Remarque 121). The word curse implies that the soldiers are bound to the war experience and thus never able to separate from it. Remarque further conveys this idea with reoccurring flashbacks from the front. When walking the streets in his hometown Baumer recalls “the muffled noise of shelling” (Remarque 121). The place that once provided him with familiarity and security is now a reminder of his past and a place filled with uncertainty.

According to Camus, one must accept the absurdity and in doing so will gain individual clarity and happiness. On the other hand, Remarque argues happiness cannot possibly be achieved in this way. Despite Baumer, acknowledging his new reality of war on the front, he does not gain the same clarity or happiness Camus speaks of. But instead concludes that life is meaningless. Remarque attributes this unhappiness to the romanticized picture of war in society back home, the dehumanization the soldiers undergo, and the destructive mindset taught during training. Some may argue that soldiers obtain happiness through the intense bonds of loyalty and friendship. However, Remarque makes it clear that apart from these moments of communion with fellow soldiers, there is still evidence of unhappiness in the soldiers’ lives due to the lack of mental separation from the war.

How does the extreme hardship and conflict of war affect an individual? War always takes a toll on the individual and leaves drastic changes to the human soul; this loss of innocence is a recurring motif and major theme throughout the novel. Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the greatest war novels of all time. The story follows the protagonist, Paul Baumer, a young, artistic boy who enlists in the German army in World War I and challenges the false glorification of war. Throughout the story, Paul repeatedly faces horrifying experiences and by the end of the novel, he is left both physically and mentally broken without the identity of his former self To convey this, Remarque — a war veteran himself– highlights how Paul has been stripped of his not only his innocence, but humanity, purpose, creative spirit, and ability to relate to society. Remarque is also able to convey the loss of innocence theme by showing the newfound disconnect between Paul and society. Paul, who has seen the death and depravity of the front, has become completely unable to relate to civilian society. Before the war, Paul was a civilian who connected well with his family and society. Now that Paul has experienced the horrors of the battlefield, he has lost the ability to make connections and can no longer integrate into nonmilitary lifestyles. “I breathe deeply and say to myself: ‘You are at home; you are at home. ‘ But a sense of strangeness will not leave me, I can find nothing of myself in all these things. There is my mother, there is my sister, there is my case of butterflies, and there is the mahogany piano – but I am not myself there. There is a distance, a veil between us” (99).

Remarque uses a unique diction with the word “veil”. He chose the word veil because it perfectly symbolizes his disconnect from society and his inability to verbalize the hardships he has endured — even to his family. It’s not just that he doesn’t fit, he can’t even explain how he doesn’t fit. Similarly, this same message can be found in the following quote: “It is I of course that has changed in the interval. There lies a gulf between that time and today. At that time I still knew nothing about the war, we had only been in quiet sectors. But now I see that I have been crushed without knowing it. I find that I do not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world” (168). Here, Paul recognizes the dramatic transformation that he has undergone in his war experience. He no longer connects with his family and friends at home, but can only understand the fear and violence of war. Remarque chooses the diction “crushed” to show the extent of Paul’s loss of connection with society. Paul has, in essence, become isolated by his experience of the brutality of war from the foreign world that is civilian society. His inability to connect with his friends at home shows a loss of connection with society itself.

In addition, to society, Paul can no longer connect with himself. Remarque can convey the loss of innocence theme by revealing Paul’s newfound inner struggles. Due to the brutality of war, Paul has lost his purpose. Originally an artistic, intelligent, engaging, and creative boy, upon returning home on leave it is discovered just how much he has changed. “I stand there dumb. As before a judge. Dejected. Words, words, words —they do not reach me” (173). With a unique diction and the use of words such as “dejected”, Remarque can show how foreign Paul’s former self has become. Paul is suddenly unable to feel the passion for his books he felt before. This quote also happens to be the only part of the story where Remarque changes his syntax. Breaking into poetry, he creates a new line for almost every word. His purpose behind this was to show how shocking this discovery was to Paul and represent how chaotic Paul’s thoughts have become. able to co-lose the innocence theme by exemplifying Paul’s newfound lack of humanity. When Paul’s commander orders his regiment to charge, he describes the experience as a brutal one: “We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation.

It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men at this moment when death is hunting us down” (113). Two messages are being transmitted here. Firstly, Remarque uses a unique poetic device known as Reverse Anthropomorphism to compare the men to “wild beasts”. He does this to show that war will strip you of your consciousness, force you to become lax towards horrific things, and revert you to your primal instincts. Secondly, Remarque personifies death to “hunt them down”. This is used both as Paul’s justification for their behavior and for the readers to understand just how cutthroat war is. It’s kill or be killed. Overall, this quote reveals the disintegration of Paul’s humanity. Humanity is what defines him, so remarque taking it away shows that was will turn you into mindless and heartless slaves. Remarque can convey the loss of innocence theme by displaying the disintegration of Paul’s hope and his lack of will to live. Halfway through the novel, Paul makes a revelation. It becomes clear to him that the war has turned him and his comrades into the lost generation and that all hope is lost for them. “We are forlorn like children and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial and believe we are lost Because Paul and other soldiers of his generation have matured in the war before they were ready, they have become hopeless. At a young age, Paul and the so-called “lost generation” have seen men with their limbs blown off, and had their innocence taken from them too early. This is what Remarque means when he juxtaposes “children” with “old men”. Paul and his comrades are unable to move past the war, and therefore, are no longer driven by their life of purpose before the war. Paul, as part of this uncertain generation, can no longer hope for his life’s purposes before the war, and therefore, has lost his identity. This was an important scene because once Paul lost hope, he lost his will to live. Remarque can convey the loss of innocence theme through Paul’s death. “He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come” (296). Everything about this quote was different. For starters, this excerpt was on its page and the POV was switched from 1st to 3rd person in contrast to Remarque’s brutal, gruesome imagery used throughout his book, readers see a change in Remarque’s diction.

The imagery here is eerily peaceful. Paul was glad that he died, that the turmoil of war had ended war caused him to lose everyone he ever cared about including himself. Readers would expect a chapter dedicated to Paul’s death, but instead, receive one line “All Quiet on the Western Front”. Remarque chooses to end the story this way to dehumanize Paul as he dehumanizes others and to show that he is just one dead soldier out of millions. With this evidence, it can be concluded that the horrors of war shatter an individual, leaving the self and the soul disfigured.

The trauma of warfare entails a loss of purpose, humanity, emotion, and connection to society, all of which lead to a loss of identity. The brutality of war robbed Paul Bommer of all these essential connections, to his own identity, the artistic, innocent youth. By destroying the basic elements of Paul’s self, war has obliterated his innocence. This is war and turmoil. So long as war suppresses these basic elements of the self, the affected individuals remain shells of their former selves. The bottom line that Remarque wanted to convey with this writing is that war wreaks havoc and causes irreparable damage to one’s innocence.

In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the author portrays the true horrors and fragility of war through the experiences of young soldiers. The boys are all fighting for one country, and the novel completely shows the differences between the perceived image of war versus the true image of war. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the novel critiques nationalism by demonstrating it to be an empty, two-faced philosophy device used to paint war as a glorious event and thus distracting the population from the true experience of war the unromantic vision of fear, meaninglessness, and butchery.

Nationalist propaganda is filled with hollow ideals that completely mislead the boys into the war. When Paul and the boys learn that a war is going to start, they all enroll quickly because of the nationalist fervor around them. Around them was a fever of nationalism that romanticized war. Nationalism made war look like an event where soldiers could go and come back as heroes. But soon after the real military life started, Paul’s opinion about war quickly changed. Paul thinks, “It’s all rot that they put in the war news about the good humor of the troops, how they are arranging dances almost before they are out of the front line. We don’t act like that because we are in good humor: we are in good humor because otherwise, we should go to pieces.’ To everyone who is not directly in the war,, the life of soldiers during the war is like a party, where every day they would be “dancing before the frontline.” The media even more romanticizes war by making it seem like the soldiers are happy to be there. A key word here is “rot: – rot here means that everything is spoiled’ indicating how the news about war and soldiers is false and spoiled, or “rot.” Everything is falsified and war is shown as cheerful which is far from the truth. The public’s separation from the reality of war makes the nationalist lie of the glorification of war possible and the leaders of nations use that as an advantage. The newspapers make it seem like the soldiers are in “good humor,” meaning cheerful, but the only reason the soldiers at least act like they are in “good humor” is that without at least trying to put a smile on their faces, they would be broken and “to pieces” because of the horrors of war. The boys were sure that their lives would never be the same. “With our young awakened eyes, we saw that the classical conception of the Fatherland held by our teachers resolved itself here into a renunciation of personality such as one would not ask of the meanest servants…We had fancied our task would be different, only to find we were to be trained for heroism as though we were circus ponies.” The “classical conception of the Fatherland” was the romanticized version of war and the true experience of war was something completely contrary to what everyone thought of it to be. When entering the war, everyone thought the soldiers were “to be trained for heroism”, and thus come back as trained “heroes.” But when reality set in, all the soldiers had to realize that each one of them was just as much as a “circus-pony,” merely a toy. Paul finds that the very nature of war is disrespectful to soldiers because it requires them to debase themselves completely. He feels that he and his comrades are not gloried defenders of their birthplace, but rather slaves to the political whims of their superiors, thus being “circus ponies”

Nationalism masks the only truth underlying war enemies and allies are all the same people, not unknown animals and the glorified idea of war and respect are demonstrated to be false – alongside the idea of a foe itself. In a war, foes are created because of nationalism, not because of true conflicts. “A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.” When Paul comes face-to-face with captured enemy prisoners, he fully realizes the arbitrary nature of war. These people are “silent figures” who have done nothing to him. When no one fighting has been wronged, then whether someone is your enemy depends on nothing more than a technicality. This is the lie of nationalism: two strangers killing each other over a plot of land is an expression of pride. In reality, their imminent deaths could be prevented with the shake of a stroke of a pen, or a “word of command” might switch around the whole situation and instead make the former enemies into “our friends.” Paul says, “A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat.” Here, Tjaden ridicules the idea that countries going to war with each other. When Tjaden questions how a war is started, Kropp explains that it is usually by one country offending the other. Tjaden retorts: “Then I haven’t any business here at all… I don’t feel myself offended.” The only people who have been offended are one or two politicians. The citizens weren’t involved in the dispute. A country is not a single entity with a single mind, but rather a collection of people doing their best to coexist, a fact which blind nationalism ignores. Due to the simple disputes of 2 politicians, an entire population goes against one another, and makes themselves enemies due to nationalism, when in reality, they have no reason to be mad at one another.

In conclusion, the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the novel criticizes nationalism by demonstrating it to be an empty, two-faced philosophy device used to paint war as a glorious event and distract the population from the true experience of war. Though nationalism fuels an individual countryman’s pride and will to fight, it can falsify the harsh realities of war and romanticize a soldier’s gruel lifestyle.

Fiction is a powerful tool with which to express a truth or make a point. A juxtaposition of interconnected external and internal conflicts which affect the characters can be used to emphasize the importance of such a truth. In All Quiet on the Western Front, the author, Erich Maria Remarque, creates such a duality to great effect. Paul, the protagonist of Remarque’s novel, is a German soldier fighting in World War I against the English and French. As the war goes on, defining experiences force Paul to confront the fact that the ‘enemies’ are people just like him, and he develops sympathy for people on both sides. He also comes to believe that the war is needlessly harming others and himself. His changing beliefs and his dissatisfaction come into conflict with his societal responsibility to fight and show patriotism. The immediate effects of ignoring what he finds to be wrong wreak havoc on Paul’s sense of self. Paul’s internal conflict shapes the novel as a whole by allowing Remarque to powerfully make the point that war is inherently repressive and damaging to people involved.

While at the front, Paul has experiences that lead him to believe that the ‘enemies’ are people like him, and that the war is needlessly hurting everyone involved. For example, when he is stationed at a camp with Russian prisoners of war, he observes their behavior and comes to the conclusion that they are more similar than different from the people he is fighting for. With that in mind, he begins to wonder why they are enemies at all. He reflects, “Any non-commissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, than they are to us. And yet we would shoot at them again and they at us if they were free.” (pg 194). Here, Paul observes that he has no grievance against the people against whom he is fighting, and neither do they against him. He begins to understand the humanity of the Russians on the other side, and he begins to question the system that sets them against each other. This nascent understanding crystallizes when he hides in a shell hole and stabs a French soldier there, fatally wounding him. Paul is trapped for hours with the dying man, and he becomes profoundly disturbed by what he has done. With nothing to do but think, he begins to understand the humanity of the person he killed — how they are alike — and he has a strong emotional response. He says aloud to the Frenchman, “You were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response.… But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship … Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?” (pg 223). In this situation, Paul realizes that he did not fully believe that the enemy soldiers were like him, until he was forced to confront the truth by watching another person die. He consequently feels grieved and confused about the war itself, and he cannot justify killing people who have suddenly become real and human to him, as he could with abstractions. However, his responsibility as a soldier is to do just that.

Paul’s patriotic duty to support the war, which is forced on him by society, directly clashes with his unspoken belief in the humanity of soldiers on both sides. This is the personal conflict Paul experiences. Paul thinks abstractly about the nature of war, referring to the same Russian prisoners: “A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.” (pg 193-194). This statement expresses how Paul sees war: arbitrary, with no real reason for the soldiers to be fighting each other. However, it equally illustrates the other side of Paul’s internal conflict. He fully admits that orders from his higher ups are sufficient to entirely change his actions regardless of his moral qualms, and even to dictate his perception of certain people. In this case, the power of the societal hierarchy forces Paul and his fellow soldiers into a certain mindset, whether they like it or not. There is obviously a conflict because Paul recognizes the humanity of all the soldiers, but that is not something he is allowed to do. As portrayed by the sensory imagery of Paul’s thought, one word of command will reduce a human being to a cardboard cutout – merely ‘enemy’ or ‘friend.’ Another clear example of Paul’s internal conflict is in the aftermath of his experience with the French soldier. The way in which Paul interacts with his comrades is especially telling. At first he does not mention the events in the shell hole at all. The next day, however, he tells his two best friends, Albert and Kat, about what happened. He is still ill at ease. They insistently argue that he has nothing to be upset about, and that he did what a soldier is supposed to do. Paul at first feels comforted that he had only fulfilled his responsibilities, thinking confidently “It was mere drivelling nonsense that I talked out there in the shell hole.” (pg 228). During the discussion, they observe another soldier sniping at the French with a rifle, and keeping track of his kills. Once again, Paul considers the humanity of his enemies, and he bluntly retorts “I would not do that” (pg 229). Shortly afterward, his tone shifts, and he says “It was only because I had to lie there with him [the Frenchman] so long. After all, war is war.” (pg 229). The two distinct tones of Paul’s statements attest to the conflict between two contradictory positions. On the one hand, he repeatedly tries to accept what he has done because it is his duty to continue doing such things. On the other hand, he cannot reconcile himself to what he did, nor to the war itself, because he intuitively recognizes the humanity of the man he killed. In this way, Remarque depicts a struggle between Paul’s moral intuition and the grim responsibility pushed on him by military leaders, his own friends, and the society as a whole.

Knowing the brutal and arbitrary nature of war, but being forced to perpetuate it and play a role in it emotionally hurts Paul, damaging his sense of self. Remarque effectively criticizes the nature of war using the effects on Paul’s character as well as a graphic depiction of war itself. Paul’s time in the shell-hole with the Frenchman is keenly distressing to him because he feels how terrible the act of killing is, and yet he has done it and will continue to do it in order to survive and fulfill his responsibilities. That contradiction is painful to live with and impossible to accept. He thinks, “This is the first time I have killed with my hands … Kat and Kropp and Muller have experienced it already, when they have hit someone; it happens to many, in hand to hand fighting especially – But every gasp lays my heart bare.” (pg 221). The expression of Paul’s heart being ‘laid bare’ describes the emotional pain Paul feels because of how the internal conflict affects him. He ultimately chooses to continue carrying out his responsibilities even while violating his conscience, but doing so is damaging. A while after his experience with the Frenchman, Paul is injured and sent to a hospital. Conditions in World War I hospitals were miserable, especially from the soldier’s perspective. Paul, observing the slow and painful deaths of many soldiers, considers the hospital to be a horrible place. He contemplates how the system creating those abominable conditions is impossible to justify, thinking “This is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia … It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood from being poured out, these torture chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.” (pg 263). Thus, Paul concludes that the justification of war is empty and false because it has led to so much suffering. Paul’s previous worldview of nationalistic duty is being shattered by a horrific reality. These words are not Paul’s alone. Remarque is using the narrative from Paul’s perspective to emphasize the devastating damage done by war. It not only causes death and suffering, which Paul is forced to catalyze and be witness to, but it also tears the protagonist apart from the inside.

Remarque creates a heart-wrenching internal conflict which Paul bears in All Quiet on the Western Front. He thereby creates a strong critique of a process which sets humanity against inhumanity, and forces soldiers to make an impossible choice. On one side of Paul’s conflict is his need to recognize people on both sides as fellow human beings, and his desire to follow what he believes is right. On the other side is the crushing responsibility to serve the country, and to play a part in the war, which he cannot avoid. By showing the terrible effects of war on the protagonist and those around him, Remarque is able to show that it is inherently damaging to those involved. Any reader would agree that the nationalistic idea of responsibility depicted, which suppresses individualism and moral choice, is wrong and deadly. Small wonder Hitler and the Nazis banned this novel. The text sends a message which is important and meaningful. War creates inhumanely destructive conflict, external and internal, which no human should have to face.