Lost Generation Quotes In All Quiet On The Western Front

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“Lost Generation” in All Quiet on the Western Front
According to Admiral Chester A. Nimitz, “They fought together as brothers-in-arms. They died together and now they sleep side by side. To them we have a solemn obligation.” Paul Baumer is a young, overly compassionate soldier in World War 1. The novel is told through the protagonist, Paul Baumer’s, point of view. For this reason, the reader is allowed to further understand the thoughts, feelings, and emotions a soldier endures throughout a treacherous war. All Quiet on the Western Front is about Baumer’s struggle with survival and his emotional state. As well as comrades that become like family to Paul during the war. Remarque’s use of gradual symbolism and foreshadowing throughout …show more content…
This realization comes to him when he acknowledges how the older men are “linked up with their previous lives,” whereas Paul only has “his parents” and he feels like “that is not much”(Remarque 9). If Paul was to survive the war, the things he has seen and experienced there will transform him as a person. Paul has been “gripped by it [war]” and “does not know when the end may be”(Remarque 9). Paul’s statement, “his knowledge of life is limited to death,” foreshadows that he suspects he will never make anything else of his life because death always puts an end to any peacetime environment plans (Remarque 117). Paul feels nothing, believes in nothing, and sees no future because of what he’s experiencing in the …show more content…
In the beginning of All Quiet on the Western Front Paul finds peace during war. In fact, Paul enjoys war and finds “today wonderfully good” (Remarque 3). Even the common latrine is described as “entirely a pleasure” (Remarque 4). Paul's perspective on war, as soon as he is enlisted, is untroubled and lighthearted. However, as Paul begins to experience the front and its treachery, his innocence is ripped away as suddenly as the crack of a rifle. The new recruits are described as “infants” and Paul refers to himself as a “stone-age veteran” (Remarque 16). The front has broken Paul emotionally and physically, causing him to mature much faster than he would have if he had never enlisted into the war. Paul even recognizes that he is “not youth any longer” and begins to feel as though he has become just another old soul of the “Great War” (Remarque
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