Book Report: All Quiet On The Western Front

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All Quiet on the Western Front Essay “This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war”(Remarque Introduction). This is the introductory statement of the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the novel that many believe to be the greatest war novel of all time. It was the goal that the author set for himself, a goal that he did not achieve. He did not achieve this goal due to his killing off of all of the soldiers and the way in which he made war the antagonist of his novel.
Remarque’s
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Remarque could have very well accomplished this goal if he had simply not have included “even though they may have escaped the shells”(Remarque Introduction) within his claim. It is that phrase that refutes any profession that states that his action of killing off the soldiers allowed him to reach his original goal. As for the second second assertion, one can argue that Remarque's opinions were too strong to be opinions and that his state of mind when writing the book does not excuse the fact that the book is still based on an accusation. Even if unintentional he still credited war for essentially everything that went wrong in his novel. War was the antagonist of All Quiet on the Western Front and was almost invariably blamed for the tragedy that had befallen the characters.
In conclusion, Remarque did not achieve the goal that he had set for himself in the introductory statement of his novel All Quiet on the Western Front. This was primarily because he made war the villain of his book and he did not leave a single character alive to prove his