Ensnared

Ensnared

Saif Salamah

Paul Baumer and his comrades were just boys and had so much to live for. Not even 20 years old, societal pressure represented by their schoolmaster Kantorek, virtually forced them into enlisting in imperial Germany’s army. Although they “were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world” (88), they only learned how horrific war was subsequent to joining the army. What these boys went through at such a young age, no human should ever experience in their lifetime. In “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque, the scarcity of happiness that Paul and his comrades experience on the “threshold of life” (20), emphasizes the monstrosity of war. Paul has to disconnect with his emotions to cope with the devastations of the war. Around him his friends are demising yet, Paul does not even think about it. He can’t think about it because he wouldn’t be able to comprehend what is happening to himself.

The soldiers have been ensnared by society. Society’s glorification of war led the youthful veterans to believe that they would be heroes, and that it was an honor to defend and protect their country. They soon realize there is nothing heroic or honorable about war at all. They have been trapped in their new lives and they can never go back. Their once bright futures are gone. When asked, the soldiers are clueless about where they will end up after the war if they survive. They have nowhere to go, and they don’t fit in society. All the basic skills a boy their age has, they haven’t been taught. All they know is death. Paul doesn’t even bother to learn the names of the new recruits, as they come and go so quickly. Instead, throughout the story, he labels them as, “one of the recruits”. All Paul’s close friends are dying around him and he has not been mentally prepared for this.

Paul says, “we march up moody or good-tempered soldiers” (56) indicating that their emotions are irrelevant; all that matters is survival. Even home seems foreign to them and they have completely lost their prior life. Not even his family can empathize with him, as they will never be able to perceive the horrors of warfare. Society has betrayed them and they will never be able to fit in anymore. Boys who were so young and had recently “just shaved for the first time” (21) were deceived and sacrificed like pawns in a game of chess.  The epilogue declares “a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped the shells, were destroyed by the war.” Even if they do manage to physically survive the war, they have already died.

Personally, after reading this book, I realize I have been desensitized to the horrors of warfare. News articles on social media are so incessant that we don’t even take the time to consider what actually happens. We rarely ever collectively ‘care’ about current on going events, especially in the Middle East where they are so frequent. Everyday, there is more and more news about warfare all over the world. Although we hear about this news every single day, we never really understand how this affects people emotionally and mentally.

Throughout the story, Paul’s thought process is revealed to the audience and we can truly understand how he has been impacted by the war. What’s worse, he can’t even talk about it with anyone, even the people participating in the war with him. When one of their comrades dies in the beginning of the novel, they just smoke and refrain from talking about it, as if it never actually happened. Tragically, at the end of the story, Remarque reveals to the audience that Paul has died, and when they turned him over they see his face had an “expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come” (296). This epitomizes how gravely war affects the people involved.

The pursuit of Happiness in a hopeless place.

The Pursuit of Happiness in a hopeless place.

By Mason                             

The first thought that came to me right after finishing this book was a question was most definitely what was the reason for all of this? Happiness is a necessary emotion to live a healthy lifestyle, but are soldiers ever living a healthy lifestyle or even getting the necessary means of survival supplied to them like the problem of low Food they have, and have ever seen Paul happy in the book? Well Paul is a simple, kindhearted, sensitive, young man at least he was until he joined into the war, he describes himself as a poetry writer and someone who enjoys spending time with love ones he directly connects this with happiness and as the book progresses you start to see a HUGE amount of disassociation from those passions and feelings he once had before. The war caused him to not only change his views on what he thought about happiness it caused him to basically push down all of his emotions to keep his sanity and survive during the war, in the book you can see he talks about animal instinct a ton this directly relates to him pushing down his emotions because just like an animal at that time instinct is the only thing that can save you. After the war lets up and they go back to the barracks and have some free time you can see that Paul really enjoys what he used to take for granted ever so much, like hanging out with dear friends and having a one on one emotional conversation we can see he really enjoys this when he goes to hang out with Kat when they stole the geese to cook up. Another thing he enjoys is going back home when he isn't bombarded with questions about "how is the war?" and glorified as a trophy by his Father, which is another than that really bothers him on how the war isn't for their happiness its more for societies happiness. This is portrayed by Paul always explaining on how it would be a pleasure to see the leaders of the countries fight it out and have them watch and sit on their butts all day, he is very annoyed with fighting for something he doesn't necessarily believe in and that really brings him down. To conclude the only happiness Paul has ever experienced DURING the war was his final moments in his life after that it was some time of serenity and explainable calmness that overwhelmed everyone the last bullet the last death you could say it was All quiet on the western front after that.

Paul Bäumer, who?

In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, there is a continual theme of loss that narrator Paul Bäumer and his fellow soldiers experience during World War I. The public’s idea of Paul’s generation being the “iron youth” is harshly contradicted by the intense loss that the young men actually experience while fighting the war. In the early 1900s even up through to today, society continues to glorify war; but Paul’s first hand account challenges this continuous glorification. Today’s high school students are told throughout their academic career that they must prepare for the future, for college and for a job. This would’ve been the same direction Paul and his friends would have taken, if not for the war. The teenage years and early 20s are supposed to be used for finding yourself, but Paul and his friends will now never get that opportunity. Once the men have made it to the front, there is a loss of identity, of who they truly are. Paul not only doubts who he is while on leave, but a traumatizing event with a French soldier leaves him questioning who he is meant to be. The war causes a great loss of identity, as soldiers no longer know who they were before the war, and are not sure of who/what they should be coming out of the war. The war forces young men like Paul to question who they were, who they are, and who they can be.

The war has taken everything that these young men had once valued and held dear in their former lives. Paul describes the war as having “swept us away” (20). This demonstrates the way that the younger men feel about the war. The idea is that the war is physically pulling these men away from their prior lives. There’s a moment where Paul and his friends are discussing what they want to do when peacetime finally comes, but Paul hints at the idea that things could not be the same as they once were; to which Albert Kropp adds “war has ruined us for everything” (87). This is a straightforward example of the soldiers attitudes towards the war. These young men see it as something that has taken everything from them, their past, and their present. “Ruined for everything” is incredibly impactful because it embodies a complete lack of hope for the future. The war has changed and scarred these young men so much that they will never be able to fully readapt, as this quote explains. That chance at life has been ruined for them because of the war.

Along with the loss of potential opportunity, the war has stolen these young men’s sense of self, and identity. When Paul is granted leave and is allowed to return home, he describes his feelings of uneasiness and how the books he had once treasured, he no longer found inspiring. “A terrible feeling of foreignness suddenly rises up in me”(172), Paul describes, when he silently urges his books to thrill him once again. But now his books are no longer enticing, and this foreignness has made its way into him, because these books are no longer a part of who Paul is. The teenagers of today have books thrown at them throughout their school experience, with most students eager to learn, as Paul once was. But after being at the front, to Paul, these books are only “words-- they do not reach [him]” (173). This lack of interest in what he once found dear, shows the deterioration of his former self.

A pivotal point in All Quiet on the Western Front, is the moment between Paul and the French soldier, Gerard Duval. It’s significant because it’s the only first hand account the reader gets of Paul personally taking a life, but also the internal conflict that Paul deals with in the aftermath shows his state of mental disarray and also how guilt changes the way Paul views himself.  Paul has this moment of what almost seems like dissociation, “I have killed the printer, Gerard Duval. I must be a printer” (225), this quote suggests that Paul, under an immense amount of guilt and in shock, feels like he must become the man he has killed. Earlier, Paul speaks to the dead man’s body, saying “I will help her, and your parents too, and your child” (224) making a promise to this corpse that Paul will take his place in a way, this idea is then solidified when Paul begins to think that he must become a printer. This is a totally skewed perception that Paul has of himself in this moment. He believed that he must fill that spot that he had taken away by killing the French soldier. In his mind, Paul could no longer be Paul Bäumer, and instead must become Gerard Duval, and take the place of the man he had taken away. This is a huge identity conflict, as Paul is so unsure of what he is to become after committing these horrible acts. In this moment, Paul believes that he must become what he has destroyed.

The truth behind the war is that these young men face an incredibly deep loss of not only the material things around them, not only the lives of other people, but also the loss of their own self identities. Paul and his friends are viewed as strong and brave for going off to war, to society it was the heroic thing to do. However, in reality, war stripped these young men of everything they had, and everything they had previously believed they were. The men who fought World War I were not indestructible. The war tore them apart from the inside out, breaking down a man's perception of himself. If a person is not sure of who they are, they cannot be sure of anything. World War I took away everything from the men who fought it; ripped away their future opportunities and their chances to be apart of normal society, wiped out their former lives, and decimated their self perceptions.

Image thanks to wikimediacommons

Identity theft abdulla nuaimi (summative blog)

I have just recently finished reading the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front.” It is a well written war novel written by Erich Maria Remarque. Remarque has written this novel in a first person perspective which makes it really interesting too know what Paul Baumer, the main character, is feeling throughout the novel. Knowing what a soldier during this war is going through makes it more interesting to read. Lots of changes are experienced in this war. An example would be the view’s Paul has on war. At first he believed it would be a honor to be defending his country and defeating the enemy.

As the war moved on Paul’s views on war changed completely. Even Paul’s fellow comrade, Albert Kropp, says "The war has ruined us for everything." (87) As the book came to an end Paul’s views on the war would change completely. Paul is just 19 years old when he enters the war. He enters the war right after he finishes school. Many people would be setting goals for themselves in life after school but Paul and his friends have to go to war. They definitely aren’t ready for the war mentally and physically. As the war went on Paul and his fellow comrades have to change their personalities because they need to have a different attitude to survive this war. They need to be strong and let deaths be deaths, and move on.

It is easier to say than to do. The soldiers couldn’t see any future for themselves. They were robbed of their identities. No one remember their life before the war. Everything from when they were born to when they joined the war was forgotten. What they had learnt in school didn’t matter anymore. The enemy didn’t ask for the capital of Prussia before killing them. They realized that education was worthless and if they had to fight the war they should have been taught to “light a cigarette in a storm of rain” or “make a fire with wet wood” (chapter 5). They get angry when they think that war wasn’t a choice for them. They were forced to join the war and if they didn’t they would be seen as spineless and worthless cowards.

The soldiers were misguided. They were made to think that war is glorious. They went to the front and realized that all soldiers face the same problems. They do not know why they fight. They are made to kill other men of the same age, only because they come from a different country. Paul and his friends realize that the enemy isn’t actually evil. It is only because the officials wanted the war. They realize that war is not productive and it only leads to destruction.

In German society everyone thought that war was glorious. They didn’t know that the soldiers were treated like dogs and died because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. They didn't know the condition of the trenches. The people in Germany thought that their kids were having a fun time when they were actually fighting for their lives. I find the attitude of the society disgusting. They forced their kids to die because of respect. They made them lose their identities, love, and their lives.

All Gloomy on The Western Front (Summative Blog)

  

Since there are so many different types of culture and society in the world, not everyone’s happiness is going to be the same. By experiencing different cultures and societies around the world and in different events in our lives, this helps us understand what happiness is all about. The book “ All Quiet on the Western Front”, made that idiosyncratic difference on the context of how a certain society or culture could have such an effect to a happiness of an individual.   Throughout the years in war, there has been changes in Paul’s life. From the day Paul left for war until he came back to his hometown, he could identify how different life has become.

(“I find I do not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world”) pg 168’

 It was not the same for Paul anymore as it seemed like it was a foreign place coming back to his old town.  The place he left was not the same place he came back just like the life he had was not there anymore. War has changed him. He is no longer the same man.

During the war, Paul’s concept of happiness dramatically changed. Food and rest has become the top source of happiness as a soldier. “ Thus momentarily we have the two things …... matter of habit-event the front line”(138). Such things one never thought could give so much happiness back in the time before he became a soldier.

As a soldier, Paul adapted to a new way of life together with other soldiers. He had to adapt to different way of living. It was waking up everyday knowing that any day could be the day you will most likely die. It was living in constant fear. It was a way of life of bare necessities. Life in war was unstable in a way that anything could happen at any moment. You could lose your best friend in a matter of seconds as well as your life, too. A soldier’s life is filled with uncertainties and full of surprises. Yet despite all the horrors of war, Paul managed to find goodness in war. He developed bonding among his comrades. They found bits and pieces of happiness in their togetherness. One incident in the war was when Paul and his friend, Kat enjoyed moments of happiness when they caught a goose and roasted it. “We sit opposite on another, …… with one another than even lovers have”(94)

 Such simple things bring joy to an individual in the middle of a terrible event. In the company of other soldiers, Paul became part of a new society and he belonged to war.

Learning from the book, I have realized that war isn’t that glorifying as I thought it was. I used to think that being a soldier is about fighting for your motherland. Naturally, this is not a bad thing at all since you are defending your own country. Little did I know that it is not just about fighting for your own country but it is also fighting for your own life, to survive.

 It can go down to how important it is to own a good pair of boots just to survive.

Day in and day out, Paul has been exposed to so much casualties in war that it has become a sort of normality. He is used to seeing dead bodies, ruins and mess. He has gotten used to it. In fact, going to the trenches has become a routine, just like a way of life. Just like how we are bombarded everyday with images of war through media, we have slowly become used to seeing people die, people fleeing, people losing their homes, places in ruins and constant violence. By and by, we have become desensitized. We have slowly gotten used to it. It could be 6 people dead in a shootout to thousands of people dead in an air raid, the figures vary but it all sends the same message - all casualties of war. It’s sad and it’s horrific but somehow we have been so exposed to such news that we have slowly acquired a sense of normality in this. Just like Paul did.

War is senseless, we all know that. Why would one be asked to kill someone he doesn’t know for the sake of defending a country. What has this other person done to you to give you the right to kill him. Soldiers become machines, they act upon instruction. Yet soldiers are human beings, too. They belong to a family as any person would. Yet they have to act collectively as their country asks them to do.  

War is pointless. It doesn’t benefit anyone and anything. It is just casualty.

Culture and society definitely shapes an individual’s concept of happiness. In fact, it opens a deeper understanding that whatever situation a person may be,  he will adapt to the new life he is in. He might find goodness even in the most terrible times. Paul found happiness in a loaf of bread, in a pair of boots, in a few hours of rest like it means the world to him. This is because human beings are adaptable to wherever and whatever societies they are exposed to.  However adaptable they are, there is no absolute guarantee that they will find happiness.

Broken Soul, Faded Memories… No Identity?

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque,  addresses the idea of memory and identity in deep, if highly confusing, detail. The novel guides us through a year of one soldier in World War One, and we get to experience what a young, nineteen-to-twenty-year-old man by the name of Paul Bäumer thinks and lives, both in his homeland Germany and on the fronts of trench warfare. In this novel, we see that his identity is challenged and changed in ways he cannot control.

In the book, we watch as Paul Bäumer receives leave in Chapter Seven, and during this time at his home, he looks upon his books of his school years and tries to bring himself back to that time. However, he can’t, as the harder he tries, the more “[his] disquietude grows” and so does “a terrible feeling of foreignness”(172). Paul soon feels panicked when he can’t connect to and is not part of his past life. He is lost to that world he had lived in; he’s “shut out” and becomes “listless and wretched, like a condemned man” as he “sit[s] there and the past withdraws itself”(172). The war has made it impossible for Paul to return to his past, as his prior life has been erased and now belongs to “another world that is gone from [him]”(121). He and his comrades are forced to leave their old lives, forgetting the pleasure of simplicities like books and poetry and carefree minds: things that we enjoy in excess.

With memories gone and no time left to wonder about a bleak future before him, Paul has become defined by war. He has lost his past, his future, and his life to the brutal battle he is forced into, conscripted to take and break all his old habits and both his own and his comrades’ youths. His identity remains, but changed, broken and in tatters, exposed only in sombre moments of idleness or heart-bleeding moments on the front, at times where confronting himself is the only battle going on in his head.

In Chapter Nine in All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul, while hiding in a crater and lost, stabs a French soldier who then falls on top of him. He spends hours in the crater with the dying man, feeling guilt and fear as he watches a terrified man die, slowly and noisily. The shreds of his self draw together as he looks on at the dead man, saying, “I did not want to kill you....But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind”(223) and reflecting on how he and this Frenchmen were never enemies, when “you [Frenchmen] are poor devils like us [Germans], that your mothers are just as anxious as ours”(223). He recognizes, just as he thinks while watching Russian war prisoners, that he and the Frenchman “have the same fear of death...the same dying...the same agony”(223) in this life of war. His livelihood and mannerisms are forged by war, but the last spark of himself that resides still gives him pause about why he, and anyone else, is fighting this war.

If identity is connected to memory, then the war has made any emotions we notice in the novel as connected to memories either forgotten or changed. During sentry duty, soon after a bombardment on the front, Paul sees a grove of poplar trees on a river bank and remembers when he had played under such trees as a child. But when he experiences this memory, it isn’t happy as he remembers. He calls them “quiet” even though the drone of the front is constant. Paul believes that the memory’s stillness “is the reason why these memories...do not awaken desire so much as sorrow”(121) within him. Instead, he becomes very melancholy, thinking of how these memories bring nothing but sorrow for him now, slowly luring him into a void that he knows he should not go into.  He knows the void will be inescapable once it finally claims him. So Paul, afraid of this void, cuts off the memories before they can consume his final shreds of self. We witness Paul’s decline and resistance to his slow degeneration, trying to remember and feel things that are truly no longer part of him.

In essence, what shreds remain of Paul’s identity is not happily connected to his memories, as so few moments of his previous life are happy any more. We can say identity does have a connection to memory and it still does within Paul. However, we are shaped by the joyous and sorrowful memories we have, while Paul’s changed memories weakly and morosely shape him. His connection to memory is built on the lack of connection to those memories rather than the memories themselves. His true identity, or what we see of it, is more closely connected to his comrades and his constant race against annihilation on the front lines.

Individual vs Society...?

Our society teaches us what is acceptable and what to do in our everyday lives. Is it possible it impacts how we feel happy? An individual’s happiness is unrelated to the society surrounding them, as it can’t dictate how we feel; yet, it changes our perspective of happiness. In the book, All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, happiness is depicted as scarce for the soldiers during the war, but is abundant in the society surrounding them.

We are in a world where the media dictates our definition of success as wealth and popularity, the world back in 1910’s had the idea that success was having a powerful nation and fighting for that nation. This impacts your happiness but it does not completely dictate it. Happiness comes from the individual, yet the individual may be happy when they make the society proud.

War is a hostile environment, where almost no emotion survives, other than bitter humor and the will to survive. Paul is “Lost in remoteness” and is “In weakness”. “There is nothing here that a man can hold on to.” (149) Paul knows he is suppose to feel happy, as he is serving his country, but he can’t, his innocence stripped away from him. Remarque creates the setting of absolute loss of emotions, to the point where the character can faintly feel happiness, yet is also so lost in fear and his memories, they are clouded by thoughts of the war.

Due to the war causing their discomfort, Paul and his friends find most of their happiness when they are doing things that distract them from the war. Things such as cooking pancakes. Paul shows his love for pancakes and it is evident that the pancakes are something he really cares about. They are one of his favorite foods from his past life and he is so set on cooking them. The explosions come so fast that the splinters strike again and again against the wall of the house and sweep in through the window.” (235) This part of All Quiet On The Western Front. describes how Paul’s happiness works perfectly. Paul is ignoring the fact that bombs are dropping on him and is focusing more on the pancakes. As soon as the distraction is made from the war, happiness can ensue. Another time Paul is distracted from the war is when he dies. That’s when it’s all over and he no longer has to worry about it. Paul seems to be relieved that he can be done with all of the horrors of the war that he can just relax, and ignore all of the war. Happiness of the soldiers comes to them when they aren’t thinking about the war.

The happiness of the society, however contradicts the happiness of the soldier, or in this case, the individual. “But my father would rather I keep my uniform on so that he could take me to visit his acquaintances. But I refuse.” (164) Paul demonstrates how society and the individual's happiness differ. The society is proud of how Paul has went to war and fought for his country, yet Paul has different views and thinks it’s horrible that he went to war. One side is happy while the other isn’t. Paul wants to push his experience on the war front as far away as possible, yet that is the exact opposite of what society wants. Society prefers to see him fight it out with their enemy, even though it hurts his happiness. The actions of the individual shape the happiness of society. When Paul is out there fighting the enemies, he is struggling, losing his happiness while society becomes happier and happier. Yet when Paul does what makes him happy, such as beating up Himmelstoss, it hurts societies happiness. It is not a direct correlation, as the individual can be happy while society is happy, like when he is bonding with his fellow soldiers. It makes the army and society happy, while he is enjoying himself, yet there is a contrast in most cases. The individual causes the happiness of society based on their actions. The difference is that the society describes happiness as when society as a whole is happy. The soldier is willing to ignore his thoughts, emotions, and needs to give back to the society. Paul is willing to fight the war, even if he personally may not want to, he still does so society can be happy as that is the ultimate goal. Nationalism at that time made many people believe this.

Overall, society has an impact to a certain degree on an individual's happiness, yet does not dictate it. A person can be happy yet not fit under the society’s norms of happiness, but the person usually enjoys fitting under those norms as they do have an impact on the person. Society plays an important role in happiness, but does not have complete power over the individual for it.