All Quiet on the Western Front

For the film, see All Quiet on the Western Front (film).

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I, about the horrors of that war and also the deep detachment from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front. The book was first published in German as Im Westen nichts Neues in January 1929. It sold 2.5 million copies in twenty-five languages in its first eighteen months in print. In 1930 the book was turned into an Oscar-winning movie of the same name, directed by Lewis Milestone.

Separately, the phrase "all quiet on the western front" later became popular slang for a lack of action (in reference to the Phony War in World War II's Western Front).

Plot summary

The story follows the experiences of Paul Bäumer: a soldier who joined the German army shortly after the start of the war. He arrives on the western front with his friends (Tjaden, Müller, and a number of other characters) and meets Stanislaus Katczinsky, known as Kat. Kat soon becomes Paul's mentor and teaches him about the realities of war. Paul and Kat swiftly became almost brothers, bonded by the hardships of the war.

Paul and his friends have to endure day after day of non-stop bombardment. Eventually it all becomes clear to him: war is entirely pointless. All his friends say that they are fighting the war for a few persons whom they have never met and most likely never will. They are the only people that can gain anything from this war, not Paul and his friends.

The book focuses not on heroic stories of bravery as do so many other war stories, but rather gives a realistic view of the hell in which the soldiers found themselves. The monotony, the constant artillery fire, the struggle to find food, and the overarching role of chance in the lives and deaths of the soldiers, all are described in detail. Remarque often refers to the living soldiers as old and dead, emotionally depleted and hardened. "We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing from ourselves, from our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces."

Paul receives a period of leave from the army, and returns home temporarily. He finds it difficult to understand people at home anymore. While all the soldiers at the front wish for nothing more than peace, knowing that they are losing the war, people back home talk about marching on Paris. He is also indifferent to the significance of any of the battles. Battles have no names. Rather, one after another they offer a chance for him to be killed. Battle seems to be waged only to gain pitifully small pieces of land.

The day Paul is killed was otherwise militarily uneventful, with the German army dispatches merely noting Im Westen nichts Neues - "All Quiet on the Western Front" in the original, evocative translation (by A. W. Wheen in 1929). However, a literal translation reveals a different kind of irony - the dispatches on the day of Paul's death read "In the west nothing new", signifying that Paul's death - being only one among thousands - is insignificant.

Major themes

There are many central themes in the book. Among them is that war is total nonsense. For example, none of the characters have ever seen a Frenchman before the war, much less have reason to kill them, but that is now what they are doing. Some of the soldiers ponder how the war was started, what is it for, and who it benefits. Nobody has any answers. There are also other themes that include: comradeship/friendship, the humanity of the "enemy", the hypocrisy of authority figures, loss of hope for the future, animal instincts or how war reduces men to animals and many others such as loss of innocence.

The horror of war

The main theme in All Quiet on the Western Front is the brutality of war. The archetypical war novel romanticizes war and extolls the heroes of the story, however this book shows a vivid, realistic, and horrible portrait of war. World War I saw the development of many new horrible innovations such as poison gas, machine guns, airplanes and tanks; all of which made killing easier and even more impersonal. The novel shows these weapons being used for butchery on a grand scale; for instance, battles lasting for four months.

Paul describes the horrors of war throughout the book. The trenches and fortifications are shelled continually, poison gas blankets the battlefield, snipers shoot at anyone with their head above ground. Paul even sees the horrible results from the trench mortars which literally blows men out of their clothes. Finally, the French troops come and the German lines disintegrate. Vivid descriptions are presented throughout the book. Nothing short of being there could show the sheer numbers of dead and wounded every day in the war.

Effect on soldiers

Another of the central themes is how war completely ruins soldiers. Physically, they are in constant danger of being shot and bombed. The never-ending attacks and counter-attacks destroy their nerves. They live in unending fear and in atrocious conditions: inhabiting muddy earthen dug-outs infested with rats, alongside rotting corpses, having no food or water for days on end. They are forced to deal with the emotional shock of watching the violent deaths of their friends. If war does not actually kill the soldiers fighting it, the physical and mental anguish of war destroys them. Paul finds much to his horror when he returns home that he can no longer feel joy, even in simple acts of pleasure like reading. The soldiers metaphorically change from humans into animals due to the constant subconscious dehumanization from their surroundings and instincts.

Nature

The landscape on the front is barren, but when Paul goes on leave, he sees nature. Nature represents escape, it is beautiful and pure. When traveling by train, Paul describes the beautiful mountains and plains of Germany. He wonders why this nature is being destroyed on the front; he wants to preserve this beauty, not destroy it. Also, when he sees the French countryside, he sees it is not different from the German countryside, why should he destroy this either? The author uses nature as a tool to achieve a change in the tone of his writing to a more reflective and peaceful one, in contrast to the rest of the book.

Paul and his comrades from the trenches cross a river to get together with some young French women who live in a farmhouse away from the front. For a short period of time, the soldiers are taken away from the war, the trenches, and the destruction and death that has been part of their lives for many months.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Film

In 1930, an American film of the novel was made, directed by Lewis Milestone. The screenplay was by Maxwell Anderson, George Abbott, Del Andrews, C. Gardner Sullivan, with uncredited work by Walter Anthony and Milestone. It stars Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander.

The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1930 for its producer Carl Laemmle Jr., and an Academy Award for Directing for Lewis Milestone. It was the first all-talking non-musical film to win the Best Picture Oscar. It also received two further nominations: Best Cinematography, for Arthur Edeson, and Best Writing Achievement for Abbott, Anderson and Andrews.

TV film

In 1979, the film was remade for television by Delbert Mann, starring Richard Thomas of The Waltons as Paul Baumer. The remake is generally considered less successful than the original and received little acclaim.

Stage

A 2 hour stage adaptation by Robin Kingsland was at the Nottingham Playhouse 11th to 25th February 2006 ^*.

Sequel

The Road Back, another book written by Erich Maria Remarque, is about a different group of soldiers trying to cope with postwar Germany: dealing with the defeated German society after the war, trying to go to school, and trying to live a normal life.

The book was banned during Nazi rule, the film's content was watered down to avoid a German boycott, and Remarque was stripped of his German citizenship in 1938.

External links

Teacher's Guide at Random House
CliffsNotes

1929 novels | Germany novels | World War I novels

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