The novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque explores the psychological and physical conditions of German soldiers fighting in the World War I, instead of focussing on heroism and military accomplishments. That is the primary distinction between the novel and its contemporaries. The novel tracks the life of Paul Baumer, as he joins the army together with his friends (Muller, Kropp and Kemmerick) at the urging of their school teacher Kantorek.
While at the base, they meet Kat, an older soldier and a former shoe cobbler with whom they form a deep friendship and he acts as their mentor. The book is a vivid illustration of the difficulties that German soldiers endured as reflected in the hardships that Paul and his friends had to face in the German trenches and other areas of their lives. The events that took place had an immense toll on their emotional stability and their outlook on life.
Perhaps one of the greatest motivations for joining the military during the World War I was the idea of nationalism. Becoming a soldier was seen as the climax of fulfilling one's role to the country and the mark of a true patriot, which is evident that from the indoctrination of teacher Kantorek to Paul and his friends. He urged them to join the army with the clarion call that it was the ultimate mark of heroism (Remarque, 21).
The clamor for nationalism had experienced exponential growth in the 19th century and was cemented by the war. It is for this reason that young men including Paul joined the army in droves not just in Germany but also in the Allied countries. The teacher in a letter to the boys while at war refers to them as "iron youth" for their bravery. The idea of patriotic idealism had the effect of radicalizing the war.
However, the idea of patriotism began to fade even before Paul, and his friends had joined the war. That occurred as a result of the tough conditions they faced during their short stint in the training camp led by Himmelstoss. Himmelstoss, a former postman, had become a corporal and tasked with training new recruits. He had a deep-rooted contempt for Paul and his friends and would not hesitate to take advantage of any slightest opportunity to punish them.
The rosy picture of patriotic heroism became further blurred once the boys joined the war at the western front. The novel blasts the idea of nationalism by simply portraying the inhumane conditions of the war. Some of the atrocities encountered could only be expected in a horror movie rather than in real life. According to Remarque, “Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days;--when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of craters within and without” (114). All the confrontations they engaged in were filled with savage brutality full of death and injury. It becomes tougher as Paul loses all his friends one at a time. The horror is brought home when Paul is carrying Kat to a medical facility after being wounded, discovers that he had already died after being hit by shrapnel on the skull. Paul collapses.
While it is the idea of patriotism that made them join the Army, it is already too late to think of turning back. They had already heavily invested in the war. Furthermore, desertions were severely punished. Detering, who was a farmer before joining the Army, deeply missed his family. His situation was exacerbated by the horrors of war, and he chose to desert the Army. He is found by the Military Police that swiftly send him to the court martial. Nothing is ever heard again of Detering in the novel. That incident was a testament that the war had ended up trapping those that had joined.
All these events had an undue effect on the soldiers regarding their physical well-being, but most importantly, it affected their psychological stability. In fact, one of the major themes of the novel is the horrors of war. Remarque offers a description of how battles would last for days on end, yet only small tracts of land would often be gained no bigger than a football field. The land would also be lost to the enemy as soon as it had been acquired.
Once, Paul and his company, which was also made up of new recruits, were sent to the frontlines to lay barbed wire to slow down enemy advances after which they encountered heavy shelling from the Allied forces. They were forced to hide in a graveyard where the intensity of the bombardment led to the buried corpses being tossed out. Some of Paul's colleagues were buried under the corpses. They were forced to wait while in that dreadful situation until transport was available to pick them up at dawn.
While evacuating a village, Paul and Kropp are shot. They are forced to bribe an officer with cigars to be allowed to travel on a train together to a Catholic hospital. He undergoes surgery and is deemed fit to return to the frontline while Kropp must have his leg amputated. As a result, Kropp even contemplates suicide. Their separation is depicted as painful but inevitable.
As the war progressed, conditions became tougher for the German soldiers. Their rations were reduced and sometimes they went hungry while sleeping in trenches filled with corpses. The trenches were also full of rats and lice. All these chilling events had devastating effects on the soldiers. In a bid to cope with all these hardships, they were forced to disconnect from their emotions. In essence, they had become hollow and heartless humans.
That incident brings the realization that they have no one but themselves as envisaged by the tight friendship of the former schoolmates, which later came to include Kat and Tjadan. The unit of comradeship became the mechanism through which they could vent out their anger and frustrations. Remarque says, “It's all rot that they put in the war-news about the good humour 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 a good humour: we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to pieces” (171).
Paul and his former schoolmates frequently lamented about teacher Kantorek's insistence that they join the Army. It also became a unit of sharing the little that they could garner in the face of shortages. At some point during the war, Paul managed to steal a goose, which they roasted and shared among the friends.
The war also had the effect of instilling pragmatism on the soldiers. While in the hospital to visit Kemmerick, Paul and Muller openly accepted the fact that he would die after a horrific leg amputation. He said, "I nod and wonder what to say to encourage him. His lips have fallen away, his mouth has become larger, his teeth stick out and look as though they were made of chalk. The flesh melts, the forehead bulges more prominently, the cheek-bones protrude. The skeleton is working itself through. The eyes are already sunken in. In a couple of hours, it will be over" (Remarque, 34). As a result, attention then shifts to who will inherit his boots. While this might be viewed as inhumane, Paul and Muller were only being realistic after having resigned to fate.
In Paul's company, only eighty of the one hundred and fifty soldiers that had joined remained. Instead of agonizing over their loss, as would normally be expected, Paul and his colleagues are instead more interested in having their dead comrades' rations. The chef Ginger was against the idea though Lieutenant Bertinck, the head of Paul's company, came to their rescue and allowed them to be served with their dead colleagues' rations.
At some point in the course of the war, Paul is forced to hide in a dugout. Inside the dugout, he encounters a French soldier whom he is forced to kill on a one on one fight using his knife. It was the first time that Paul had ended someone's life. He is obliged to watch for hours, as the French soldier slowly succumbs to the knife wound. Such events hardened him to the extent that he expresses no emotions or remorse to death or injury. He becomes completely detached from his emotional side.
However, there are a few times that his innocence is brought back when his emotions seem to get the better of him. It is illustrated when he visits Kemmerick in hospital and while with his mother on her deathbed. He said, "Ah! Mother, Mother! How can it be that I must part from you? Here I sit and there you are lying; we have so much to say, and we shall never say it." From which he concludes by saying "ought never to have come [home] on leave "(Remarque, 45).
After a period of service, he is sent home for leave where he finds his mother on the death bed suffering from cancer. While he feels pitiful for his mother, he cannot extend his stay at home. In fact, he does not feel comfortable being at home. He is even of the opinion that he does not belong there anymore. He is so disconnected from his feelings that he thinks he cannot even talk about his experience.
The feeling is so overwhelming to the extent that he is of the view that his father is asking foolish and distressing questions about the war that he would rather not talk about to anyone. However, it may just have been that his father was merely showing concern, yet Paul's now hardened nature could not figure that out.
Before the war, Paul was a lively young man passionate about writing romantic poems yet life had turned him into a cold and emotionless person. He says, "We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing from ourselves, from our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world, and we had to shoot it to pieces" (Remarque, 54). His lack of purpose and direction in life is summed up when he is in the Catholic hospital after being shot. Paul said: "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"(Remarque, 134). He has resigned himself to death. As it becomes evident that the Germans would lose the war, there is talk of the war coming to an end by the German soldiers. However, for Paul, even in peace, he sees no bright future as he has become completely broken. As the novel comes to an end, Paul dies, and as Remarque puts it, his face was calm "as though almost glad the end had come" (Remarque, 291).
In conclusion, the book offers an insightful view of the human stories that occurred during the First World War. The description is a far cry from those painted by political narratives that only offer an impassionate version of events. The tribulations that Paul Baumer and his friends encountered were not an isolated case but such was the norm for all the German soldiers. As such, the war led to a lost generation for Germany. Remarque's superior literal command of the events as they occurred allow one to be transported back in time to the early 20th century when the war took place. For those that can stomach the deeply moving stories and gory events that take place, "All Quiet on the Western Front" is definitely a must read.
Work Cited
Remarque, Erich M. All Quiet on the Western Front. Newyork: Little, Brown and Company, 1929.
