All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front

File:Western front cover.jpg 1958 paperback edition
Author	Erich Maria Remarque
Original title	Im Westen nichts Neues
Translator	A. W. Wheen (1929 edition)
Language	German
Genre	War Novel
Publisher	Ballantine Books
Publication date	1929
Publication place	Germany
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	304 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-449-21394-3
Followed by	The Road Back

For the film, see All Quiet on the Western Front (film).

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I, about the horrors of that war and also the deep detachment from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front. The book was first published in German as Im Westen nichts Neues in January 1929. It sold 2.5 million copies in twenty-five languages in its first eighteen months in print. In 1930 the book was turned into an Oscar-winning movie of the same name, directed by Lewis Milestone.

Title and translation

The 1929 English translation by A. W. Wheen gives the title as All Quiet on the Western Front. The literal translation is in fact "Nothing New in the West", with "West" being the war front, which was in fact a routine dispatch used by the German Army. This title in German adds to the terrible irony of the actual situation. In English the phrase would be unclear, whereas "All Quiet..." does sound like the English used for such matters.

Brian Murdoch's 1994 translation renders the phrase as "there was nothing new to report on the western front" within the narrative. Explaining his retention of the original book-title, he says:

Although it does not match the German exactly (there is a different kind of irony in the literal version...), Wheen's title has justly become part of the English language and is retained here with gratitude.

Separately, the phrase "all quiet on the western front" later became popular slang for a lack of action (in reference to the Phony War in World War II's Western Front).

Plot summary

Template:Spoilers The story follows the experiences of Paul Bäumer: a soldier whose teacher inspires him to join the German army shortly after the start of the war. He arrives on the Western Front with his friends (Tjaden, Müller, Kropp and a number of other characters) and meets Stanislaus Katczinsky, known as Kat. The older Kat soon becomes Paul's mentor and teaches him about the realities of war. Paul and Kat swiftly become almost brothers, bonded by the hardships of the war.

Paul and his friends have to endure day after day of non-stop bombardment. Eventually it all becomes clear to him: war is entirely pointless. All his friends say that they are fighting the war for a few national leaders whom they have never met and most likely never will. They are the only people that can gain anything from this war, not Paul and his friends.

The book focuses not on heroic stories of bravery as do so many other war stories, but rather gives a realistic view of the hell in which the soldiers found themselves. The monotony, the constant artillery fire, the struggle to find food, and the overarching role of chance in the lives and deaths of the soldiers, all are described in detail. Remarque often refers to the living soldiers as old and dead, emotionally depleted and hardened. "We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing from ourselves, from our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces."

Paul receives a period of leave from the army, and returns home temporarily. He finds it difficult to understand people at home anymore. While all the soldiers at the front wish for nothing more than peace, knowing that they are losing the war, civilians back home talk about marching on Paris. He is also indifferent to the significance of any of the battles. Battles have no names. Rather, one after another they offer a chance for him to be killed. Battle seems to be waged only to gain pitifully small pieces of land. He returns to his school where his teacher is still encouraging young men to enlist. Asked to what the war is like, he tells them the truth and is shouted out of the classroom.

Main Characters

Paul Bäumer

Paul Bäumer is the narrator. He is convinced to enlist in the German Army for WWI by his long-time teacher Kantorek, who promises that Paul will have a sense of satisfaction having done something with himself.

He's 18 years old when he goes to war.

Erich Remarque uses Paul Bäumer to magnify some of the experiences he viewed himself as a WW I veteran.

He is kind hearted and always willing to lend a hand.

His deeds include: giving his remaining cigarettes to Russian prisoners and replacing the new recruits saw blade bayonets with shovels, catching a goose to cook with Kat in an intimate lean-to, visiting his dying mother with whom he has little relationship, stabbing a French soldier in a shell hole, and spending the night with the dead body.

Along with others of his group, he teaches the basics of war to the new recruits, but in their excitement, they do everything wrong.

In the film adaptations, he was shown killed whilst reaching for a butterfly (film) or bird (television movie).

Paul is also used to describe the highly heightened sense of war, and the remorse when killing the French soldier mentioned above. He goes through the man's pockets, learns about his life and family and (briefly) dedicates himself to their welfare.

The day on which Paul is finally killed was otherwise militarily uneventful, with the German army dispatches merely noting Im Westen nichts Neues, which, as noted above, translates literally to Nothing new in the West. This brings home that Paul's death - being only one among millions - is nothing special.

Tjaden

A skinny locksmith of Paul's age and the biggest eater of the company, Tjaden did not volunteer for the war. Labeled as a "piss-a-bed", Tjaden received unfair treatment from Corporal Himmelstoss for urinating in his sleep; This system of 're-education' involved hunting up another bedwetter, who was quartered in the same bunk as Tjaden. The man on top would urinate at night, and the fellow below would be switched from bottom the next night so that he could retaliate. He was a very greedy young man who always found time to eat a good hearty meal.

He was promised Kemmerich's boots after Kemmerich died.

Leer

A close friend to Paul, Haie and the others, Leer dies after being shot during an attack. After he bleeds to death, Paul can only remark of Leer, "What use is it to him now that he was such a good mathematician at school." He was also the first in their class to have sexual intercourse.

Müller

The most pragmatic of the group, he is most noted for grilling his comrades with questions about what they're going to do after the war, he is the one most trying to hold onto their past, still carrying around his old physics text book, even though it would only weigh down his pack. He is also the inheritor of Kemmerich's boots, for which he fervently begs whilst Kemmerich is dying, showing how the war turns a man from an individual into a heap of supplies which they might as well make use of. The boots are later passed on to Paul after Muller's agonizing death.

Stanislaus Katczinsky

Also known as Kat. Of an older age than Paul Baumer and his younger comrades, Katczinsky worked as a cobbler in civilian life. As an elderly figure, Kat serves as a leadership figure for Paul and his friends, as well as a literary model showcasing the differences between the younger and older soldiers, the latter whom Paul describes as being connected to their former life, whereas he and the men his age have their parents, schooling, and a few, a girl. When he is killed, it is as though a great hero has died.

Kat is also well-known for his ability to scrounge nearly any necessary item, above all food. Examples of this are provided throughout the book; for instance, one night Paul and his company of men are quartered in a factory without rations nor comfortable bedding; Katczinsky leaves for a short while, returning with straw to put over the wire bedding. Later, to cure the hunger of some of his men, Kat retrieves bread, a bag of horse flesh, a lump of fat, a pinch of salt, and a pan in which to cook the food.

He was killed when a shell fragment pierced him in the head. Paul carried his dead body, believing he was still merely injured, back to the camp.

Minor Characters

Kantorek

Kantorek served as Schoolmaster to Paul and his friends, including Haie Westhus, Tjaden, Leer, and Muller. Acting "in a way that cost [him] nothing," Kantorek is a proponent of the war and convinces Baumer and the rest of his class to join the war effort. Out of twenty enlistees, this includes one Joseph Behm, the first of the class to fall - Ironically, Behm was the only fellow that did not want to fall in line.

Also ironic, Kantorek is later called up as a Territorial, only to be grilled by one of the same students he convinced to enlist.

He was tortured by Mittelstaedt who "copied him to perfection". Mittelstaedt would imitate his snobbiness. "Inadequate, Kantorek, quite inadequate." "Territorial Kantorek, do you call those buttons polished?" "Look at Boettcher now, there's a model for you to learn from." "Territorial Kantorek, we have the good fortune to live in a great age, we must embrace ourselves and triumph over hardship."

Himmelstoss

Easily stirring the hatred of the reader, Himmelstoss is a power-hungry corporal with a special dislike of Paul and his friends, taking sadistic pleasure in punishing the minor infractions of soldiers inferior in rank. Baumer and his friends mercilessly whip Himmelstoss the night before they board trains to go to the front. After Himmelstoss later joins them on the front, he asks for forgiveness from his old students. He was to become the new staff cook. He brings two packets of sugar for Paul and one pound of butter for Tjaden to prove his alliance.

Detering

He was a farmer who loved his farms. He went mad when he saw a cherry blossom, which reminded him of home too much and urged him to leave. He was especially fond of horses and was angered at those who used horses in the war. "It is of the vilest baseness to use horses in the war."

Josef Hamacher

He was known for a brief time in the Catholic Hospital. He was allowed to do anything because he was " not responsible for his actions" due to wounds. He taught Paul and Albert Kropp how the hospital works. He revealed a sinister surgeon who would amputate a limb for the slightest reason for his expirements, unless you say "no".

Franz Kemmerich

A lifelong friend of Baumer and his comrades, Kemmerich is wounded at the beginning of the book. Later he had his foot amputated, and afterwards died of his wounds. He was in possession of some yellow knee-high boots salvaged from a British aircraft pilot. These are later referred to as "Kemmerich's Boots", and change hands as Paul and his comrades are killed.

Major themes

Template:Spoiler There are many central themes in the book. Among them is that war is total nonsense. For example, none of the characters has ever seen a Frenchman before the war, much less have reason to kill them, but that is now what they are forced to do. Some of the soldiers ponder how the war was started, why it was declared, and whom it benefits. Nobody has any answers. There are also other themes that include: comradeship/friendship, the humanity of the "enemy", the hypocrisy of authority figures, loss of hope for the future, animal instincts or how war reduces men to animals and many others such as loss of innocence.

The Horror of War

The main theme of All Quiet on the Western Front is the brutality of war. The archetypical war novel romanticizes war and extolls the heroes of the story, however this book shows a vivid, realistic, and hellish portrait of war. World War I saw the development of many new destructive innovations such as poison gas, machine guns, airplanes and tanks; all of which made killing easier and even more impersonal. The novel shows these weapons being used for butchery on a grand scale; for instance, battles lasting for four months.

Paul describes the horrors of war throughout the book. The trenches and fortifications are shelled continually, poison gas blankets the battlefield, snipers shoot at anyone with their head above ground. Paul even sees the horrible results from the trench mortars which literally blows men out of their clothes. Finally, the American troops come and the German lines disintegrate. Vivid descriptions are presented throughout the book, combined with gritty little details that could only come from personal experience (Paul explains at one point why a shovel with sharpened edges is so much better in close-up combat than a bayonet.) Nothing short of being there could show the sheer numbers of dead and wounded every day in the war.

Effect On Soldiers

The physical and mental hardships pressed on soldiers during times of war can be absolutely astounding, and in trench warfare these hardships were ever-present. Bullets, bombs, mortars, and disease easily destroy men by the tens of thousands, while those who live to fight another day are subject to dealing with the mental anguish of the violent deaths of their comrades and the separation from civilian life.

Tying into one of the central themes of the book, Remarque says at the beginning, "This book is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure for those who stand face to face with it. It will simply try to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped the shells, were destroyed by the war."

The book also emphasises that the war was worst for the 'lost generation', those who went straight from school or collage into the trenches, as the narrator had done.

The older men still have firm ties to their earlier lives - they have property, wives, children, jobs and interest, and these bonds are all so strong that the war can't break them. But for us twenty-year-olds there are only our parents, and for some of us a girlfriend. That isn't much, because at our age parental influence is at its weakest, and the girls haven't really taken over yet. (Chapter 2)

We are like children who have been abandoned and we are as experienced as old men, we are coarse and superficial - I think we are lost. (Chapter 6)

Nature

The landscape on the front is barren, but when Paul goes on leave, he sees nature. Nature represents escape, it is beautiful and pure. When traveling by train, Paul describes the beautiful mountains and plains of Germany. He wonders why this nature is being destroyed on the front; he wants to preserve this beauty, not destroy it. Also, when he sees the French countryside, he sees it is not different from the German countryside; why should he destroy this either? A disturbing incident involving a group of army horses, terribly wounded in a bombardment and screaming with pain, demonstrates the war's violation of innocent nature.

The author uses nature as a tool to change the tone of his writing to a more reflective and peaceful one, in contrast to the rest of the book. To temporarily escape from the horrors of war, Paul and his friends swim across a canal late at night for a relaxing evening with several French women who live on the other side. Also, after a particularly violent battle, Paul observes birds flitting tranquilly about the shell-torn fields, and sees two butterflies, miles from any vegetation, perching on the teeth of a skull. He notes that he has seen birds successfully raise their young in the midst of the trenches. This highlights the human absurdity of the war, and also hints at nature's reassuring capacity to go on about its business despite the surrounding turmoil.

Animal Instinct

In many parts of this book, through Paul Bäumer, Erich Remarque expresses the human spirit transition into a more beastial nature. It is apparent that Erich Remarque believes that the nature of war is so barbaric, that human nature must be lowered to match the level of barbaric war.

There are many examples of Paul Bäumer reverting to animal instincts. One such time is when he finds himself stuck in a shell hole, surrounded by enemy soldiers. He realizes that if any of the enemy were to join him in the hole, it would mean instant death for him, unless he could act without thinking, and stab instantly. He waits in the hole, hoping that it would not happen. As time goes by, a Frenchman jumps into the shell-hole. Paul stabs the man instinctively --only realizing afterwards that he has killed another human being. Later the barbarity of war leaves his spirit and he experiences guilt, then remorse, and only returns to rationality when he is able to leave the hole and the body within it.

Presence of Death

Constantly throughout the book, the soldiers are followed by the frightful presence of death. Every time that they go to battle, they pass by their own graves, something that would send chills down the average person's back

Christian Allusions

[[1. In the beginning Remarque tells the reader that Paul had been writing a play called "Saul". Saul was a Roman officer who was persecuting Christians all over the Roman Empire. Later, he said that God came and spoke to him. Saul changed his name to Paul and was responsible for so much of Christianity being spread all over the Roman Empire because he was an officer. 2. Paul's comrade group is made up of 7 men: Paul Bäumer, Stanislaus Katczinsky, Franz Kemmerich, Haie Westhus, Albert Kropp, Tjaden, Müller. 7 is the strongest christian symbol. In Genesis the 7 days of creation.

Relations to Other Books

1. Romeo and Juliet "He buries his face and his limbs in her... She is his only friend, his brother, his mother;... new-won life... he would now be a heap of mangled flesh... that has thrown us to the ground and saved us... there would not be one man alive"(54-55). This can refer to the famer's soliloquy in Romeo and Juliet: "The Earth that's nature's mother is her tomb; What is her buring grave, that is her womb"(Act IV, Scene III, v 9-10). The soldiers fall to the ground for protection and then its like they are being reborn just like a mother's womb protects her innocent child. A theme in this novel is the lose of innocence. The second way a soldier can drop to the ground is when he dies and becomes his tomb because so many bodies and dirt pile up on them. 2. Odyssey Hope is a major key to surviving the war. One of the times Odysseus was returning home he had received a bag. He was not to open it, but during the night one of his crew members opened it and the only item left was hope. Hope is dangerous because it allows you to believe that everything will be okay. It allows the soldiers to continue to take commands and live in an animal like behavior.

Film, TV, and Theatrical Adaptations

Film

Main article: All Quiet on the Western Front (film)

In 1930, an American film of the novel was made, directed by Lewis Milestone. The screenplay was by Maxwell Anderson, George Abbott, Del Andrews, C. Gardner Sullivan, with uncredited work by Walter Anthony and Milestone. It stars Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander.

The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1930 for its producer Carl Laemmle Jr., and an Academy Award for Directing for Lewis Milestone. It was the first all-talking non-musical film to win the Best Picture Oscar. It also received two further nominations: Best Cinematography, for Arthur Edeson, and Best Writing Achievement for Abbott, Anderson and Andrews.

TV film

In 1979, the film was remade for television by Delbert Mann, starring Richard Thomas of The Waltons as Paul Bäumer.

Stage

In a two hour period, people do things, the worst part is that people pick their nose an dthen go out and...........!

The Road Back

Main article: The Road Back

The Road Back, another book written by Erich Maria Remarque, is about a different group of soldiers trying to cope with postwar Germany: dealing with the defeated German society after the war, trying to go to school, and trying to live a normal life.

The book was banned during Nazi rule, the film's content was watered down to avoid a German boycott, and Remarque was stripped of his German citizenship in 1938.

See also

• Paths of Glory

External links

• Teacher's Guide at Random House
• CliffsNotes
• Spark Notes
• All Quiet on the Western Front at IMDb
• 2 Speeches from the Movie in Text, Audio, Video from AmericanRhetoric.com

Quote Sources

Quotes in "Effect on Soldiers" are taken from the Ballantine Books 1982 paperback edition of All Quiet on the Western Front as translated from the German by A. W. Wheen.