All Quiet On The Western Front Feminist Analysis

A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque, born Erich Paul Remark, published All Quiet on the Western Front in 1929. However, the novel was not an immediate success. Numerous people viewed it as an anti-war novel, which, in some way, it is. The Nazis were especially despondent towards his novel; they pursued Remarque, which ultimately forced him to flee to Switzerland. His German citizenship was revoked, and “His books were publically burned in Berlin” ( Wagener 5) because of the pacifist outlook Remarque had towards war. The Nazis veritably despised him so much that they executed his sister for “defeatist remarks” (Wagener 7). “The Nazis took revenge [...] by murdering his sister Elfriede [...] and beheaded her with an ax”
“When his classmate Troske was wounded by grenade splinters, Remarque carried him to safety. He was devastated when Troske died in the hospital of head wounds that had gone unnoticed.” (Kam 2) Analogously, “Kat is not very heavy; so I take him up on my back and start off to the dressing station with him.” (Remarque 287) “On the way without my having noticed it, Kat has caught a splinter in the head. There is just one little hole, it must have been a very tiny, stray splinter. But it has sufficed. Kat is dead.” (Remarque 291) Remarque created Kat, as a way to deal with the death of his best friend, Troske.
All Quiet on the Western Front is—indirectly—an autobiography of Remarque. When going through traumatic events such as war and the deaths of both his best friend and his mother, novelizing his thoughts became a very therapeutic way to cope. “There is no doubt that Remarque’s books always dealt—either directly or indirectly—with subject matter that he knew from personal experience or that had at least been triggered by events affecting him personally” (Wagener