Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

The First World War was a long and gruesomely brutal affair, claiming the lives of over 17 million individuals. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, it was equally as ferocious on the intellectual front, where it marked a turning point for in the clash of European intellectual values. For the past half century, philosophers such as Nietzsche and Freud had already challenged established institutions of Positivistic thinking toward knowledge and progress. However, it was the uncertainty and disaster of the war that accelerated their movement by inspiring culture-wide undermining of prior intellectual beliefs: alongside Expressionist artists, authors such as Erich Remarque and Vera Brittain drew upon pent-up grievances underscored by the war to portray …show more content…
To him, the war represents a complete disappearance of Nationalism and uncertainty where there was confidence about decisions before. Germany was so confident going into the war, but the thoughts of her soldiers after the war prove otherwise. The war dashed the confidence of young soldiers and shocked them into realizing that what they perceived before was not so true; that things are uncertain. For example, [MAIN CHARACTER] longingly reflects, “It will be [peaceful] like this too. If I am lucky, when the war is over and I come back here for good. I will sit here just like this and look at my room and wait.” Thus, the war was crucial in shifting the belief that things might not always work out if we just blindly follow our confidence. A further example of this is in a yearning for the war to be over and a lesson to be learned from it: “I want to hearken and know when I go back to the front that the war will sink down, be drowned utterly in the great home-coming tide, know that it will then be past forever, and not gnaw us continually, that it will have none but an outward power over us.” He says that he wants the war to be “an outward power,” or a lesson that we can learn from and question our decisions before abiding by them so …show more content…
She was one of very few women to study at Oxford at the time, and though this was discouraged by traditional women’s values at the time, the war brought about tremendous changes in this area and showed that she could fill this role that was scoffed at before for women. Towards the beginning of her life, her father was unsupportive of her quest to study at Oxford. However, with the changing attitudes due to the war, she found that women’s professional roles had expanded greatly, as she found work with the League of Nations as well as becoming a writer and tutor. Additionally, before the war, women had been entirely expected to This is a prime example demonstrating the vast social reform brought about to middle-class values by the war. “Throughout my two decades of life, I had never looked upon the nude body of an adult male…I still have reason to be

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Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front