All Quiet on the Western Front

In the book All Quiet on the Western Front, the author describes the horrors of war to show his revulsion at the cost and brutality of war. This is just one of the quotes which emphasize how awful...

All Quiet on the Western Front is full of gritty, realistic descriptions of the destructive power of war. Paul and his friends are literally surrounded by death and destruction, and the horrors...

In addition, Paul says that the Russian prisoners are pitiful, feeble, and sickly. Many of them have dysentery from the poor living conditions and poor quality of food, and the tails of their...

Upon returning to the front from spending time at home, Paul has clearly established that the war has changed him. This is evident in his assertion that "I am not myself here [at home]. There is a...

The hospitalization and death of Kemmerich serves a number of purposes as Remarque illustrates the inhumanity of war. The first, of course, is the pain that Kemmerich felt as a post-surgical...

Remarque opens his narrative with a startling account of death and food and the realities of the front line. Although he spends a portion of that chapter reviewing how the characters came to be on...

In my opinion, the author has Paul die because that helps him to make his point about the effects of war. As we have seen in Paul's thoughts, he feels that the war will destroy his whole...

I actually think the movie does a pretty good job of showing the relationship between the characters and staying true to the plot of the novel by having Paul Baumer narrate the film like he...

The lines about Tjaden are part of a series of impressions. The boys in the group have been assigned "to guard a village that has been abandoned because it is being shelled too heavily...(they)...

Over the course of the narrative, it becomes clear that the young men begin to see the true horrors of war. The patriotic fervor that adults like Kantorek inject into the young men are radically...

Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is the story of young man’s experience in World War I. The central theme of the story is the destructive power of war on the human identity. The main...

In Paul's astute estimation, the devastation wreaked by the war upon his generation is far more complete than that visited upon the older soldiers. He says that "all the older men are linked up...

In writing a book review of Remarque's work, I would stress how the hope and zeal of the young soldiers become replaced with discouragement and disillusionment. The betrayal and sense of...

The "conventional" answer to this question would probably be yes. The loss of Paul's friend Kat has already destroyed him, so Paul's own physical death is described as a kind of afterthought, a...

This a very interesting question. Greek tragedies were approximately written two thousand five hundred years ago. From this distance alone, one would guess that these tragedies would have nothing...

In Chapter 1 of All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul does not talk about the woods per se, but he does talk about appreciating the outdoors in the meadows. An outdoor latrine has been built for...

In Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front", Chapter 6 there are two major signs that the Germans are starting to lose the war. The first of these is the state of the two sides'...

When you say "they," I assume you are talking about the Russian prisoners who are in the camp near to the training camp that Paul goes to after his leave. These prisoners are being mistreated quite...

In Chapter 8, Paul is away from the front, at a training camp for German soldiers. While there, he has to do all sorts of exercises out in the woods. While he is doing that, he comes to...

Written in present tense, with its stark realism, 10 sections total, the pace of chapter six is relentless; the chapter reads like machine gun fire. Some passages are stand-alones--they have no...

The word “sympathy” comes from the Greek words “sum” (with) and “patheia” (suffering), so it means that one suffers with the character. The word “compassion” derives from the same two words in...

In this scene, Paul is riding in a train car with two bunk beds. His friend Albert Kropp is put on the lower bunk, and Paul takes the top. At first he is amazed, to the point of not wanting to get...

I certainly think that Remarque agrees with this statement. Part of the futility of war presented in the work is a condition in which the soldiers are pawns of something larger. They are not...

I think that being able to examine the shared theme in both works is an element that can be analyzed. Both works depict a clear statement as to the cost of war and what it does to the soldiers who...

An interior monologue is one of the characters basically talking to themselves. The way you relate it to the book is by connecting it to the events of the story. You might take some time to find a...

The extended description of Paul's time in the Catholic hospital serve in developing several thematic elements in the novel. One of the most central is expressed when Paul observes, "A hospital...

Paul changes from being a sensitive young man with poetry in his soul who sees the beauty of poetry in life to being a young man who has lived through the horrors of war. He, and all his fellow...

My impression of the book in general was that it really describes the "fog of war" well. The idea that a soldier returning home is never quite the same, since my father was a soldier long ago in...

In the second chapter of All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul describes the training that the men received under the hand of Corporal Himmelstoss. Himmelstoss has the reputation of being overly...

Although Paul initially believes that he and Albert are fortunate to be in a Catholic hospital because these are "noted for their good treatment and good food," he discovers that the hospital can...

The change in Himmelstoss' character also serves to illustrate the difference between the empty talk of those not actually fighting in the trenches, and the nightmarish reality for those who do....

One change in the boys is evident right away: Paul and his friends are not at all ashamed to defecate in front of each other. During basic training, they were all embarrassed about using general...

Whether Germany is winning or losing is not really the central concern of the soldiers. Remarque shows throughout the book that the soldiers are worried about survival and making the best of a...

Paul responds to the girl on the poster with amazement. They could hardly believe, he says, that "such things still exist." She is beautiful and well-dressed, and Paul notices that she is clean, a...

This is an enormous question, but I'll try to give you some pointers toward some of the main ideas.Paul and his friends truly believed Kantorek when the teacher first gave them the line about being...

One of the advantages of have a limited first-person narrator is the opportunity for the reader to leanr along with the character. The first two chapters are Paul's acclamation to military action...

Food is indeed important in All Quiet on the Western Front. Kat, one of the central figures of the novel, is portrayed in almost heroic terms, not because he is a great warrior, but because he has...

In Chapter Four of All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul describes the battle front as a "mysterious whirlpool." The soldier walks along without thinking, suddenly he falls to the earth as a...

This novel is the story of Paul Baumer, a 19 year old German boy, living during WWI. Paul is fresh out of school, and he and his friends decide to volunteer for the army. They believe the slogans...

In Chapter 11, the German forces are at the end of their endurance, and a number of the men meet their end. Detering, who had always "kept himself to himself," sees a cherry tree in a garden. The...

The two sides in battle each settle into trenches and dugouts on the open ground facing each other. Opposing trenches, which are usually several hundred yards apart, are separated by "middle...

In Chapter 7, Paul decides to lie to Kemmerick's mother because he does not think that she needs to suffer through the truth. Paul reasons that Kemmerick is dead anyway and his mother's knowing...

The original question had to be edited down. I think that Paul is correct in much of his assertions regarding how the war has ruined those who survive. I think that a strong case can be made that...