All Quiet on the Western Front

Similes and metaphors are two kinds of comparisons; both are made between unlike things for effect. A simile uses “like” or “as,” while a metaphor is a direct comparison. Chapter 3 is concerned...

Personification is figurative language related to metaphor. Authors use this literary tool as a method of describing something to make it more easily understood, to emphasize a particular point, or...

The "iron youth" is the manner through which the war is presented to young people in Germany. Part of what makes All Quiet on the Western Front such a timeless read is that it probes into why wars...

Kropp and his comrades have been deeply traumatized by their experiences of war. So much so that they can't seen any meaningful future for themselves once they've eventually returned to civilian...

In Chapter 2, the author describes his experiences in boot camp. He talks about how the cold reality of what the boys are about to be forced to undertake contrasts with the lofty impressions of war...

I think that what can be done here is to express how Paul's emotional experience can be universally appreciated. Certainly, few could say that they "get" what Paul is talking about. His...

Kat's referring to the unthinking deference of German soldiers and civilians alike to the generals. They're all blindly going along with what the generals are doing instead of questioning whether...

The people who make declarations of war are never the people who have to do the dirty work of fighting it. Kat's ironic statement, "Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay and the war...

Caught in a bloody and seemingly unending offensive after waiting in anticipation and boredom for many days, Paul describes the state of being that characterizes the fighting man in battle...

The most gripping depiction of the devastating effects of technology in World War I, in either film version of All Quiet on the Western Front, is the gas attack, which Paul describes as the "most...

Remarque's intentions are to record the horrors of war and the damage to the spirit of the individual. Remarque's novel moves from an objective style to one marked more by impressionistic images...

Literary devices such as simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia, and metonymy help create the fog of war in Chapters 8 and 9. A literary device can be almost anything that is used to describe and add...

Paul articulates the condition of young men sent to the front in World War I. Paul sees his generation, a young one, as comprising the vast majority of soldiers sent towards military action in the...

On the first page of chapter 15, in the first paragraph, Remarque uses the simile, "war is a cause of death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentery." This simile suggests that...

In Chapter 4, the soldiers move to the front. Paul encapsulates the the horror of the situation in the terse statement, "...we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human...

Himmelstoss is not well-received upon coming to the front in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. Prior to his arrival, Himmelstoss had been a severe and exacting leader while he was the men's...

This quote is an example of tremendous sarcasm. If we look at the context of the quote, we can see how this operates. The paragraph just before Kat says this quote to the narrator, the soldiers are...

Remarque's passionately anti-war novel about the senseless slaughter of World War I and the young men who were its victims is punctuated with lyrical, poetic language, some of it almost...

The irony at the end of All Quiet on the Western Front is that Paul, the main character and narrator of the book, is killed right before the end of the war. The title of the book is derived from...

All Quiet on the Western Front is told in 1st person point of view and uses present tense verbs. The narrator is Paul Baumer. This means that the entire story is told through his eyes. The point...

Dehumanization results from the soldiers' lack of hand-to-hand combat. The shell warfare creates a bizarre non-entity rather than an enemy soldier. Because Paul and his fellow soldiers strive to...

Paul is surprised at the intensity of Kemmerich's mother's grief because his own senses have been completely dulled by his experiences in the war. He has seen killing, in all its horrifying...

Early in Chapter 4 of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator describes the behavior of a young soldier – a “new recruit” – who has joined more experienced men...

The most famous film version of All Quiet on the Western Front is the 1930 adaptation directed by Lewis Milestone. The movie is relatively faithful to the novel, even retaining its unhappy ending...

I don't have a copy of the book in front of me, so I can't give you any exact quotes - but I did teach this book a number of times, so I'll try to point you in the right direction. External...

There are many reasons, and unfortunately for the boys, most of them turned out to be false and empty. Considering their young age, perhaps the most tragic is the much-quoted influence of their...

This passage from Chapter 8 of All Quiet on the Western Front points to Paul Baumer's attempts to bring some meaning to the senselessness of war. Having returned from a furlough during which he...

The original question had to be edited down. I would suggest that the primary significance of the daydream is to bring to light how far off reality is from it. Paul's daydream brings to light the...

In Chapter 3, the boys are sent to the field, and begin to learn more about war, authority, and power within the ranks. Kropp, who is "a thinker," has a theory about how wars should be conducted....

Paul's room represents to him the "Life of (his) Youth." When he comes home on leave, he sits in his room, waiting for his old life "who are care-free, beautiful," to take him up again, but...

In chapter 6, Paul remembers the line of old poplar trees in the meadow behind the town, and how the children, including himself, used to love them. The children would sit beneath the trees and...

Paul Baumer is part of a lost generation. Young and idealistic, Paul marches off to a dehumanizing war of battles in which the soldiers cannot even see their enemy. Terrorized by shell warfare,...

Paul has a difficult time remembering the past because of the contrast between the calm in the memories and the chaos of war. On the front, there is always noise. In their memories only, there is...

Haie Westhus dies of an injury to his lung that he sustained in the trenches. After being wounded in the back during battle by some shrapnel or pieces of weaponry, Haie endures significant pain...

Kat blames the tendency of power to corrupt on man's fallen nature. He says, "In himself man is essentially a beast, only he butters it over like a slice of bread with a little decorum"....

In Chapter 7 of All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul's classmate Mittelstaedt torments their former schoolmaster Kantorek. Kantorek has enlisted as one of the reserve soldiers, and he proves that...

In his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque uses a wide variety of literary devices and figures of speech. Consider, for example, the following paragraph, chosen at random:...

Paul is suggesting that the experiences of war have helped to make children represent some of the worst aspects of adults. The bitterness and resentment that have come to replace what was once...

The meaning of the title, in general and specifically with regard to Paul, can be interpreted in different ways, but the overriding concept is one of the senseless nature of war, of life, and of...

By the end of Chapter 11 of All Quiet on the Western Front, which takes place in the summer of 1918, it is clear that the German army is losing the war. The men are becoming nervous and losing...

Paul thinks that the best thing to come out of the war is the development of comradeship or esprit de corps within the soldier ranks. We did not break down, but adapted ourselves; our twenty years,...

Friendship is probably the biggest theme in All Quiet on the Western Front. There are numerous examples of friendship being of paramount importance in the life of a soldier. In chapter five, Paul...

In Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, the author develops his central themes of alienation, dehumanization, and disconnectedness by using several literary devices, including...

When we first meet Kemmerich in the opening chapters of All Quiet on the Western Front he is suffering with an amputated leg in an army field hospital. When his friends, including our narrator...

Albert and I find a mahogany bed which can be taken to pieces with a sky of blue silk and a lace coverlet. We sweat like monkeys moving it in, but a man cannot let a thing like that slip, and it...

In the graveyard scene, human life before and after death are juxtaposed, and, with chilling clarity, it is shown that there is very little distance between the two. Paul's regiment is caught in a...