All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
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Book Reviews of All Quiet on the Western Front
Book Review: A Powerful Story of Innocence Lost
Summary: 5 Stars
The untimely story written by German author Erich Maria Remarque (pronounced Remark) in 1928 about his experiences during World War I. It is a frightening, violent, poignant, and moving story of seven German schoolboys who volunteer for the war and realize the horror that comes with it.Our narrator is Paul Baumer, an idealistic youth of 20 who marches along the roads, dives into trenches, and kills the enemy. His friends and comrades in battle are Albert Kropp, Stanislaus Katczinsky, Haie Westhus, Detering, Tjaden, Leer, and Muller. They are the proud, brave few who are sent into battle after battle, eventually bringing them closer to death and destruction. They live through the code of battle - serve your country, protect one another, and live!
The book is filled with many poetic anecdotes which fill the pages with a contrast of beautiful images of peace and the brutal, harsh vision of war. Remarque doesn't spend too much time with mindless description that other writers usually do, but rather he elaborates on a time now lost to us - and to him and his countrymen. It is rare to see author's taking a brief moment to explain what the poplars look like in the summer, or the way the tree sway when the wind blows over the countryside.
We are exposed to the sick and dying side of war, the loss of limbs and disease, and the personal failures of each man. We sympathize with these boys, all of whom are in their 20s (with the exception of Katczinsky, who is in his 40s), these boys who we, as Americans, fought against during this war and eventually World War II. It's that quality that everyone, everywhere, can understand, or hope to understand.
I was impressed with Remarque's style, which made me come to the conclusion that he was also a poet - and a good one at that! I recommend this for everyone of all ages.
Note: ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT was made into a 1930 Best Picture Oscar-winning film by Universal Pictures starring Lew Ayres and Louis Wolheim. It was later made as a TV movie in 1979 with Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine.
Book Review: A review long overdue.
Summary: 5 Stars
Remarque's beautiful and timeless masterpiece perhaps earns the honor of being the first modern war novel. Long gone are the days of the heroic charge with bayonettes of pre-industrial age warfare when a former college professor in a glorious moment of bravery could turn back the enemy with firm resolve and unflinching courage. Remarque sharply snaps the reader into the reality of the 20th century battlefield and reviles it as an ignoble stage of endless and faceless mayhem. He depicts World War I's legacy of prolonged battle in the filthy trenches for months, its soldiers eating rats and picking lice out of their hair, not daring to venture out of their holes for fear of being torn apart by mounted machine gun fire and explosives showers. These atrocities come through in all of their savage, bloody, physically and mentally tortuous reality. The experience permanently changes the protagonist Paul, rendering him unable to reconnect with family and adapt to civilian life back home. Absent is the noble feeling of the prestigious war hero for a local boy turned veteran. The trench becomes all that is real to Paul, his comrades the only source of understanding for his battle-hardened world view. War, Remarque implies, destroys the winners as well.
I was reminded often of this book when watching Samuel Fuller's "The Big Red One" more recently. That film's final line seemed most fitting to Remarque's moral, that the only virtue in war is simply surviving.
The book's writing style is simple and unadorned. The narrative flows with an unsettling smoothness because Remarque treats moments of most dire peril and those of carefree levity with equal detail in disturbingly dispassionate tone. Although at upsetting to conventional good taste concerning the urgency and emotional impact of life and death, this style quickly becomes a powerful medium to convey Paul's personal sense of priority without requiring him to openly comment upon it.
A beautiful tale.
Book Review: Read before you enlist
Summary: 5 Stars
The phrase "war is hell" has been repeated often enough for it to have lost any potency. Used by war protesters and supporters alike, the expression provokes no thought whatsoever. In my opinion, Erich Remarque's greatest achievement with "All Quiet on the Western Front" is to capture the reader's imagination in ways that go beyond empty rhetoric. With morbid detail, he explores the question, "What do we ask of our youth when we send them to war?" In his story, soldiers do not merely risk their lives, they go to war with the GUARANTEE that it will destroy them regardless of whether or not they survive in a physical sense.
The descriptions of mutilation and barbarism are enough to cause one to condemn war outright. But--at the risk of sounding trite--perhaps even more compelling is the way the characters are forced to put aside their humanity in an effort to cope with their own savagery. When the heat of battle subsides, the soldiers do not ponder their actions philosophically, but instead focus on practical matters such as who will inherit their dead friend's boots. This is not to say that they are indifferent to or disregard the loss of human life. Rather, they have become accustomed to it.
We do get glimpses of the pains the characters carry with them, and it evokes a kind of sorrow that does not produce tears but a profound sense of hollowness. For instance, we usually find comfort in the idea of having our whole lives ahead of us, but for the main character, Paul Baumer, life has lost its splendor. As much as he hates the war, he feels more attached to life when dodging machine gun fire than he does spending time on leave with his family. For him, his future after the war is as terrifying as death.
I do not claim to know what it is like to fight in a war, nor do I believe that war is always avoidable and unnecessary. But having read this book, I have a greater appreciation for its significance.
Book Review: War
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is about a guy named Paul and his friends Kropp, Tjaden, and Katczinsky which they called Kat for short. They all joined the German army in WWI where they found out that war isn?t so great. They have many different adventures as the book goes on. They chase gooses around a shed and kill them to eat them because they didn?t have food. The rats in the trenches and the rats that ate their food were bad but I like the way they dealt with them. And I just think the overall view of what the war was like and what this people went through was horrific.I think this is a good war novel because it has a lot of detail and it really gets you into the book right away. I think that this is a better book than The Red Badge of Courage, by: Stephen Crane because you get into it right away and it holds your attention. That?s why I feel that this is a good book. I like the way the author uses all the details except sometimes the details were kind of gross. Like the time when Hemrich, made the two soldiers who wet the bed sleep in the same bunk. That kind of got to me a little. I think my favorite line in this book is when it says the thunder of the guns swells to a single heavy roar and then breaks up again into separate explosions.(pg.59) I like this line because it really tells you how it sounded and it makes people think about what war is really like and makes you think that maybe war isn?t great.
I think that this book really taught me a lot about war and how terrible it was, and after seeing pictures of what some of these soldiers went through and hearing some of their stories it really makes you think about war. And it makes you think that we should never have war because of how many people die and what horrible things happen. Now after reading this book I would recommend it to people if they like war novels. But it is a hard book to put down because it really gets you into it.
Book Review: Disquieting
Summary: 5 Stars
"All Quiet on the Western Front" tells the story of a group of young, idealistic German youth who volunteer for the war on the preachings of their teacher. The story focuses on the narrator, Paul Baumer, as he and his friends come face to face with the horrors of war that the older generation will never experience. Abruptly, thier idealistic notions are shattered as they encounter the newest monstrosities of war - tanks, airplanes, machine guns, gas, etc... that destroy not only lives, but the spirits of those who are "lucky" enough to survive.At times poetic, Erich Maria Remarque's novel doesn't depict war as glorious or noble. His soldiers question their reason for fighting and long for a home that will never be the same after the war. When the main character receives a leave for home, he finds it more damaging than restoring. In the front lines, he can live with what he sees because he doesn't think about it. At home, everyone has the wrong idea of war - how noble their actions are, how easy winning should be - and dwelling on these thoughts, the soldier cannot bear the sights he sees when he returns to war. He cannot handle the killing. Remarque has his narrator speak of the disparity between fighting and life - how after the war, nothing will be the same for this generation of young soldiers, barely out of their teens; their life now is made up of death.
As an avid fan of anything relating to WWI and WWII, this book speaks volumes to just how horrific and unexpectedly devastating WWI was to an entire generation. Knowing the experiences of other soldiers (such as the soldier-poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen) allows Remarque's narrative to resonanate all the more deeply. His novel could very well be the beginning signal of what we've come to call "the lost generation." For indeed, these soldiers are lost.