All_Quite_on_the_Western_Front

All Quiet on the Western Front is a first-person account of World War I at the frontlines of German forced. The book portrays the incredible, epic scenes of battle and the life of soldiers behind the newspaper articles. The amazing details are narrated by Paul Baumer who enlists in the army with a group of friends after his patriotic teacher encourages him to enlist in duty. He develops an admirable quality of survival and instinct. This animalistic ideology helps him survive the intense battles in the fields. Although this may sound simple to obtain, it is not because of the moral he develops that does not encourage saving one’s life if in danger. He feels that he is mentally disabled as a result of this morality consciousness. Paul’s predecessor, Corporal Himmelstoss, too creates an admirable, yet negative quality towards his soldiers. He orders simply ridiculous tasks for his soldiers to train them for combat. These orders seem brutal and pointless, but they help during the war. For example, he got his company to fight in the winter with no gloves; the perfect time to get frostbite. However, it shows the soldiers how to win a battle with pre-set disadvantages. Although it is just a war story, the environment is multiple battlefields across Germany, during World War I in the late 1910’s, which is filled with horror and emotions. This environment influences the hatred that Paul has against warfare and even encourages the idea of having politicians fight their wars with club. However, at the peak of World War I, many soldiers thought the war was never going to end. Therefore, many soldiers stop trying so hard to fight in battle, just as Paul dies in the end of the story. They, like him, believed that they would become mentally disfigured after the war. The trauma that the battlefields give him lead him to die in a way with very little fighting. The stated values that the soldiers have against the war are very similar to what is seen in modern life. Soldiers fighting wars both today and in the past experience unexplainable tragedies, that leads them to form a negative perception of war. Paul thinks of soldiers as objects used to fight a battle which is not fought by politicians themselves. He calls them unworthy for not being able to handle their own problems. This is very similar to modern society because there are multiple anti-war groups of veterans who are against the Iraqi War at the moment. In addition, many of the same health problems that occur with past soldiers still exist today. These problems strengthened the values soldiers have towards the war. For example, shell shock is a combat stress disorder and it only occurs after a very close explosion. It gives the victim an hallucination of battle anytime, anywhere. This has been found in the early stages of World War I and still exists today. The most evident theme in the story is that the experience at war is one that is gruesome. Soldiers have the most horrific experiences in life at battle. The book eventually comes to conclusion that all of Paul’s friends become victims to very tragic encounters with enemies. Also, in the beginning of the book, there was a one-hundred-and-fifty man company that turned into eighty after Paul’s first battle. He was amazed at how easy it was for people to die in battle; therefore, he chose to strengthen himself emotionally not to let himself die. Nevertheless, eventually soldiers perceive thoughts of suicide based on what was seen in the frontlines of the battles that they cannot get out of. Paul faces both an internal and external conflict in this war novel. Paul’s external conflict resides in the first half of the book. After the death of Kemmerich, his close friend, he becomes more defensive and enforces the need to follow his instinct in battle. In addition, he also is slowed from solving this conflict with the unpredictable commands from Commander Himmelstoss. Eventually, he catches on and adapts to warfare at the frontlines. That occurs near the middle of the book, just as he discovers an internal conflict. The internal conflict is based on the experiences he witnesses in the war. Halfway into the story, he views the war as something that was meant to personally demonize his own life. Nearing the end of the book, he realizes that no matter if the war ended or not, he would be personally and mentally defeated due to the corruption it caused in his mind. After a minor poisoning in warfare, he was sent to rest for three weeks, the period he visualizes normal society as a place which is totally different than the battlefields. He then truly knows that the war was all he knew well and the conflict was ended at the final battle. Paul becomes dead at the last, yet quiet battle. Horrifically, soldiers face these problems as they were persistent in every modern war. Many of these soldiers may once want to enlist but do not realize what they are getting into until they are finally deployed. There is no way out of war, unless of discharge or federal offenses. This is what many soldiers are being put through to this date, and the only thing possible to do, is to just fight. It is what Paul did to succeed, and he rests in peace, where it is all quiet on the Western front.