All Quiet on the Western Front

My interpretation of the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque:

All Quiet on the Western Front tells about the atrocities of World War I through the viewpoint of Paul Bäumer. Young, untrained soldiers, just like Paul, are put on the front lines without proper training or understanding of what they are fighting for. The youth of soldiers younger than 20 is being taken away. Paul reflects on memories of childhood and before the war: 

“To-day we would pass through the scenes of youth like travelers. We are burnt up by hard facts; like tradesmen we understand distinctions, and like butchers, necessities. We are no longer untroubled – we are indifferent. We might exist there; but should we really live there? We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial – I believe we are lost” (Remarque, p. 122).

Throughout the novel, Paul reflects on this feeling of being lost in the war. The war has stolen who the soldiers were, and they wouldn’t recognize who they once were. As the novel progresses, we see that Paul and his comrades are becoming hardened and inhumane, looking at their enemies as savages and killing without question. They act instinctively as the army has trained them. Paul begins to see that these people whom they are told are the enemy are just the same as Paul and his comrades. Why, then, are they fighting this war? How do they become so numb as to kill the opponent who could easily be mistaken for one of their own? They are lost and fighting without a cause. Even for Paul, who cherishes his friendships, becomes hardened when he is separated from his good friend, Albert: “A man gets used to that kind of thing in the army” (Remarque, p. 269).

The soldiers are surrounded by hunger, illness, and death at increasing rates. There is not enough medical care to save the majority of people. They are bringing in anyone to take part in this war only to get killed the moment they step on the front. Hundreds of thousands are wounded and dead: “A hospital alone shows what war is” (Remarque, p. 263). Increasingly, Paul sees the despair of the war and the situation. Hope is lost, and everyone is broken. Everything has been ripped away from these soldiers and their families. They were lost as soon as they enlisted.

Only at the end is grim hope revealed: “His face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come” (Remarque, p. 296). Finally, when the end has come, either through death or the end of the war, the people can start to feel some sort of relief and comfort. They escape the suffering of hunger and illness, the separation from loved ones, the inhumanity they have developed toward others and felt themselves, and the overall lack of control the soldiers face.

There has been a tour designed along the Western Front to see the Allied battles along the front as well as the devastation of trench warfare. It seems to me that there would be conflict in re-creating one of the most devastating wars of all time as a tourist attraction.

Resources:

Remarque, E.M. (1958). All Quiet on the Western Front. Ballantine Books, New York.

http://marineparentsinc.com/store/shop/item.aspx?itemid=3947

http://www.albatrosstours.com.au/anzac-tours/all-quiet-western-front