Preview

Compare the Wars and All Quiet on the Western Front

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1766 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Compare the Wars and All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front Vs. The Wars During World War I, many soldiers were impacted by the mental and physical effects that have changed their lives in positive, but mostly negative ways. There are two novels that talk about two men in World War I, however each tells a different story on their struggles on the battlefield. On one of the books, The Wars by Timothy Findley, focuses on the protagonist Robert Ross, a Canadian soldier that joined the war. Robert Ross mainly joined to war because it was his way of isolating himself after his sister’s death, while on the other book, All Quiet on The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, in which the story is about a teenager named Paul Baumer. Paul Baumer is a German soldier who was influenced from his teacher that going to war was a courageous decision. War focuses us to sacrifice our humanity in exchange for survival, which leads us to our self-destruction, where we become like animals for the sake of our survival. The meaning behind this is that wars take our feelings and human instincts thus replacing them to animal instincts to survive. In the end, life becomes difficult to come back to which leads to our own destruction. The aspect from both novels is about “men who were destroyed by war” (Remarque 12) even when they have escaped the horrors of the war. Both authors express that they do not want to tell us about the experiences in the war, at least not just the war, but rather the destructive impact on the soldier; such as the inability of young people to go back to their life exactly like before the war. There is no doubt that the entire generation has been ruined by war and were unable to function afterwards. Paul Baumer returns home on his seven day leave, and describes those seven days as unhappy personal experiences. He fails to see an old major on the street, he is forced by another officer to go back to the major and salute him according to the etiquette of military soldiers. Paul feels as

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    4. SUBJECT: This book is written by a German veteran of World War I, who describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the frontlines.…

    • 1103 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In a time period filled with war and conflict, the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is a difficult read due to the heavy topic it pertains to. The story begins with Paul Bӓumer and his friends from school joining the army. They joined because they thought war would be honorable thanks to Kantorek, their teacher. After their ten weeks of training and their first two weeks of being on the front lines, only eighty of the one hundred fifty men return. Paul’s friend, Franz Kemmerich, has his leg amputated and he eventually dies because of it. At this point, Paul learns to disconnect his feelings from himself. Reinforcements come for their company and they are sent on a mission to place barbed wire on the front lines.…

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Baumer receives seventeen days of leave, but will then be reported to a training base to return to the front in six weeks. While on leave we receive a better understanding of how war has changed our brave soldier and how he will never be the same. “I imagined leave would be different from this… at the time i still knew nothing about the war”(Remarque 75). As our narrator sees people in his hometown he now realizes he isn't the person he was before war “I have been crushed without knowing it… I find i do not belong here anymore”. He cannot shake the feeling of “strangeness” as he no longer feels at home in a place that used to think of as his safe place . His mother starts to asks if it was “very bad out there” yet Paul lies to her (Remarque…

    • 165 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the author Erich Maria Remarque, explores the effects of war through both literary and structural techniques. Remarque himself being involved in the war, writes from the perspective of young German soldiers who were on duty during the World War One campaign. Using various literary techniques, Remarque is able to convey the effects of war through the destruction of natural imagery, the displacement experienced by the soldiers as well as the loss of identity which eventually affects the soldiers the soldiers.…

    • 908 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    War. Very few words invoke such strong and conflicting reactions. War demands honor and death. War offers hope and despair. War creates the ultimate challenge and the pinnacle of defeat. Throughout history, man struggles to understand war and its impact on the people engaged in its horrors. Paul Baumer, the protagonist in Erich Maria Remarque’s historical fiction novel All Quiet on the Western Front, enlists in the war with his comrades. Throughout the novel images reveal the ultimate emotional and physical destruction faced by Paul and his fellow soldiers, whom World War I corrupts. In his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Enrich Maria Remarque employs imagery of animals, nature, and water to convey the theme of destructiveness of war.…

    • 1606 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The protagonist of the All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer, says, "I believe we are lost" (Remarque 123). The soldiers themselves recognize that they are part of a lost generation. They are, "forlorn like children, and experienced like old men" (123). Lost Generation is revealed in All Quiet on the Western Front through the young soldiers loss of innocence, loss of life, and loss of home. The First World War has no positive effect on the lives of the young soldiers.…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In All Quiet on the Western Front by Enrique Maria Remarque, the reader follows Paul Baumer as he fights through World War I and discovers the trials of being a soldier. As they survive through the war with each other, Paul and the other soldiers began to understand certain realities of life. Going into the battlefield teenagers, the soldiers come out as old men, burdened with their experiences. The war, meant to glorify Germany and turn its men into heroes, deadens and dehumanizes Paul and the other soldiers until they can’t recognize themselves.…

    • 761 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel about a young teenager named Paul Baumer and his friends who enlist in the war. He and his friends in World War I. Paul and many of his friends from school volunteered to join the army after listening to their teacher, Kantorek talk about how honorable it is to fight for your country. When the boys started training, they realized that war was a lot more harsh than they had anticipated. After experiencing about two months of rough training from their cruel trainer, Corporal Himmelstoss, they realized that the talk and rumors about war were completely opposite than the reality of it. They lost their belief that war is glorious or honorable, and they live in constant fear; physical and emotional. Much like actual soldiers, Paul had a difficult time recapturing what his life used to be when on leave back in his hometown. Paul goes through more trauma than any young man should. His friends were killed in war one by one as Paul wondered why he was still alive. He faced many trials; guilt from killing enemies who he believed were just people like he was, losing friends, and losing himself. Paul was injured multiple times at war, and was eventually killed. This book focuses mainly on the struggles of a young man at war and his battle to overcome it.…

    • 1097 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    This story is about a nineteen year old soldier named Paul Baumer followed by his friends while at war and it shows how it effects each and every one of them physically and mentally.“We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.”(Remarque 13) World War I was a tragic war with more than 9 million soldiers dead, and roughly 21 million were injured in the end. Germany and France both sent millions of men between the ages 15-50 into the war. Throughout the book and the movie you can see and understand all of the tragic deaths that occurred on both sides of this war. Not only were there millions of deaths by the fighting but also many deaths by other things such as, soldier dying from lack of food, lack of reinforcements, rats running through the trenches, and lastly deadly gases in the air. Any soldier that actually did survive was considered “lucky” to Paul Baumer. “We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life.…

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Bäumer and his generation feel separated from the rest of the world. These boys’ lives were drastically changed by the war, and “even though they may have escaped its shells, they were destroyed by the war,” (Remarque Epigraph) describing that even though they survived the war physically,they were mentally destroyed by the dangers and chaos of war. Paul expresses that “he has been crushed without knowing it” and “does not belong anymore, it is a foreign world” (Remarque 168). The generation of men who fought in the war are “pushed aside,” (Remarque 249) as an unpleasant reminder of a war that society would like to disregard. After surviving such dreadful…

    • 521 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As the war changes so does the young and innocent mind of Paul Baumer. This is shown not only in his thoughts, but in the actions that he takes throughout the novel itself. Specifically, Paul’s mind changes because of his views on the war, how he witnessed the death of his classmates, and the battles that are fought change his personal view of life, and what it means to him as well as the war in itself.…

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Amidst the chaos and terror of war, a soldier needs some sort of comfort to keep him going. Naturally, this comfort is provided by his comrades. When Paul has a panic attack taking cover in a shell-hole, he should be moving forward but he is too afraid. Then he hears the voices of his friends moving along the trench which restores his courage. “At once a new warmth flows through me. These voices, these few quiet words, these footsteps in the trench behind me recall me at a bound from the terrible loneliness and fear of…

    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Paul Baumer leaves for the western front a young boy, but as All Quiet on the Western Front goes on, Paul becomes more of a soulless soldier. Multiple events while fighting for Germany caused Paul to become this way. He began pushing away his family, friends, everyone, everything. This was a technique he used to survive. He cut off all emotions to become the best possible soldier he could be. When Paul and his friends signed up to go overseas, and fight for Germany, they had the idea planted in their heads that their actions were actions of patriotism. They never stopped to think about the opposite side of the spectrum. Training gave the boys a chance to start to realize that enlisting in the war was no joke. The boys didn't fully understand how brutal and violent the war was until they were out, fighting in total war.…

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    War is often viewed as one of the most dangerous and brutal events ever created. It utterly destroys the humanity and mental state of soldiers fighting in the war. In All Quiet on the Western Front, a world renowned war novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the epigraph states that this novel “will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.” Staying true to this quote, Remarque tells of the horrors of World War I and fittingly describes the effects that war has on humans through the eyes of the protagonist, Paul Bäumer. In his epigraph Remarque says, “this book is to be neither an accusation, nor a confession, and least of all an adventure.” Except for a few notable exceptions,…

    • 1401 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    "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 peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another (263)." Powerful changes result from horrifying experiences. Paul Baumer, the protagonists of Erich Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front utters these words signifying the loss of his humanity and the reduction to a numbed creature, devoid of emotion. Paul's character originates in the novel as a young adult, out for an adventure, and eager to serve his country. He never realizes the terrible pressures that war imposes on soldiers, and at the conclusion of the book the empty shell resembling Paul stands testament to this. Not only does Paul lose himself throughout the course of the war, but he loses each of his 20 classmates who volunteered with him, further emphasizing the terrible consequences of warfare. The heavy psychological demands of life in the trenches and the harsh reality of war strip Paul of his humanity and leave him with a body devoid of all sentiment and feeling.…

    • 1753 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays