Essays on All Quiet on the Western Front

The book All Quiet on the Western Front shows the casual and pointless brutality of the First World War from the German point of view through the eyes of the main character Paul Baumer, who is already an “experienced” veteran of the trenches by the start of the story. Bauman and the other soldiers are totally disconnected from those on the home front. He tries to retain his humanity, even throughout all of the horror of the war, and despite the fact that he is expected to die and kill for an essentially pointless cause.

Baumer and many of his friends joined the army voluntarily in a fit of patriotic fervor at the start of the conflict. This was common as many portray war to be a glorious thing and those at home like his old school teacher, Kantorek, don’t seem to realize (or don’t care) that all of these young men, so willing to fight for their country, are simply being sent off to die. “While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger.” This touched on the recurring theme of disconnect between those on the frontline doing the actual fighting and those at home actually creating and running the war. Generals and ministers make war plans with no regard to the lives of their soldiers, fighting even when there’s no chance of victory towards the end, while those at home are still under the patriotic illusion that the war is this big, meaningful struggle for Germany. Thinking back on his old teacher, Baumer muses that there were thousands of “Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best- in a way that cost them nothing.” The people away from the war are disconnected from the horrors of war and are eager to entice others to go out and fight. The petty and insignificant people are the ones who are powerful in war.

The popular vision of trench life was one of constant fighting and dehumanizing warfare. Despite the horror, soldiers struggle to retain some semblance of their humanity. Baumer forms friendships with his old classmates and fellow soldiers and the constant threat of death along with the endless sound of artillery fire becomes a part of everyday life. Often the soldiers will cook around campfires, make dark jokes about the state of war, and simply talk about life and their plans for the future. Paul and the other soldiers speak about the simple things they miss like harvesting, smoking a cigarette, and just having a comfortable bed to come home to. “Yes, the club chairs with red plush. In the evening, we used to sit in them like lords, and intended later on to let them out by the hour. One cigarette per hour. It might have turned into a regular business, a real good living”. Paul thoughts often drift back home. Details of home, and thinking of what it would be like if he could back after such horrendous experiences. “I breathe deeply and say over to myself: ‘You are at home; you are at home.’ But a sense of strangeness will not leave me, I can find nothing of myself in these things. There is my mother, there is my sister, there is my case of butterflies, and there is the mahogany piano – but I am not myself there. There is a distance, a veil between us.”

Trench life overall is terrible. The sound of artillery is a constant background noise, much of their food consists of moldy bread, and diseases spread like wildfire. Lice is so much of a problem that men rarely bother with the uncomfortable process of delousing since the lice so quickly return. Sleeping was hard battle to conquer as well. “Katczinsky is right when he says it would not be such a bad war if only one could get a little more sleep. In the line we have next to none, and fourteen days is a long time at one stretch”. Rats are a problem as well, crawling over the soldiers at night and chewing on the bodies of the deceased in the trenches.

Even without constant fighting, the book does a good job at painting war as an assault on the senses, especially the artillery fire in the background. When Baumer is on leave, the screeching of trolley wheels often startles him by bringing back the memories of the artillery fire in the trenches. It’s as though his mind, so adapted to war is no longer used to the quietness of his hometown and even away from the frontline, he cannot escape the constant noise of war.

Throughout the novel, Bauman clings to his sanity in the horrendous conditions of the war with little to no power, while all of the ignorant fools away from the war are in control.