Who Is The Soldier In Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

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Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that dispels beliefs about the glory of the soldier. Remarque vividly describes the dehumanization of trench warfare and war in general. He exposes the incredible toll that combat takes on soldiers—all for the purpose of fighting other people’s battles, against other soldiers who have nothing personally against each other. The novel went past the obvious physical damage that soldiers faced and gave insight into the mind of one particular infantry soldier. While he may have been considered heroes by outsiders, people in Paul Baumer’s life—similar to people in Remarque’s life-- failed to realize the catastrophic internal damage that befalls combatants long after their tours of …show more content…
We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling out bombs, what do we know of men in this in this moment when Death is hunting us down… for the first time in three days we can oppose him; we feel a mad anger. No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves. (113)
In this passage, Paul speaks of death as a living entity trying to hunt down his troop, and the soldiers as animals fighting to escape. He does not think of himself fighting a battle to kill an enemy, nor is he feeling any human emotion towards the well-being of himself or his supposed enemy, he is only concerned with the basic instinct of survival. Later in the same chapter, Paul goes on to say that he is a completely different being from when he came to the Front: “[Memories] arise no more; we are dead and they stand remote on the horizon, they are a mysterious reflection, an apparition, that haunts us, that we fear and love without hope… they are unattainable, and we know it.” (121). In other words, Paul, as he was before the war, is dead. He exists only in a faint and enigmatic memory, and he will never be able to return to being this happy, innocent person. Seeing and participating in the horrors of war took away any hope of being the same person as he once …show more content…
The idea of hatred towards your enemy and the ideology for which your enemy defends is essential for a pro-war argument on the side of a soldier. If one fights for what he or she believes, that person will not regret the killing and it will not affect them as badly emotionally. The mental anguish Paul experiences after killing Gérard can be interpreted in two ways: advocating traditional hand-to-hand combat, or to discouraging all combat. By being more personal, hand-to hand combat would cause each soldier to truly analyze whether or not a cause is one worth dying for, as well as decrease the amount of deaths caused by things such as new technology. It could also be discouraging all combat because the end result of death is almost inevitable, the only variable that depends on killing is how much the rational killer suffers internally. The internal suffering that results from taking the life of another man often does not end on the
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