Paul Baumer and his friends were all living a very
difficult life—very different from their previous one—before deciding to fully
commit to the Armed forces of Imperial Germany. These young men had not yet experienced
the dark side of war; they were forced by the state (the Kaiser of Imperial Germany).
In the beginning of All Quiet on the
Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque, Paul, the sensitive young protagonist, feels
a sense of confidence and self-esteem, because he was excited to join the army
and fight for his beloved country. Because the narrator tells us that the first
day “is wonderfully good," we can predict that life will sooner or later
go completely down hill. This line is foreshadowing of the soldiers’ inevitable
demise of both their emotions and mentality, because war cannot give life, but
rather it destroys life. The idea loss of identity illustrates the young teenagers
in war. Where will they go after the war; do they even know what will happen in
the future?
In the autumn of 1918, Paul, the compassionate 20 year-old
German soldier, contemplates his future at the end of the war, because he feels
“so alone and so without hope” (295). Paul's final thoughts of misery occur
just before his young and untimely death, connecting Paul’s hopefulness of his
first day being “wonderfully good.” However, Paul represents a generation of
young men whose time in the war resulted in them unable to “ face the [day]
without fear.” The “lost generation” could be considered as the generation of
men who do not know what their future will be.
Earlier on in the book, Paul demonstrates the difference
between his generation and the generation of those older, more experienced soldiers.
These soldiers had a life before the war. A life of family, where during the
war, the soldiers have a purpose worth fighting for. But unfortunately for
Paul’s generation, they never experienced the wonderful opportunities in life
yet. These young teenagers are empty, cold, and sad that defines themselves as
the so-called “Iron Youth”(18). While Paul assumes that he is ready for the
war, he does not know that death, suffering, horror, fear and hopelessness will
be on his way.
Gertrude Stein, an American
novelist familiarized the famous post-war term of the lost
generation. All Quiet on the Western
Front connects with Gertrude Stein's idea of the young teenagers
exclaiming that they are “forlorn like children, and experienced like old men.”
These soldiers think that their lives at this moment are very “crude and
sorrowful and superficial.” This ties back to the idea of the teenagers
“believing we are lost,” they’re lost identity (123).
Within the battalion, it gets worse when it comes to their behavior
with other men. From Paul violently beating up a French soldier, which made
Paul feel really innocent. There is a huge significant sense of loss due to the
fact that Paul and his battalion forcefully murdered the French soldiers on the
front line and then later on realize how horrific their actions were. Paul is
afraid to demonstrate his actions from the front line, he often uses these
strategies of denial (denying information) and daydreaming (shifting the
subject): "I imagined leave would be different from this. Indeed, it was
different a year ago. It is I of course that have changed in the interval.
There lies a gulf between that time and today. At that time I still knew
nothing about the war, we had only been in quiet sectors. But now I see that I
have been crushed without knowing it. I find I do not belong here any more, it
is a foreign world." (173). Paul pulls out a dagger and quickly stabs the
French soldier, also known as the “printer”. Paul’s lost senses and forgiveness
towards the French solider made him a promise to “send them money anonymously”
to his family because he “looked at the portraits one more” and realized that
“they are clearly not rich people” (151). Paul did not want to be in that
situation to kill him, but in that case it is a matter of life or death. If
Paul did not react quickly, he would’ve killed him.
Loss in general has played a big role in novel, since The Great War has ruined
many lives of young individuals. No one could tell who the "good
guys" really were. The Germans were invading and defending to protect
their motherland, while France had the exact same purpose in the war. This
makes life especially hard for the soldiers, as they don't know what they are
doing with their lives, did they really want to be apart of this in the first
place? "Their stillness is the reason why these memories of former times
do not awaken desire so much as sorrow-a vast, in apprehensible melancholy. Once we had such desires-but they return not. They are past, they belong to another
world that is gone from us" (121). These men no longer have
happiness and no understanding to their purpose in life at this point. They go
to war as boys, yet never return as men.
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