Notes

Evan Hamblet
11/4/16
Period 4 English


War is not a pretty thing. Whether you’re on the front, or in the cities, the effects of war can be seen everywhere. In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer is a german soldier in World War 1. Throughout the war, Paul learns how glorified war is, and the war alters his state of mind, eventually leading him to believe that his generation has been lost.


Because it was the first war of such scale, World War 1 was over glorified by many civilians at the time. Men would send their sons off to the war fearing that otherwise they would miss out on heroic opportunities. People believed that due to the recent technological advancements, the war would be over and all the soldiers would come home by Christmas; however, the war lasted four years, and many soldiers didn’t come home. As Paul says in the novel, “After all, war is war” (Remarque 229). There can be no true “happy ending” to a war, because one side will always lose. Even on the winning side, many lives will be lost, and sometimes not even on the front. During war, nobody is truly safe. Paul, however, was on the front most of the time, the most dangerous place of all. He and his comrades had to constantly be wary of enemy shelling, raids, and gas attacks. They got so jumpy to the point where they would kill anyone that came near the trench. As Thomas Hardy says in his poem “The Man He Killed”, “You shoot a fellow down/ You’d treat if met where any bar is.” On the front, it didn’t matter who you saw, they were the enemy. They could be a father, a factory worker, a lumberjack, anything, but you would only see them as the enemy.
Due to the constant struggle for life, war affects one’s mind in many ways. On the front, Paul and his comrades slowly develop the mindset of a man at war. At one point, Paul’s group is sent to man an outpost, where they slaughter two piglets that they found in a barn; although, normally they would be horrified if anyone just slaughtered someone else’s piglets, as Paul says “[They] all stand round them as though before an altar” (Remarque 234). They thought to themselves that the pigs would be killed eventually anyway, be it by the enemy soldiers or their shells, so they figured that why shouldn’t they eat the pigs themselves. Also, during an enemy shelling, two men from Paul’s unit are killed by the shells, and Paul’s friend Tjaden remarks that “you could scrape them off the wall of the trench with a spoon and bury them in a mess-tin” (Remarque 128). A normal person would’ve been horrified by what had just happened, and lamented the loss of the two men, but due to the continued exposure to death and gore, Paul and his friend simply joked about it.


Due to the demands of constantly facing war, Paul and the men of his generation lose all sense of anything outside of the war. For the generation before Paul’s, it isn’t too bad because they have wives, jobs, and possibly children to go back to. To the generation after Paul, the war was simply something that happened, they had no relation to it; meanwhile, for Paul’s generation, it is everything. As Paul says to himself at one point, “And even if these scenes of [their] youth were given back to [them they] would hardly know what to do” (Remarque 122). The war was so taxing on the brains of the men that those who had nothing to root them in place simply lost everything before it. They could still vaguely remember things from their childhood, and their lives before the war, but it had no meaning to them. Due to this, the men had no idea what to do after the war ends. Paul says himself, “We will not find our way home anymore” (Remarque 294). His generation no longer has a purpose outside of the war. They can’t remember anything they were or aspired to be, just that they are soldiers.


In conclusion, war is terrible, because it affects people both on and off the front, changes the way people think, and yet is still thought of as a grand adventure. People sometimes think of war as a heroic journey, when in reality, it’s simply a fight for one’s life, and against one’s mind. Novels like All Quiet on the Western Front are good, because they teach people that war is not good, or heroic, but simple war. Nothing is gained but temporary peace, while much is lost.