All Quiet on the Western Front

Rating:
Summary: Jumping Off Place for the "Horrors Of War" Theme
Review: The horrors of war! How many times have we been exposed to it over the past century? Beginning with War and Peace I'd guess the countless books, movies, TV dramatic presentations, mini-series, and all other conceivable forms of mass-communication have been used for the "Horrors of War" drumbeat.Over and over. Over and over. Over and over.<>One only need read this one classic. All Quiet On the Western Front exposes it all--makes unnecessary countless retellings. In this shattering book we have Mr. Common Man, but a boy, his hopes, dreams, ambitions channeled by a stern School Master into the noble cause of "Fighting for the Fatherland." With broad strokes Ramarque paints the horrors of the abyss he is thrown into, and with precision, fine-line sketches he delineates the shattering of his dreams with his return home, on leave, and priceless revisitation of his classroom. The flashbacks of boyhood memories, alone, are priceless, the depictions unforgettable.<>Truly a classic for all time. A copy of All Quiet On The Western Front should be on every bookshelf in America.

Rating:
Summary: A Perspective other than the US
Review: This book is incredible. It is so refreshing to read from the "loser's" point of view instead of the US's all the time. I get so tired of only hearing our side. But it was nice to have my firm belief that other nationalities are people with valid beliefs and opinions be backed up.

I could write literally pages on the brilliance of this book, but I will refrain.

It is a nice, simple read, though a very intense and meaningful one. To clarify, it goes fast, the words are 'easy' but there's so much BEHIND the words.

As Sigmund Freud states, "(War) strips us of the later accretions of civilization and lays bare the primal man in each of us. It compels us once more to be heroes who cannot believe in their own death; it stamps strangers as enemies, whose death is to be brought about or desired; it tells us to disregard the death of those we love." Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front shows the disillusionment of war-how one can easily lose all past ideals and human emotions, how one can easily forget that his enemy is human, and how one can easily fail to remember that he is still alive.

When the reader compares each character in youth to the `person' they have become, the boys of 1916 are now no more than shadows of what they were or could have been. The only time they experience any happiness is when they are with each other, enjoying the peace of camaraderie. Erich Maria Remarque fiercely details to the reader all that is lost in a war-not only lives and money; but for those who are `lucky' enough to survive-their lives have been forfeit as well. "We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces...The first bomb...burst in our hearts. We are cut off from...striving...progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war."