Jan 4, 2010

All Quiet on the Western Front | Social Concerns

In its "Preface," Erich Remarque writes that the novel will "simply try to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were still destroyed by the war," a statement that underscores the novel's social concern: the effect that World War I will have on people and the world. Protagonist-narrator Paul Baumer traces war's effects on him and his classmates who patriotically enlisted en masse to fight for Germany, their Fatherland. Once into battle, however, they lose their patriotic illusions as well as their limbs, eyes, and even lives. From their...