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Summary: The Cover Is Not False Advertising
Review: This truly is the greatest war novel ever written. It covers all of the horrors and fruitlessness of war in an appealing and amazing fashion. The story is about German soldier Paul Baumer, who is caught up in the patriotic zeal of his classmates and signs up for WWI. Through the novel he shares his tale of humanity lost, lives forever shattered, and a longing for an impossible thing, to return home. This book was in fact based on Remarque's experiences as a soldier in that war. Even translated, the language is colorful and adds greatly to the experience. Unlike nowadays "war" productions like Pearl Harbor, you get a sense of the spirit of war, the face of it. -m-
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Summary: It changed my life!
Review: Wow! I never thought my summer reading assignment would be so interesting and so exciting while still being easy to understand! I loved the "blunts as chalk" shock value of this book. Sometimes it did get a little gory, I'll admit, but it shatters all romantic ideals of war and brings it's audience to grips with the harsh reality of modren trench warfare.
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Summary: Heart wretching......
Review: If you never felt that war is bad, bad, bad before, you will after reading this book. It is written through the eyes of a young German soldier during World War I. It reaches down into your gut and puts you on the battle field. It shows you how war steals the youth from young. How when in battle it is a matter of surviving. You forget what you are fighting for, and just fight to survive. And afterwards, how do you feel about yourself. It is about how families suffer during war. I think that every head of government in the world should read this account of how it feels to be in the midst of the battle. How unnatural it is. The devastation. I can not even begin to imagine that the words written described in actuality what the war was really like. This book is not for the weak at heart, but I am glad I did not pass over it. It is so very powerful.
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Summary: A heartbreaking account
Review: For those of us Generation X-ers who have never felt even a remote threat of going to war, this novel is a must-read. This first-person account of a WWI German combat soldier embedded in my mind images of such horror that I cannot ever think of war in the same way again. The novel is a fast read -- I read through it in a couple of days -- but its impact lasts far longer.Remarque is the master of show, don't tell. He doesn't have to say "we felt hopeless" or "it was scary" or "it's heartbreaking when a young person dies." Instead, he paints each scene slowly, with precision, and we learn these truths for ourselves. The novel potrays various aspects of a soldier's life: the trench warfare, watching someone you've wounded slowly die, the fear of capture and death, being wounded yourself, suffering hunger, fatigue, and loneliness, the realization of all that's been lost by going home on leave, losing friends to the enemy's bullets, and even death itself. Perhaps most compelling in this account is the realization of the huge, gaping crevass between what the leader of state decides in his air-conditioned offices far from the front and what the common soldier suffers as a result. The novel did not convince me that war should be avoided at all costs, but I was surely awakened sufficiently to war's horrors to realize that only the greatest of purposes could justify it.
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Summary: Typical war story
Review: This book was about some soldiers in WWI. They met when they first came to fight in the war, and stuck together ever since. They helped each other in many ways, and I really liked how the story of the war from their point of view was told. I didn't like, however, the fact that not much was mentioned about the fact that they were fighting in WWI. It was mentioned once or twice, but there wasn't really anything said about the names of the battles they fought and stuff like that. It's nice to read if you want to know how war really is, but if you're looking for details about WWI, this isn't the book for you.
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Summary: Read it all the way to the end
Review: My Freshman English class read this book about three months ago. I think about three of us actually read it. And the other two were complaining about it savagely. I felt really weird, because I thought it was awesome. Everyone was "Oh, it's all gross!" Of course it is! It's showing you war. How else do you think it's going to be? I don't think it was too gross to show. It made me cry. My favorite part was when Paul was stuck in the shell-hole with the French solider he killed. Wow, that was gutwrenching. I'm a fourteen year old girl and I like shopping and dressing up and writing and poetry but I definitely still got something from this book that a lot of kids in my school didn't seem to get. Maybe if they read it they would. This is wonderful.
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Summary: Excellent book
Review: This is a classic novel about a young grunt in the big one. It would be comparable to The Forgotten Soldier and is an anti-war novel. You should also see the movie since it is also excellent.
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Summary: Unenjoyable
Review: I like most of what I read but this was slow and unenjoyable. The writer doesn't hold you much and I couldn't finish it. There are some plus sides to it though.
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Summary: The Front Line of Literary Excellence.
Review: The horror and insanity of trench warfare sink home in this classic eyewitness account of World War I combat. The book is a bit of a paradox, a fictional account of an ordinary German soldier's gruesome war experiences, written by an author who lived through it all in real life. Remarque was himself a German trench fighter who was wounded more than once One wonders why he chose the fictional approach rather than an auto-biographical one. Perhaps he felt it delivered more emotional impact. It's hard to argue. This is a touching novel that easily accomplishes his clear goal: depict the utter futility and inhumanity of war. The Great War, as all wars must do, gave birth to many worthy poets and novelists. But if there is a better one than Remarque relating the conditions in WWI Europe, it's news to me. The book reads at low volume, generating mental imagery in black and white. Simple, straightforward story-telling is all that's needed to present the message, and the result is anything but subtle. Remarque captures the essence of trench warfare and places us as near to it as we'll every want to be. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.
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Summary: graphic and moving without being sentimental
Review: I had to read this book for a class and expected for it to either glorify war or present a whiny, over-done call for peace. This book was niether of these things. It is written very frankly by Remarque and avoids excessive descriptions of gore and violence. This is not to say that it isn't often very graphic it its depictions of war, yet it avoids using language that seeks to envoke pity from the reader. For lack of a better description, it is written "just right" for the content explored. It uses believable dialogue between the characters and descriptions that constantly imply the vague, disconcerted, and confusing world of the soldiers without ever becoming sentimental or over-elaborate. I found this novel to be moving, well-written, and entertaining and would highly reccomend it, even to those who normally would not touch a war novel (such as myself).
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