Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

Improved Essays
War is not glorifying nor dignifying but is listening to the cries of your comrades and a waste of human life. In the novel by Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, told through Paul Baumer point of view as a 1st person narrator. Baumer is a German soldier who joins the army along with schoolmates after the start of World War 1. After the training designed to break down individuality and create unquestioning obedience, they realize how they have been brainwashed, losing their belief they once had in patriotism. Paul and his comrades engage in battle and endure the conditions of trench warfare. In the middle of all the horror, they try to find acceptance and keep a part of their humanity. The brotherhood of soldiers versus the …show more content…
Every soldier deals with fighting against their inner morality.
First, the propaganda that inspired Paul and his fellows are proven to be false within the horror of war. “In the spasm of terror, under the hailing of annihilation, in the bellowing death of explosions, O Earth though grant us the great resistance of new-won life” (Remarque 55). Paul along with his comrade’s face death and loss of fellow soldiers through every bombardment men fall. They dive into every earth crevasse, hole or hump that can be a life saver. Men dig deep some never wanting to come out of their hole. The lucky ones are the ones that make it through their first duty at the front. When it comes to the new recruits most don’t know when to duck and cover or to run. They continue staying in line marching like a so-called good soldier. Unlike the new recruits, those that have been there before can hear the difference between bombs, cannons, and gas. “We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts we are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war” (Remarque 88). It is sad the way this

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