The
heroism of fighting in war has often been romanticized by movie directors and
authors. After World War I, there wasn’t an immediate surge of war novels being
written until the late 1920’s. The writing about war experiences has often been
used by veterans as a therapeutic strategy to cope with the stresses from the
war. Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a war
novel that was written with the intention of providing the layperson with a
sense of what soldiers experience while in combat and on leave. The use of
point of view in All Quiet on the Western
Front by Remarque allows the reader to experience the wartime emotions and
actions of a German infantry soldier in World War I.
In
All Quiet on the Western Front, the
majority of the novel is narrated by a young German soldier named Paul Bäumer. He was drafted
into the war and originally persuaded by his teachers that joining the war
effort was an honorable and patriotic thing to do. But Paul soon realizes the
horrors and dangers of being in the trenches. He describes the front as a place
where one loses oneself: "To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool.
Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the
vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself" (Remarque
55). By having the narrator tell the reader how he feels, Remarque is able to
present the reader with a firsthand account of a soldier’s emotions. The first
person narration of this quote gives the reader a sense that this is a sincere
feeling, making it appear more realistic. Remarque also illustrates to the
reader through the eyes of Paul Bäumer, increased knowledge of necessity. After
visiting his dying friend, Paul states: "We have lost all sense of other
considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and
important to us. And good boots are hard to come by" (Remarque 21). Paul’s
statement shows how the soldiers are able to see that the dying soldier won’t
need his boots because he lost a leg and take the opportunity to get a new pair
of boots. There is a good chance that the soldiers wouldn’t try and get the
boots if not for being in the war. The slight loss of humanity by looking at
the death as a pair of new boots demonstrates to the reader that the soldiers
in World War I often were forced to think and act with less humanity.
In
All Quiet on the Western Front, the
narrator Paul and his comrades talk about how the war has affected their lives.
After a bombardment, the band of soldiers talk about what they are planning on
doing once the war is over. “Albert Kropp expresses it: ‘The war has ruined us
for everything.’ He is right. We are not youth any longer…We were eighteen and
had begun to love life and the world…We believe in such things no longer, we
believe in the war” (Remarque 87-88). Albert Kropp’s statement provokes Paul to
explain that there isn’t anything for the soldiers to look forward to after the
war is over. The war destroyed their youth and innocence, causing the
assimilation into society extremely difficult. This group of soldiers who
fought in World War I would soon be known as the “lost generation” because it
was very hard to become fully functioning members of society once the war ended.
While injured, Paul has more time to think about life and comes to the
conclusion, "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…Our knowledge of life is limited to death”
(Remarque 263-264). This sums up the thoughts of many soldiers that fought in
World War I, that there isn’t anything outside of the life at war. They aren’t
able to see what their lives would be like if there wasn’t a war. From Paul’s
perspective, the reader is able to gain insight to the feelings of soldiers
that fought on both sides of the war through the eyes of a soldier. The reader
is able to realize that when the war ended, the youth and potential of
the soldiers ended with it.
The
novel, All Quiet on the Western Front,
is told entirely from the point of view of Paul Bäumer, except for a small
excerpt at the very end.
He
fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front,
that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the
Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping.
Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an
expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come (Remarque 296).
This single statement shows how
little one life can really matter in the grand scheme of things, but also
emphasizes how the war destroyed the life of a generation. This change in point
of view to an unknown person illustrates the death of Paul, the previous
narrator. When reading about the facial expression, the reader can assume that
this is what Paul wanted for various reasons. Paul had lost nearly everything
to the war: his friends, family, youth, hope, and drive. It almost seems
fitting that he should lose his own life to show that Paul had lost everything
to the war. The army report demonstrates how little the one life that was lost
mattered to the army, failing to get any mention. Because it was told from an
unknown person, the report and the news of Paul’s death are highlighted by
Remarque, who intended this to be a novel of how the war really was.
The
two points of views that Remarque used in his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front illustrate the brutal truth about a
lost generation because of a war. The experiences of Remarque that influenced
the writing of this novel warn of the consequences of using the youth to fight
a war. After reading this novel, the reader can view the realities of fighting
a war without the full experience, and world leaders should recognize the
commonality of this lost feeling the soldiers have and think twice about
sending troops off to fight.
Works
Cited
Remarque, Erich M. All Quiet on the Western Front. Trans.
A. W. Wheen. New York:
Fawcett Books, 1989. Print.
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