“All Quiet in the Western Front” is an anti-war novel that tells the story of what a young soldier Paul Baumer and his wartime comrades saw and experienced at the front in First World War. Like Ernest Hemingway, Remarque used the term "lost generation" to describe young people who, after receiving the spiritual war injuries, were not able to settle in civilian life. The author’s own shockingly negative experience during World War I written in the epigraph of the novel: "This book is neither an accusation nor a confession. This is just an attempt to tell about the generation that was destroyed by the war, those who became its victim, even if escaped the shells" (Remarque 3). Erich Maria Remarque’s literary masterpiece, therefore, stood in sharp contradiction to the right-wing conservative military literature, which had prevailed in the era of the Weimar Republic and which, as a rule, tried to justify Germany's loss in the war and glorify soldiers.
This novel is the best anti-war ode to the soldier's fate, recognized by many readers of several generations. This is the rebuke to the arbiters crippling human lives. This is a call to learn a lesson. Most importantly, all the battles described in the book were aimless in their essence and, in the course of time, they acquired little significance to soldiers. The living soldiers, except for the dead, were emotionally deceased and empty. Their youthfulness was lost and sacrificed for the benefit of war initiators. The cost of the war was high for everyone, not just those who were fighting in the tranches.
Why an anti-war novel
In all episodes, yet, not just in those where bloody military action is shown, but also in scenes in the hospitals, that sometimes are even more terrible than the front, and dull paintings of life in the rear, seen through the eyes of the man, and spirited, laced with humor. This book, despite its bitterness, has not lost the peculiar sense of humor brought forward by the author though his main protagonists. Erich Maria Remarque’s most vivid endeavor to the war theme in literature consists of telling the story of the young people mostly inspired by the harsh life of soldiers, specifically found in the second tier during the short breaks, and suffocating memories of barrack drill, before sending in the part, the drill, essentially, which began in school.
The anti-war spirit of the novel, “All Quiet in the Western Front", is closely linked to internationalism. The soldiers, heroes of the novel, often think over what (or who) drives them to kill people of other nationality. Their reasoning on this subject during the dispute, described by Remarque in the ninth chapter, is naive, but they can help to get to the truth. The main capturing discussion prepared by the scene from the previous chapter, the scene that takes place in the prison camp.
The essential climax of the internationalist’s line in the novel is one of the most memorable scenes of the book. Caught in no man's land in one crater alone with a French soldier, the hero kills him, and as if in punishment for this is forced to experience his last hours with him, for the fear of own death he cannot leave the place. For some time, he ceases to feel himself a soldier, suffering, trying to help the victim and listens to the death rattle of Duval (the so-called French), and frantically trying to unravel the same tangle to understand why people should destroy each other. During his first killing experience in the field, Paul asks forgiveness from the dead man he killed a couple of seconds away. He even takes a pledge to fight against the war, if he remains alive. However, the next day, when he met with his fellow soldiers again, he became "sober". However, the experienced shock did not pass.
It is hard to consider the novel being not anti-war. Throughout the book, Erich Maria Remarque shows how ruthless and senseless the war is, and how illusory the ideals ordinary soldiers are fighting for in all fronts are. The only argument justifying the conduction of the war is the need to defend the interests of the country. In some cases, war is the only a cruel method of struggle without a sustainable goal.
Transformation of the heroes
“All Quiet in the Western Front”, like many subsequent works of the same renowned German author, is largely autobiographical. Paul Baumer and his comrades, Müller, Kropp, Leer, Kemmerich get to the front straight from a school desk, all unprepared and naïve to serve their country. They did not know life and believed the wisdom of their teachers. Because when they heard it — "war for the Motherland, for the happiness of the people", they, without hesitation, volunteered; they were excitable, fond, yet immature young men.
Personal experiences of the novel's characters were very poor and reduced to a few realistic episodes. What did they know about life? Behind them – years of training of the gymnasium wisdom, dreams, uncertainty, and naive, about the future, in which there was no place for war. Their minds were preoccupied with the false mentors’ dogmatic lessons like the schoolteacher Kantorek, inspiring them with reverence for the authority of the government, molesting their hearts’ chatter about the "Great Germany", preparing them as loyalist, nationalist, cannon fodders. But, despite all this, some characters do not cease to hope for the best, that in the future they can return to normal life. For example, Muller "still carries around books and wants to take discounted exams; under heavy fire, he crams the laws of physics" (Remark 42).
Barracks straight after school is a pitying experience. Here, processed by their spiritual mentors, youths in practice got acquainted with the virtues of military drill. After the barracks, the only realistic option offered to them is the front. Harsh ruthless school of possibility to die every minute, complete helplessness and inability to understand what had happened. As a herd, the heroes of the novel gather in a heap, unable to understand for the glory of what ideas they have to die and to kill. "We became soldiers voluntarily, out of enthusiasm; but here everything was done to give us this feeling" (CH. II), says the main character of the novel, Paul Baumer.
The characters of Erich Maria Remarque, covered by the warlike enthusiasm, initially thought that they were fighting for their country. Enlightenment had not been immediate to them, and when it came, fighting suddenly seemed a hundred times harder; the meaning of the war is lost, and the enemy is not an enemy anymore.
War has broken heroes depicted in the Erich Maria Remarque’s novel. It laid an indelible mark on their souls, and even being in a circle of wartime friends, they were carrying a sullen sadness and loneliness with them. Single people, on whose shoulders lies the burden of an unheard of social injustice, pay with their lives for the folly of proprietary society, for which the war is an inevitable companion. They hate war — they know it too well, but nothing else.
The war paved the fatal line between those who were at the front, who sipped soup from a frontline soldier's pot, and those who remained in the rear.
Works Cited
Remarque, Erich Maria, and A. W. Wheen. All Quiet in the Western Front. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1929. Print.
