Maybe there would be no more wars if everyone who wants to be a soldier, and every politician who wants to wage war, was forced to read All Quiet on the Western Front. Told from the viewpoint of a young man snatched from academic life into the jaws of World War I, Eric Remarque’s classic is a ruthlessly realistic picture of military conflict as only a soldier could describe it.
The story centers mainly around the experiences of twenty-year-old Paul Bäumer and three of his German comrades. Boys who
have never seen death suddenly find themselves drowning in it as the stalemate of trench warfare rages on. Appropriately, one battle takes place in a cemetery. Bombshells and bullets rip the lives from people they have never met, while others die slowly from painful injuries and infections as they crouch down in filthy water and bitter cold. Trench rats eat their food, the noise of shelling drives them to madness, and memories of home lose their meaning in the shadow of impending death.
Simple pleasures like a hot meal, a cigarette, or a warm place to sleep are all the soldiers can hope for. A few weeks’ leave time gives Paul little comfort. The people back home, lacking experience in war, smother him with platitudes until he prefers the company of his army brothers. Back at the front, Paul spends hours in a trench with a man he has mortally wounded, wishing he could give back the years of which he has robbed his victim’s family.
Conditions reduce the soldiers’ reasoning to simplicities. They argue about why they must fight someone they aren’t mad at. “I see people being driven against one another, and silently, uncomprehendingly, foolishly, obediently and innocently killing one another,” Paul says. “I see the best brains in the world inventing weapons and words to make the whole process that much more sophisticated and long-lasting . . . Our knowledge of life is limited to death.”
Only a soldier could write a book like this. That’s why All Quiet on the Western Front deserves its status as a description of humanity at its worst. Despite some offensive language and graphic descriptions of suffering, I award Eric Remarque’s novel a five-star rating.
Featured by Chevron Ross
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