All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I, about the horrors of that war and also the deep detachment from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front. The book was first published in German as Im Westen nichts Neues in January 1929. It sold a million copies within a year in Germany and a further million abroad. In 1930 the book was turned into an Oscar-winning movie of the same name, directed by Lewis Milestone. Although it is unrelated to the novel, "all quiet on the Western Front" has become a popular slang for the lack of action, a reference to the Phony War in World War II's Western Front.

Plot

The story follows the experiences of Paul Bäumer: a soldier who joined the German army shortly after the start of the war. He arrives on the western front with his friends (Tjaden, Müller, and a number of other characters) and meets Stanislaus Katczinsky. Kat soon becomes Paul's mentor and teaches him about the realities of war. Paul and Kat swiftly became almost brothers, bonded by the hardships of the war.

Related Topics:
Soldier - German army - Mentor

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Paul and his friends have to endure day after day of 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 will. They are the only people that can gain anything from this war, not Paul and his friends.

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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 artillery fire, the struggle to find food, and the overarching role of chance in the lives and deaths of the soldiers, all are described in detail. Remarque often refers to the living soldiers as old and dead, emotionally depleted 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."

Related Topics:
Heroic - Bravery - Monotony - Artillery

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Occasionally Paul receives leave from the army, and returns home temporarily. He finds it difficult to understand people at home anymore. While all the soldiers at the front wish for nothing more than peace, knowing that they are losing the war, people back home talk about marching on Paris. He is also indifferent to the significance of any of the battles. Battles have no names. Rather, one after another they offer a chance for him to be killed. Battle seems to be waged only to gain pitifully small pieces of land.

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