Analysis Of All Quiet On The Western Front By Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque was born in Germany in the year 1898 into a lower-middle-class family. In 1916, he was drafted into the German army to fight in World War I where he was badly wounded. Ten years after the war ended, he published a book which was translated a year later into English with the title All Quiet on the Western Front. This is a novel about the experiences of ordinary German soldiers during World War I. Remarque starts off the novel by stating, "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."
The soldiers struggle to find food, and the lack of training provided to the young recruit minimized the chances of soldier’s survival. Remarque uses All Quiet on the Western Front as a way to express his beliefs and ideas about the brutality of the war and its effects on the ordinary soldiers. In the novel, Remarque describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during World War I. He also describes the detachment from civilian life felt by many of the soldiers in the war upon returning home from the front and how they became completely disconnected from their family. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque illustrates how war is dehumanizing because it causes physical and psychological damages to soldiers who were once enthusiastic about fighting but are now lifeless and trauma