All Quiet on the Western Front

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Review: "On the threshold of life, they faced an abyss of death..."
This written on the cover of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. That sentence sums up EXACTLY what this book is all about. It starts off rather slow descibing what life is all about in the rear, you would think that life in the rear would be completely different then in the front but the real only difference is instead of worring about dying from a bullet they were worring about dying of starvation. This book was packed with action and gore, if you are a war fanatic I highly recommend reading this book.

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Summary: A Novel With a Timeless Message About the Horrors of War
Review: Reading an anti-war novel during wartime, gave me an opportunity to view Operation Iraqi Freedom in a different light. Author Erich Maria Remarque approached his novel with a clear message that he wanted the readers to come away with and he was very successful. Without preaching an anti-war message, the message was subtly, but effectively related to the readers through the eyes of Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier. The book doesn't get caught up in telling the readers what is going on everywhere on the front or in explaining Germany's political views. It simply gives readers a chance to see the horrors of war through the eyes of a regular soldier and his classmates. The readers experience Paul's transformation from an excited young volunteer to a young man who understands the brutality of war. He was persuaded by his professor to join the army out of love for the fatherland and to show patriotism, but instead Paul has watched as all of his friends and fellow classmates die for their country. Readers won't think of Paul, in the traditional sense, as being an enemy. They view him as a person who had to leave his youth behind too quickly and has become an unfortunate member of the lost generation. Paul teaches us the important lesson that deep down everyone is a person and they are fighting for what they believe is right. Ultimately, who is to decide which side is right or wrong? Paul comes to the conclusion that it isn't his place to decide who is right or wrong. He realizes he should treat his "enemies" as comrades because like him, they are just men fighting for their country. Paul felt that if not for the war, he could have been friends with them.

After reading All Quiet on the Western Front, readers know how war can be both physically and emotionally damaging to the soldiers. The soldiers come back changed people, having seen the dark side of humanity and living in constant fear of death. They have viewed horrific sights and once they return home they still carry the scars of war. This can be seen when Paul returns home, he isn't able to put into words what he has seen. He feels as though he is an outsider and he is uncomfortable talking to his own family members and wearing his uniform at home. Although it might be hard for the older men to leave their jobs and their families, at least they are able to think about life after the war. Young men like Paul don't know what they are going to do after the war. Before the war, their time was taken up by going to school, but after a brief amount of time spent on the front, they have realized that knowledge isn't important. It didn't teach them basic survival techniques that they wish they knew for the war. They became the lost generation. In a way, Paul's ultimate fate was almost an end of a long journey that he had been waiting for. When he died, he had an expression of calm on his face, glad that, at least for him, the war was finally over. It is a loss that the readers share in after so intimately getting to know Paul over the novel's two hundred ninety-six pages. Remarque's amazing ability of making the readers experience a war front during conflict makes All Quiet on the Western Front a timeless novel that should be read by everyone worldwide to prevent another lost generation from occurring ever again.

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Summary: All Quiet on the Western Front
Review: I usually am not very interested in books but when I saw the movie "All Quiet On the Western Front" I knew I had to read the book. I am glad that I chose to read the book because as someone that plans on a career in the military this book gave me an insight to how bad war is. Remarque really helps the reader see how a young solider is rapidly changed into a man through the horrors of warfare. Remarque also helps someone that is not so educated in world war one see what the ordinary foot solider endured everyday to survive.
The book All Quiet On the Western Front begins with Paul and his friends story about their boot camp experiences with Corporal Himmelstoss, and how Himmelstoss abused his power towards the young boys. The boys carry there grudge against Himmelstoss throughout the book and continually think of ways to get at him. Himmelstoss quickly learns that it is okay to have mistakes on the front line and hard action should be taken for the men doing small errors that have no consequences. This helps Paul and his friends especially Tjaden, keep out of serious trouble.
The young boys begin to change to war hardened men after the death of a good friend. The man shows them how quick their lives can be done, and how they really have not had a chance to have a life of their own. They often dream about what they will do after the war. The lack of materials is made obvious in the hospitals. Fortunately for the men there friend and leader, Katizinsky, is a tremendous scrounger. Kat helps the young men learn the tricks surviving as a solider.
The men never really liked the war but after seeing death around them and realizing they have to kill to survive makes them wish they could just go home and live their lives. Paul's views on the war change drastically when he spends the night with the wounded enemy solider. Paul sees how pointless the war is.
Remarque does a very good job with the characters in this book. Each character is himself, yet very close to his comrades. This book shows how the chain of command is used and abused in the military. Extra drill time for hours at a time is something that happens even today as punishment. This is something that was very real then and is still today in and out of wartime. The way the soldiers dealt with their harsh non-com was also believable. The action on the front lines that the soldiers faced in trench warfare was realistic yet not so detailed that is would make one sick. The lack of supplies is something that is in every war and Remarque does a good job to show how the lack of supplies had to be dealt with. The part of the book that I found most interesting was the rat problem that the soldiers faced. I can attest to the ruthlessness of a rat and can imagine how that would be a problem for a solider in the trenches. The terminology that Remarque uses would be very hard for someone that does not have much knowledge of military terms to understand. Abbreviations like a non commissioned officer being called a non-com might be confusing. I would recommend this book to anyone that is interested in learning more about a soldiers life in warfare because this book does an excellent job to show this. Also, this book would be appropriate for someone that is into military history. This is a good book that about World War One and helps one understand what war is like.

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Summary: All Quiet on the Western Front
Review: The novel All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the best fictional novels that I have ever read. Not only was it informational but it was also entertaining.
I really liked how the narrator, Paul, tells exactly what he is feeling about the war, keeping nothing back. This includes gory details and harsh feelings toward people, but you are able to relate to people when you know exactly what is going on and how they are all feeling. There are also several entertaining parts in the novel, such as when they describe their free time and how they act around each other when they are not on the front line. I like this because you are able to realize that these boys are just normal teenage boys that think about girls and making trouble, the same as any other boy.
I would have to say that the best feature of this book is that it paints a picture for you and it almost makes it seem like you know the character.

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Summary: all quiet on the western front
Review: I thought this was a good book, it started out kind of slow, but by the third or fourth chapter it really picked up, it told a good story of world war 1, a side of the story I had never heard before, I would recommend this book to other people.

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Summary: All-Powerful about the Western Front
Review: ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is not the story of military strategy, or a tale concerned with the mass movement of armies and people. It is not a novel about the higher view of war, the way it is seen by governments and generals. It is, in fact, the story of one man caught up in a war that he doesn't even seem to fully comprehend. He and his friends are battered and wounded, and simply trying to survive each day as it comes. The book is powerful and memorable. Erich Maria Remarque shows us what war is like, and shows us a tale of people trying to stay alive, but becoming more and more alienated from the regular world they left behind.

The story is gritty, dirty and depressing. It probably isn't exactly explaining what life was like for the German soldiers during WWI, but my guess is that it comes extremely close. The men have trouble finding food, they are ordered around by sadistic officers, they are cold, and hungry - and there's a war going on, the nature of which means that literally at any second they could be killed or horribly maimed. The book focuses on the death associated with the war, but it also spends a lot of time going over the suffering and the pain. Remarque tells us of the soldiers wounded, of those slowly dying in no-man's land with no hope of being rescued or of dying a clean death. The lucky ones are the ones who die quickly; the unlucky are in agony for days or weeks.

There really isn't much of a plot, which would certainly seem to be in keeping with the way an average solider would view the war. The narrative bounces us around from the front lines, to the rear camps, to civilian villages in a sequence as random as it would have appeared to anyone involved in the war. We can't see the reasoning behind any individual movement, and neither can our protagonist. They are concerned only with the moment, the simple things that will keep them alive and as comfortable as possible. Their occasional contacts with home and with civilian life highlight how different they have become and the difficulties the survivors will face when they attempt to reintegrate themselves with their old lives.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is a book that everyone should read, just so that the story of the average soldier is always carried on. Even as television brings cursory and unrepresentative images of the battlefield to regular citizens, it is vital that everyone fully understands the horror that war is. I can't say that this was a pleasant read, but it was a book that I found difficult to put down.

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Summary: The Reality Of War
Review: This was one of the saddest books that I have ever read. There is nothing good that comes out of it; there is only [destruction] and despair. The reason I recommend this book is because it shows you what war does to soldiers. The people that supposedly fight for honor and dignity receive scars for life. They see their comrades getting [destroyed] and massacre people who have done nothing wrong to them. The soldiers that fight and sign up for war just like Paul have no idea what it's like. They think it's a big joke. "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 that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring ...Through the years our business has been killing; -it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?"(p.263) Paul enters the war as a 19 year old without any knowledge of what war is like and he matures to see that he has been turned into a killing machine. As Paul ages and the war carries on he has no memories of happiness and only sees the worst. This book describes in every detail the brutality of war, the senseless deaths and the reduction of intelligent people to primitive killing machines by deceptive politics and false patriotism. After you read this book you see the world in a different way and you can never truly see why there can't be peace on Earth.

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Summary: POWERFUL NOVEL ABOUT DISILLUSIONMENT OF WAR
Review: In this most famous Remarque novel, we follow the life of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier in WWI, to his tragic death.

We can see the dissonance between the romaticized version of war, which is taught to him by a high school teacher, and the actual situation of war, where in one case people are just waiting for a soldier to die to take his boots from him.

The author does a very good job intertwining nature, as seen from the trenches, to the savage brutality of the combat going on. It is difficult to give good examples that don't sound corny here, but trust me that the author puts these references in a way that the reader gets a complete image of the situation.

The war is seen away from its political or military environment, but rather from the perspective of daily deaths, without much meaning or crying. There is some gore, but it is done well, to the point that it will make the reader finch and understand the conditions.

In this meaningless world of war, the ending is fitting. The telegraph on conditions of war in Germany reads "All Quiet on the Western Front", on a day when Paul Baumer dies. The book is a powerful statement, with no need to scream.

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Summary: Book Review: All Quiet on the Western Front
Review: Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front is a powerful novel about the disillusionment brought on by World War I. Before the Great War, many countries in Europe had been extending their powers and establishing empires and strong trade developments. Many in these countries saw these strengths as signs of their nations' greatness. Also before World War I, there had never been a war that used so much fire power in the form of grenades, mortar shells, machine guns, etc. Wars were also seen as a moral activity and the winning country often attributed its success to its own virtue. World War I changed all of these opinions and Remarque (who fought in WWI himself) does an excellent job of portraying the horrors of war and the awakening experienced by so many of the young men who fought on the front.
Before the novel opens, there is a short explanation which states:
"This book is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."(dedication page)
The book's point of view is that of a German foot soldier who spends much of his time fighting on the front. While other nationalities are mentioned and questioned, Remarque at no time says anything that would offend a reader's personal loyalties. He simply states what every soldier from each side of the war must have felt as they faced each other in such inhuman circumstances.
The main thing I appreciated in this book was Remarque's ability to instill in the reader the grotesque images and events that men face in a war. Remarque was able to do this without painting complicated and graphic pictures. The few words he did use sufficed to give the reader enough information to fill in the blanks and see for himself the terrors that Remarque was describing.
Remarque is also able to avoid the obscene language that inevitably flows through a soldier's vocabulary. He does not try to cover the fact that such words were spoken, he merely leaves the language out and tells the reader that such an answer or statement was given.
As well as giving a report on life on the front line, this book also explores the psychology of the soldiers. There are scenes where the soldiers question their reasons for being where they are. They remember the speeches thrown at them in school about the glory and honor they will receive for defending their country. They ask themselves if the boys on the other side also received such speeches and if so, who was right and who was wrong. They wonder about the issues they are fighting for and many of them realize that they have no idea about why they are there.
At one point the men are dressed up and paraded before their Kaiser. They begin to question the motives of their country and the motives of the others who are involved in the war. As they discuss it one of the men says, "One people offends the other-" Upon which his friend states, "Then I haven't any business here at all. I don't feel myself offended."(p. 204) These statements give an excellent insight into a soldiers feelings and questions. Remarque is once again able to place the reader inside his characters and let him feel for himself what it must be like to be in such a position.
As far as I'm concerned, this book, All Quiet on the Western Front, gives an eye-opening and realistic view on the terrors of war. Most people recognize war for the horror that it is, and while there may be times when it is unavoidable, most are ready to do everything it takes to avoid such a catastrophe. Unfortunately though, there are always those that are ready at the slightest provocation to go blindly into the foray. Perhaps if more people read books like this one, they would be more cautious about such hasty action. I highly recommend this book to anyone that is looking for something real and though provoking. They will definitely not be disappointed.

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Summary: War hurts more than our bodies, but it hurts our minds also
Review: This book is and always will be a classic. It could very possibly be the greatest war novel of modern war. Paul, the main character, enlists in the German Army of World War I. We follow him into the trenches of battle and feel his emotions. We witness the hate and hurt of war. This is not a book to be taken lightly. Instead, we should read this and understand better what our war vets go through on a daily basis. Some are able to cope, some are not.
Paul enters the war not knowing to expect, as thousands do. But in the end, his life, and his mind, will be changed forever. This book is beautifully written, and beautifully translated. I recommend this to any fan of war novels, or anyone that wants to experience what it was like. This is a close as you will get to the trenches, unless you were there.