Analysis: All Quiet On The Western Front

War is good and bad, beneficial and pointless, but above all other things, immensely inhumane. Man created war, and with our controversial human nature egged it on. “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque is a war novel that shows the war experience and how war changes people. During the time spent at the front and at rest the soldier is turned from human to inhumane. They are taken away from the normal human emotion and placed into a state of being more animalistic and superhuman.
“One-two-three-four, and ceased at thirty-two”. (Remarque 136) Of the entire Second Company, thirty-two men are left. This was a Company that started with 150 men, cut to eighty, and then again to thirty-two. This inhumane act of sending men to be killed is called war. Man after man is sent to war, trained, and then killed. Training a man for his death is not something that could be considered healthy
Himmelstoss was tough on all of his trainees at the camp but especially cruel to a select few. While at the training camp, Himmelstoss would do things such as making the bed wetter’s bunk on top of one another, peeing on each other through the night. That alone is an act of compassionless inhumanity that no everyday person would torture another human being with. One of the bed wetter’s included a of the member of the Second Company, Tjaden, who was a main character and good friend of Paul. Thus cruel act of torture from the camp caused Tjaden to hold a grudge that was continuously growing with time and with every other traumatic experience he went through. “We prepared ourselves to square accounts with Himmelstoss.” (Remarque 47). In this quote, you can tell that the war has made Paul, Tjaden and the rest of their friends from the Second Company to lose that human state of mind when planning their very in depth and harsh payback on