Questions and Answers for All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front
In All Quiet on the Western Front, what are the "iron youth"?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are examples of similies and metaphors in Chapter 4 of Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western...
Like many talented writers, Erich Maria Remarque deliberately uses similes and metaphors in his novel All Quiet on the Western Front. These figures of speech help make the novel more vivid and...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are three quotes from Chapter 6 of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and why they are...
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What page is the following quote on? “We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are...
The quote is in Chapter 5, from Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. The page number will depend on your edition of the book. In the Penguin Random House edition, that particular...
All Quiet on the Western Front
Why did the students join the army in All Quiet on the Western Front?
Most of the students at Paul's school join the army in response to the zeal and patriotic enthusiasm surrounding the whole matter. This was led in no small part by Kantorek, the boys' teacher. The...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are examples of literary devices in Chapter 8 and 9 in All Quiet on the Western Front?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What does the chapter 3 quote, "Give 'em all the same grub...done in a day," mean?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are three quotes from Chapter 4 of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and why they are...
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
significance of quote “We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and...
They are like children because war has destroyed the foundation upon which they understood their lives. It's like starting over again, learning to perceive and understand the world again with a new...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are some examples of friendship in All Quiet on the Western Front?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
Looking for quotes on disconnectedness, dehumanization, alienation, and dislocation in chapter 7.
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What is ironic, or dramatically unexpected, about the ending of All Quiet on the Western Front?
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
Where is personification in All Quiet on the Western Front?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are three quotes from Chapter 5 of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and why they are...
In Chapter 5, Paul and his comrades discuss aspects of life from the perspective of the western front. Things here are very different from how they were during their training. The avenues of...
All Quiet on the Western Front
According to Kat in All Quiet on the Western Front, why does power corrupt?
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"....
All Quiet on the Western Front
What does the graveyard scene say about the value of human life in All Quiet on the Western Front? This question is...
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What happened to Kemmerich's boots and how do the doctors react to his condition?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
"I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality...
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
In All Quiet on the Western Front, what are some examples of syntax, diction, and tone?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are three quotes from Chapter 2 of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and why they are...
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are three quotes from Chapter 3 of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and why they are...
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....
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are Paul’s experiences in the hospital in Chapter 10 of All Quiet on the Western Front?
After Paul's arm is wounded and his leg broken, he is taken to the hospital. There the doctors are quick to amputate rather than try to save limbs, but after one doctor probes around Paul's wounded...
All Quiet on the Western Front
In All Quiet on the Western Front, what symbolism does the earth hold for the soldier?
The men in All Quiet on the Western Front are in the middle of a deadly and destructive war. War during this time period was quite literally in the earth itself, and therefore, the earth was highly...
All Quiet on the Western Front
In Chapter 4 of Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, one paragraph begins as follows: "Beside...
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What does Kropp mean when he says of himself and his classmates, "The war has ruined us for everything"? in All Quiet...
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
From Chapter 2 in All Quiet on the Western Front, why does Paul refer to his generation as a "waste land"?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
In All Quiet on the Western Front, how does Mittelstaedt taunt and humiliate Kantorek and is it justified?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are some literary devices used in chapter 1 of All Quiet on the Western Front and what are the author's...
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are some of the literary devices used in Chapter 4 of Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front?
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:...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are examples of metaphors and similes in chapter 3 in 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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What is the significance of the following quotation from Chapter 3 of Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the...
In Chapter 3 of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front, a common soldier nick-named “Kat” – a favorite of the other men because he finds food and shares it with them –...
All Quiet on the Western Front
How was Himmelstoss received when he arrived at the front?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
How does Paul die?
All we know about the circumstances of Paul's death is that he was killed on the front lines on an otherwise quiet day. His death was not part of a big battle or heroic action. Since the book is...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are examples of similes and metaphors in All Quiet on the Western Front?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
Descriptions of nature are evident throughout All Quiet on the Western Front. Why does the author present these images?
In Erich Maria Remarque's novel, images of Nature, the "lost world of beauty," represent the loss of innocence and peace of the "Iron Youth" as Kantorek alludes to the young German soldiers. Often...
All Quiet on the Western Front
Paraphrase of Paul's daydream in Chapter 6? In chapter 6, Paul daydreams about his home. What specific things does 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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front “I breathe deeply and say over to myself: "You are at home; you are at home." But a...
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,...
All Quiet on the Western Front
How did Haie Westhus die?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
Why does Paul refuse to be chloroformed after his injury in All Quiet on the Western Front?
Paul refuses to be "put under" because he fears that the surgeon will amputate his injured leg. In Chapter 10 of All Quiet on the Western Front, after having three weeks of good food and relaxation...
All Quiet on the Western Front
From which chapter of All Quiet on the Western Front is this quote and what is its significance? “ My heart beats...
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
In chapter 12 of All Quiet on the Western Front, explain the meaning of the title, especially as it relates to Paul.
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
When Paul reflects on his childhood experiences in chapter #6, do these memories awaken happy feelings or sorrowful...
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
In Chapter 6 of All Quiet on the Western Front, what two qualities are part of Paul's memories of the old poplars?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What incidents and metaphor in chapter 11 of All Quiet on the Western Front show that the men's nerves are frayed?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are examples of three different types of literary devices in chapters 10, 11, and 12 of All Quiet on the Western...
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
Why do Paul and Kropp scoff at the term Kantorek uses for his former students in All Quiet on the Western Front?
Schoolmaster Kantorek refers to his former students as "the Iron Youth". Paul Baumer and Albert Kropp scoff at the term because it is so ironic. Kantorek speaks of them as if they are glorious...
All Quiet on the Western Front
How many men die in the first battle of All Quiet on the Western Front (the 1930 film)? How do you know?
This first battle depicted in the film was revolutionary for its time. Never before had the horrors of battle been portrayed so realistically on screen. It is unclear what the total number of...
All Quiet on the Western Front
What are some of the literary devices used in chapter 11 of All Quiet on the Western Front?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
In All Quiet on the Western Front, why did the students join the army?
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...
All Quiet on the Western Front
In All Quiet on the Western Front, why did the boys enlist in the army?
In All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul suggests that social pressure was one of the reasons the boys enlisted in the army. Paul identifies one potential reason why the boys enlisted in the book's...
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