All Quiet on the Western Front Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Written by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front (1929; German Im Westen nichts Neues) clearly elucidates not only the horrors of contemporary warfare, but also the deep detachment from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front.The Story follows the experiences of Paul Baumer: a soldier who joined the German army shortly after the start of the war. After his training, however, he regrets joining the military. After he arrives on the frontline on the western front with his friends (Tjaden, Müller, and a number of other characters) he meets with Stanislaus Katczinsky. Kat soon becomes Paul's mentor and teaches him about the realities of the war. Paul and Kat swiftly became almost brothers, bonded by the hardships of the war.
Paul and his friends endure day after day the terrible non-stop bombardment. Eventually it all becomes clear to him : war is entirely pointless. All his friends say that they are fighting the war for a few persons whom they have never met and most likely never would. Those are the only people that can gain anything from this war, not Paul and his friends.
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The story is narrated by Paul Baumer. The story begins with Paul and Müller visiting their friend who had been wounded in battle recently. All three, 17 others, had joined the army after the start of the war, after being persuaded by their school-master Kantorek. The book focuses not on heroic stories of bravery as do so many other war stories, but rather gives a realistic view of the hell the soldiers found themselves in. The monotony, the constant barrage of artillery fire on the front line, the struggle to find food, and the overarching role of chance in lives and deaths of the soldiers, all are described in detail. Remarque often refers to the living soldiers as old and dead, emotionaly depleated and hardened. "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. "
On occasion Paul recieves leave from the army, and returns home temporarily. He finds it difficult to understand people back home anymore. While all the soldiers on the front wish for nothing more than peace, knowing that they are losing the war, people back home talk about marching on to Paris. He is also indifferent to the significance of any battles. Battles have no names. Rather, one after another they offer a chance for him to get killed. Battle seems to be waged only to gain pitifully small pieces of land.
There are many central themes in the book. The first is that war is total nonsense. After all, none of the characters have ever seen a Frenchman before the war, much less have reason to kill them. Some of the soldiers ponder how the war got started, what is it for, who does it benefit. Nobody has any answers.
The second theme is that war is horrible. Paul describes the horrors of war throughout the book. The treches and fortifications get shelled continualy, poison gas blankets the battlefield, snipers take out anyone with their head above ground. Finally the French troops come and the German lines disintegrate. Very visual descriptions are presented throughout the book. Nothing short of being there could show the sheer numbers of dead and wounded every day in the war.
It also received two further nominations:
Themes
Film
The film version, adapted by Maxwell Anderson, George Abbott, Del Andrews, C. Gardner Sullivan, Walter Anthony (uncredited) and Lewis Milestone (uncredited), won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1930 for its producer Carl Laemmle Jr, and an Academy Award for Directing for Lewis Milestone. The movie starred Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander.
The film has also been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Sequel
The Road Back-This book is also written by Erich Maria Remarque. It is about a different group of soldiers trying to cope with postwar germany. Dealing with the defeated german society after the war, trying to go to school, trying to live a normal life.
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