All Quiet On The Western Front Essay. The Soldier’s Fate.

The theme of war is immortal. A lot of essays on All Quiet on the Western front were written and many more essays will be written. Our custom writing service also has one essay on All Quiet on the Western front.  Erich Maria Remarque was a talented German writer. All of his novels are worth reading. If you will like our All quiet on the Western front essay, you can look through other our writing works and order what is interesting for you.

“All Quiet On The Western Front” or “In the West Nothing New” it is the great novel about the German soldier’s life, their physical and mental stress during the war and their almost isolation from the civilian life. Most of the soldiers came back home from the war and they did not know what to do, because all they were able to do is to fight. Most of them after school went to the front. So, the story “In the West Nothing New” is mainly about the theme of a lost generation. The book has two titles because when the English translation was made, Arthur Wesley Wheen decided to translate the title as “All Quit On The Western Front”, but the literary translation is “In the West Nothing New”. Nowadays the phrase “all quit on the Western front” is just a colloquial expression, which means stagnation, or lack of visible change.

About The Author

Erich Maria Remarque is a well-known German novelist. Most of his works are about the terror of war. “All Quiet On The Western Front” is one of the best, because it was made into the Oscar-winning movie. His books are interesting and exciting, because he wrote about those things, which he experienced himself. When Erich was eighteen years old he became the soldier and was transferred to the Western Front. Soon he was wounded and the rest of the war he was in the hospital. Once he told: “I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.” 

 After the war Remarque worked at different jobs. He was a teacher, an editor, a journalist, a librarian and even a businessman. But he started to write at the age of sixteen. His first story was published at 1920. When his novel “All Quiet On The Western Front” was published in 1928, the book created a real furor among the readers. For one year were sold half a million copies of this book. The publishers were surprised, because the interest in the war has not disappeared, despite the fact that the armistice was 10 years ago. The most of the critics were also German writers, they were sure that Remarque had exaggerated the horrors of war and his novel denigrated the German’s war effort. But Erich Remarque absolutely knew what he was writing about and he managed to catch the readers. In his novel the author describes three main themes: the horror of the war, the effect of war on the soldiers and the nationalism and political power.

The Plot

The novel tells us about soldiers’ life during the whole period of war. The main character of the novel is a young soldier called Paul Bäumer. He is also the narrator of the story. When he was 19 years old he became the soldier and was transferred to the West Front (it looks like Remarque himself). Before the war Paul was creative, sensitive young man, who wrote poems and loved his family most of all. But the war changed everything and everybody, and Paul was not an exception. He forgot about the poetry forever, it was the part of his previous life. The horrors of the war turned him from a young boy into a fearless soldier. Dozens of his friends died in front of him, and Paul understood that death is a part of life. He could not tell everybody about his experience or about his feelings and when he came back to his family he felt like an outsider. He had the same loving parents, but something changed and Paul was not able to explain it. Paul did not know what to do, because the war was everything for him. All his young years he spent fighting. At the end of the novel Paul was killed. He died in the end of October 1918. It was a quiet and peaceful day. When he dies, his face is calm “as though almost glad the end had come." During that day, the only one phrase sounded in army’s report: “All quiet on the Western Front”.

There were also some of Paul’s classmates – Albert Kropp and Müller. Albert was one of the best Paul’s friend. He was with Paul during the Second Company. This young soldier always wanted to realize the causes of the war. Müller was a hardheaded and practical young man. He always thought about the future that is why he bored his friends with questions about what are they going to do after the war ends.

Stanislaus Katczinsky or Kat was also one of the Paul’s best friends. Kat was older than Paul; he was forty years old and had his own family at home. During the war he always helped his friends, because Kat was a resourceful soldier. When it was really necessary he always could find food, clothes or blankets. Paul loved and respected this man.

In the novel we met a lot of other characters with different fates. It takes a lot of time to describe every of them, that is why I recommend you to read the whole novel “All Quiet On The Western Front”. You will not regret it. The book will help you to take a fresh look at the war, it will change your attitude to the young soldiers will help you to understand their feelings and difficult life.