All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque
Here we are again, me and Remarque. Interestingly enough, this is my fifth reading of the book overall (at least), my third in college, and my second for this professor. By this point, you'd think that I'd be fully sick of the thing, but instead I find it more intruiging and more moving every time I pick it up. Here is a book where one can find something new every time it is read, a book that can affect you in a profound way by different means depending on the context in which you experience it. Both accessible and deeply artistic, it is close to being a perfect book.
The first thing that I thought about while reading this time around was the depiction of the war and its realism. Having just come off of a couple of memoirs, I think the comparison is useful and interesting. Remarque doesn't focus on scenes of battle; rather, he evokes emotion by portraying the soldiers as men. The soldiers are no heroes; the main characters are an upstart group of teenagers who volunteered at the behest of their rigorously patriotic headmaster. Paul, the narrator, relates the tragedy of the war not through graphic depictions (though they play their part rather well as they occur), but by showing us the war through the eyes of a kid. As his classmate Leer dies, Paul's lament is simply, "What use is it to him now that he was such a good mathematician at school?" This is far more provoking than any amount of gore. Remarque shows us the war as it was lived and experienced, not as history books pare it down to battles and trench warfare. The novel, being as focused on life beyond the trenches and soldier-to-soldier relationships, is a very interesting talking point regarding the reliability of the novel as a form to unearth human truths about the past.
At a more literary level, perhaps, one of the other most striking things about this book is the constant mish-mash of life and death. The two are often coupled in shocking ways. In a battle scene, for example, Paul describes how the caskets of the dead blocked bullets and shrapnel, allowing the soldiers to survive. This is perhaps the most graphically illustrated amalgamation of life and death, but the comparisons are everywhere. The most moving passage of the book (in my opinion) is one that has Paul questioning his place in the civilian war. He is only twenty, but he knows nothing of life but death and destruction. If Remarque was looking to condemn the destructive results of war on the living, on the survivors, there is hardly a more effective way he could have done it.
The pain of Remarque's novel is its humanity. It is so moving because we can see ourselves in Paul and can watch the steady degeneration of his faith in humanity. We can see ourselves coming to pieces in the trenches, and we have no answers for Paul's questions about life and his future. Remarque understood something about the war and about the defeat of Germany that was incredibly acute and prescient. There is a reson that this book stands as the greatest war novel of all time, and I would urge anyone interested in the moral ramifications and effects of war on the human psyche to read this book. Anyone looking for moving commentary on the human condition should read this book.
Grade: A
Erich Maria Remarque
Here we are again, me and Remarque. Interestingly enough, this is my fifth reading of the book overall (at least), my third in college, and my second for this professor. By this point, you'd think that I'd be fully sick of the thing, but instead I find it more intruiging and more moving every time I pick it up. Here is a book where one can find something new every time it is read, a book that can affect you in a profound way by different means depending on the context in which you experience it. Both accessible and deeply artistic, it is close to being a perfect book.
The first thing that I thought about while reading this time around was the depiction of the war and its realism. Having just come off of a couple of memoirs, I think the comparison is useful and interesting. Remarque doesn't focus on scenes of battle; rather, he evokes emotion by portraying the soldiers as men. The soldiers are no heroes; the main characters are an upstart group of teenagers who volunteered at the behest of their rigorously patriotic headmaster. Paul, the narrator, relates the tragedy of the war not through graphic depictions (though they play their part rather well as they occur), but by showing us the war through the eyes of a kid. As his classmate Leer dies, Paul's lament is simply, "What use is it to him now that he was such a good mathematician at school?" This is far more provoking than any amount of gore. Remarque shows us the war as it was lived and experienced, not as history books pare it down to battles and trench warfare. The novel, being as focused on life beyond the trenches and soldier-to-soldier relationships, is a very interesting talking point regarding the reliability of the novel as a form to unearth human truths about the past.
At a more literary level, perhaps, one of the other most striking things about this book is the constant mish-mash of life and death. The two are often coupled in shocking ways. In a battle scene, for example, Paul describes how the caskets of the dead blocked bullets and shrapnel, allowing the soldiers to survive. This is perhaps the most graphically illustrated amalgamation of life and death, but the comparisons are everywhere. The most moving passage of the book (in my opinion) is one that has Paul questioning his place in the civilian war. He is only twenty, but he knows nothing of life but death and destruction. If Remarque was looking to condemn the destructive results of war on the living, on the survivors, there is hardly a more effective way he could have done it.
The pain of Remarque's novel is its humanity. It is so moving because we can see ourselves in Paul and can watch the steady degeneration of his faith in humanity. We can see ourselves coming to pieces in the trenches, and we have no answers for Paul's questions about life and his future. Remarque understood something about the war and about the defeat of Germany that was incredibly acute and prescient. There is a reson that this book stands as the greatest war novel of all time, and I would urge anyone interested in the moral ramifications and effects of war on the human psyche to read this book. Anyone looking for moving commentary on the human condition should read this book.
Grade: A
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