| Trigger warning! This article contains mentions of possibly triggering content |
All Quiet on the Western Front is a famous novel written by Erich Maria Remarque. Released in 1928, it shows the war service of Paul Bäumer. All Quiet on the Western Front is considered to be the pinnacle of anti-war fiction.
Characters[]
- Paul Bäumer
- Corporal Himmelstoss
- Kemmerich
- Müller
- Kropp
- Kat
- Tjaden
Synopsis[]
All Quiet On The Western Front is a war novel that is from the point of view of a young German recruit, Paul Bäumer. He and his classmates have only heard glorified tales about wars, but when they enter service to be part of Germany's army in WWI and find themselves on the front lines in France, they find their fantasies disproven, learning that in war, there is no glory, justice, or beauty.
Instead, 19-year-old Paul and his classmates are met with waves of bombs, shells, mustard gas, and the overall harsh reality of trench warfare. In a masterpiece that is so moving in the emotions it channels that it disconnects one from reality, Erich Maria Remarque brings all of our beliefs about war, and how we talk about it, into question.
All Quiet On The Western Front is a truly gripping novel. It is saddening and horrifying as much as it is beautiful, and can be hard to put down, even during the most trying of times. Set during the time of trench warfare in the first world war, it leaves the reader with a sense of shock and sadness as they reach the end, reminding them about their humanity in such a way that one can feel speechless.
Summary[]
All Quiet on the Western Front is narrated by Paul Bäumer, a young man of nineteen who fights in the German army on the French front in World War I. Paul and several of his friends from school joined the army voluntarily after listening to the stirring patriotic speeches of their teacher, Kantorek.
But after experiencing ten weeks of brutal training at the hands of the petty, cruel Corporal Himmelstoss and the unimaginable brutality of life on the front, Paul and his friends have realized that the ideals of nationalism and patriotism for which they enlisted are simply empty clichés. They no longer believe that war is glorious or honorable, and they live in constant physical terror.
When Paul’s company receives a short reprieve after two weeks of fighting, only eighty men of the original 150-man company return from the front. The cook doesn’t want to give the survivors the rations that were meant for the dead men but eventually agrees to do so; the men thus enjoy a large meal. Paul and his friends visit Kemmerich, a former classmate who has recently had a leg amputated after contracting gangrene. Kemmerich is slowly dying, and Müller, another former classmate, wants Kemmerich’s boots for himself.
Paul doesn’t consider Müller insensitive; like the other soldiers, Müller simply realizes pragmatically that Kemmerich no longer needs his boots. Surviving the agony of war, Paul observes, forces one to learn to disconnect oneself from emotions like grief, sympathy, and fear. Not long after this encounter, Paul returns to Kemmerich’s bedside just as the young man dies. At Kemmerich’s request, Paul takes his boots to Müller.
A group of new recruits comes to reinforce the company, and Paul’s friend Kat produces a beef and bean stew that impresses them. Kat says that if all the men in an army, including the officers, were paid the same wage and given the same food, wars would be over immediately. Kropp, another of Paul’s former classmates, says that there should be no armies; he argues that a nation’s leaders should instead fight out their disagreements with clubs. They discuss the fact that petty, insignificant people become powerful and arrogant during war, and Tjaden, a member of Paul’s company, announces that the cruel Corporal Himmelstoss has come to fight at the front.
At night, the men go on a harrowing mission to lay barbed wire at the front. Pounded by artillery, they hide in a graveyard, where the force of the shelling causes the buried corpses to emerge from their graves, as groups of living men fall dead around them. After this gruesome event, the surviving soldiers return to their camp, where they kill lice and think about what they will do at the end of the war.
Some of the men have tentative plans, but all of them seem to feel that the war will never end. Paul fears that if the war did end, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. Himmelstoss arrives at the front; when the men see him, Tjaden insults him. The men’s lieutenant gives them light punishment but also lectures Himmelstoss about the futility of saluting at the front. Paul and Kat find a house with a goose and roast the goose for supper, enjoying a rare good meal.
The company is caught in a bloody battle with a charging group of Allied infantrymen. Men are blown apart, limbs are severed from torsos, and giant rats pick at the dead and the wounded. Paul feels that he must become an animal in battle, trusting only his instincts to keep him alive. After the battle, only thirty-two of eighty men are still alive. The men are given a short reprieve at a field depot. Paul and some of his friends go for a swim, which ends in a rendezvous with a group of French girls. Paul desperately wishes to recapture his innocence with a girl, but he feels that it is impossible to do so.
Paul receives seventeen days of leave and goes home to see his family. He feels awkward and oppressed in his hometown, unable to discuss his traumatic experiences with anyone. He learns that his mother is dying of cancer and that Kantorek has been conscripted as a soldier, from which he derives a certain cold satisfaction. He visits Kemmerich’s mother and tells her, untruthfully, that her son’s death was instant and painless. At the end of his leave, Paul spends some time at a training camp near a group of Russian prisoners-of-war. Paul feels that the Russians are people just like him, not subhuman enemies, and wonders how war can make enemies of people who have no grudge against one another.
Paul is sent back to his company and is reunited with his friends. The kaiser, the German emperor, pays a visit to the front, and the men are disappointed to see that he is merely a short man with a weak voice.
Paul volunteers to go on a scouting mission, during which intense bombing force him to take cover and hide in a shell hole. A French soldier jumps into the shell hole with him, and Paul instinctively stabs him multiple times in the grip of panic.
As the man dies a slow, painful death, Paul is overcome with remorse for having hurt him. He realizes that this enemy soldier is no enemy at all but rather a victim of war just like himself. Paul laments, for he now realizes that if he had waited - even for a split second - before attempting to kill the other man, he would not have. He continues on, and as he does, Paul tries to make the man's death easier by propping him up against the wall of the shell hole, and giving him water at intervals, despite the water being very grubby and dirty. Hours later, the French man dies, and Paul begins to miss the company of the man, even if it was comprised of gurgling and other noises that showed that the other man was nearing his end.
Paul looks through the soldier’s things and finds that his name was Gérard Duval, and learns that Duval had a wife and child at home. In the moment, Paul feels obligated to send the wife and child of Gérard Duval money, if not a letter hand-written by him formally apologizing for the man's death. This idea is cut short when Paul remembers that his French consists of only a few words, and that this French family likely speaks no German. When he returns to his company, Paul recounts the incident to his friends, who try to console him.
Paul and his friends are given an easy assignment: for three weeks, they are to guard a supply depot away from the fighting. When the next battle takes place, Paul and Kropp are wounded and forced to bribe a sergeant-major with cigars in order to be placed on the hospital train together. At the hospital, Paul undergoes surgery. Kropp’s leg is amputated, and he becomes extremely depressed. After his surgery, Paul has a short leave at home before he returns to his company.
As the German army begins to give in to the unrelenting pressure of the Allied forces, Paul’s friends are killed in combat one by one. Detering, one of Paul’s close friends, attempts to desert but is caught and unfortunately court-martialed.
Kat is killed when a piece of shrapnel slices his head open while Paul is carrying him to safety. Kat had gotten injured in his ankle badly, and Paul attempts to pick him up as he alternates between running and walking to the nearest medical tent, with short breaks. While doing this, a small piece of shrapnel hits the base of Kat's skull, killing him instantly.
Paul does not realize this until he has already reached the medical tent and reaches under Kat's head to help him sit up and has his hand come away bloody. Paul is overcome with grief, for Kat helped him survive so long in the war, and was an excellent scavenger who could find food under any circumstance. Kat was so good at finding food that it was said that even in a barren desert, Kat would find something to eat. Kat's actual job was making shoes, so the fact that he was so good at finding food is truly impressive.
By the fall of 1918, Paul is the only one of his circle of friends who is still alive. Soldiers everywhere whisper that the Germans will soon surrender, and that peace will come. Paul is poisoned in a gas attack and given a short leave. He reflects that, when the war ends, he will be ruined for peacetime; all he knows is the war. He notices that the older men, who have finished school, have families and jobs to return too. He, and the rest of his generation, have nothing, for when they were supposed to be establishing themselves and getting jobs, they were killing people and being killed as well.
In October 1918, on a day with very little fighting, Paul is killed. The army report for that day reads simply: “All quiet on the Western Front.” Paul’s corpse wears a calm expression, as though relieved that the end has come at last.
Quotes[]
- " But now, for the first time, I realized that you were a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, your rifles; but now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never say that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, that we have the same fear of death, the same agony? Forgive me, comrade. How could you be my enemy? If we threw down these uniforms, these rifles, we could be brothers, just like me and Kat." - Paul
- "A hospital alone shows what war is." - Paul
- " Let the months and years come. They can take nothing from me. They can take nothing more" - Paul
Backstory[]
The first world war (aka "The Great War" or "World War One") lasted from 1914 to 1918. During the first world war, if you looked at the newspapers, they would often say that it was "All quiet on the western front," and probably show a grainy black-and-white photograph of soldiers lounging about. The newspapers would say this, even though it was possible that at the same time, there was a battle going on somewhere.
In fact, that phrase means a lack of visible change in any context, so it is a bit of an ironic title, considering how much visible change goes on during the book.
The Terribleness of Trench Warfare[]
Trench warfare is a type of land warfare where each side basically digs long, elaborate ditches (trenches) that are largely protected by being up to 2.5 m (8 ft) underground, to allow people to walk about without getting shot. The trenches would also have sandbags and barbed wire for extra protection, and can extend over a large area.
The reason it exists is because if you were to just stand on a flat stretch of ground, you would be setting yourself up for a very large, mortal disaster. This is because at the time of the war, there was a lot of shellfire (aka streamlined bombs) and rocket fire, along with the beginnings of machine guns, meaning that any person who was unprotected and had nothing to hide behind was an obvious target.
When the trenches were dug, they were purposefully dug so that they were never straight, but instead zig-zagging in a general left-right or up-down direction. The logic was that if one area of the trench was hit by a bomb or shell, the explosion would hit dirt instead of more men, and therefore keep casualties down.
In the space between the trenches dug for both sides, there is what's called "no-man's land," which is really just a lot of barbed wire across a wide open area that is really just asking for death if you are seen walking across it, hence the name.
In All Quiet On The Western Front, there are a few points in which the Paul and his comrades can hear injured people crying for help in no-mans land, making the rescue of them hard, for they know that the opposing side (composed of Britain, the US, and France) would not hesitate to take the rescuer down with a bullet to the heart, or to the head (Or both).
See Also[]
- War Horse by Michael Morpugo
- The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque
Sources[]
- Wikipedia (Article One)
- Wikipedia (Article Two)
- SparkNotes
- The book itself