The Loss of Life on the Front

The Loss of Life on the Front

The book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque displays a loss in the soldiers’ lives. The story takes place during World War One in the eyes of the German soldiers. Some soldiers before the war were peat diggers (Haie), postmen (Himmelstoss), peasants (Detering), and some were even school students (Paul and his friends). The book had introduced us to many of these young boys in the first chapter. We were introduced to Muller who was aged 19 and was a school boy. We were introduced to Kropp who was a very smart boy and aged 19 years. Kat who was the leader of the squad was aged 40. The main character Paul Baumer was 19 years old. Not many people would notice that he was the glue of the group.

The idea of loss was demonstrated immediately in the first chapter when Kemmerich had an amputated leg and had died. We were given the idea of their generation being “the Iron Youth”(18). I mean this may not attract other people but their youth was taken away by them getting deployed into this war. This is the recurring theme that Erich Remarque seems to put in this book that their youth was lost. The idea of the Iron Youth makes us think about the future generations and how this generation will be lost. While Paul was about to die, he seems to reflect on the past and how “{It} can take nothing from {him}, {it} can take nothing anymore”(295). His thoughts on their generation being the “lost generation” that was demonstrated and portrayed throughout the book was again back at the end.

These soldiers had lost many things throughout the war but another loss that caught my eye was the fact that these soldiers/kids had a prior life. As early as the 2nd Chapter we were able to notice that the soldiers had lost their prior life when Kantorek refers them as the “Iron Youth”(19). Later on in the book Paul had gotten emotional about how they “had begun to love life and the world” and after they had stepped foot into war “the first explosion, burst into {their} hearts”(87-88). If i’m not mistaken, this makes it 100% visible that their prior life was erased as soon as these soldiers stepped into the war zone to fight for their nation. Every other chapter of the book always seems to reinforce the idea that they lost their past. For example on page 20, Paul had said, “we have become a wasteland”. We can see that no matter where it happened, the message of the soldiers losing their prior life and being the lost generation was foreshadowed in the beginning and then confirmed throughout the book to the very end.

http://www.sky.com/tv/movie/all-quiet-on-the-western-front-1930

Obviously when we read or hear about war we assume that there is a lot of killing involved. It sort of feels that our young generation has gotten used to this idea with high graphic video games and movies. Personally, I have never seen the angle of war that “All Quiet on the Western Front” described.  There was another loss displayed in the story and that was the loss of innocence. There was a massive section in the book and that was Chapter Six. This Chapter had displayed the gruesome images of war that us humans don’t imagine. The gas bombs dropping and choking the soldiers slowly and painfully. This has to cause their mindsets to change and it does!  An example in the book when Paul hesitates to throw the grenade at the soldier demonstrated that there is still that human mindset in him and it isn’t all animal instincts. He does end up killing the enemy and that is the part that presents the loss of innocence. This automatically leads to the minds changing further on in the book when Paul feels that “When a man has seen so many dead he cannot understand any longer why there should be so much anguish over a single individual”(181). It is fact that this can’t be shown and taught to us viewers of war from behind our electronic screens. No one knows that when you go to war, the mind set changes from normal to animal instincts and all these deaths are seen everyday. This sort of relates to going to school everyday for the normal population.

Another instance later on in the book, we see Paul hiding in a shell behind French lines and an enemy coming into that shell forcing Paul to get his hands dirty for the first time in hand to hand combat. This moment was a massive reflection period because in that chapter we saw that loss of innocence but it sort of broke him down and made him talk to the dead body. I feel that every time there was a demonstration of loss of innocence there was a reflection period after because it felt inhumane to kill someone and be such a gruesome human.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03231/all_quiet_lew_ayer_3231338b.jpg

To bring all of my thoughts together, Paul had reflected on ““We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost”(123). This basically summed up everything I had talked about. There was a loss and this reflection about half way through the book had displayed us that they knew it too. Readers just had to open up and see that the loss was massive and every single component they lost shaped their identity in their prior life and the post life. The loss of innocence had also demonstrated the identity change from normal humans to animals who saw killing as often as children went to school.