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All Quiet on the Western Front (Paperback)
by Erich Maria Remarque
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| Market price: ¥ 98.00
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¥ 88.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
Written in brilliant prose and disturbingly dispassionate tone, All Quiet is a seminal work on the horrors of war. |
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Author: Erich Maria Remarque
Publisher: Ballantine Books; Reissue edition
Pub. in: March, 1987
ISBN: 0449213943
Pages: 304
Measurements: 7.0 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00452
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- MSL Picks -
All Quiet on the Western Front from author Erich Maria Remarque appears on most lists as one of the greatest war novels ever written. The author fought in WWI, and was wounded five times. Almost a century later, the book hasn't lost one iota of its power, and it stands as a testament to the inhumanity and insanity of war.
Narrated by nineteen-year-old German Paul Baumer, the story begins with Paul and his classmates on the front lines. He notes that all of the pupils were under tremendous pressure to enlist from their schoolmaster Kantorek and other gung-ho war supporters who were "convinced they were acting for the best - in a way that cost them nothing." Paul notes that "even one's parents were ready with the word 'coward'; no one had the vaguest idea what we were in for."
Paul, a sensitive young man, describes leaving his books and his poems behind and attending army-training camp. He details how the experience involves a "renunciation of personality" and the recruits were "trained for heroism as though we were circus-ponies." The hierarchal structure of the army, the flattening of the recruits' personalities, and the acceptance of meaningless orders all result in the process of dehumanization and become a matter of course by the end of Paul's training.
Sent off to the front line, Paul's classmates are killed or horribly maimed, one by one. Even those who survive will be forever changed by their experiences, and Paul notes, "The war swept us away." While each loss is felt deeply by the other men, they continue on comforting each other and sharing their paltry rations whenever they can. Surreal memories of his past life flood through Paul's consciousness, but the memories "do not awaken desire as much as sorrow."
Remarque's novel would be unbearably painful to read had the author handled the text any differently. In spite of the subject matter, the story is told unemotionally - although there is certainly an emotional reaction from the reader. Amidst the death and carnage, there are brief moments of life and humor - a shared feast, and revenge against a tyrannical soldier. In calm moments, the soldiers speculate how the war started and conclude that war is a "kind of fever" and that it would never have happened if "20 or 30 people in the world had said 'no'."
Paul describes the painful difficulties of taking leave - inevitable questions from civilian relatives about conditions are avoided. If pressed, Paul lies to spare his family the truth, but the horrors of war are revealed to the reader. If there is one good thing created by war, then surely it must be the camaraderie that exists between the soldiers, and Remarque's protagonist is eternally bonded to his fellow soldiers. What a paradox war is - the best thing it produces is the loyalty and camaraderie experienced by those who fight, and yet while the soldiers fight and help defend one other, they are ultimately exposed to death as either destroyers or victims. All Quiet on the Western Front is an amazing, unforgettable book - it's just as relevant today as the day it was published.
(By quoting DisplacedHuman, USA)
Target readers:
General readers
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From the Publisher
Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other - if only he can come out of the war alive.
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New York Times Book Review (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first trank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure. |
Sean (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
Hyped as the greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front had certainly piqued my interest. I must say I wasn't disappointed. Remarque delivers a biting, scathing criticism of a meaningless and cruel war and its dehumanizing effects on the "Lost Generation."
Contrary to previous war novels romanticizing the ideals of patriotism and heroism, Remarque delivers a poignant story of a German soldier's survival on the front lines of World War I. In the pragmatic life of warfare, there are no grandiose ideals of nationalism, nor any dreams of heroism. There is only one pervading thought - survival at all costs. The ultimate goal of the soldiers is to live another day. And whatever that may entail, not matter how horrific, they will do it
The soldiers are pawns - one homogenous, interchangeable group - to their leaders. All individuality and humanism is stripped from their meager lives. The heir of a fine set of boots from a dying soldier are more important than the human life lost. Yet, the soldiers know that they are pawns but are powerless to change anything. They are mere animals, who use their instinct for survival to live another day.
The soldiers are alienated from society and are separated from the society of their homeland. As the brotherhood of soldiers contemplate their roles in a postwar society, they cannot grasp at anything. Not only is their innocence lost, but their future is bleak and meaningless as well. Even if they are able to survive the front lines and return homes, they are living corpses, shells of human beings who have been irrevocably damaged by the war. Indeed, they are the "Lost Generation," whether they are able to return home or are rotting in the ground.
The abject futility and meaningless of war pervades throughout the novel. As the war progresses, the talk of armistice intrigues and tortures the soldiers simultaneously, as they know that any day may bring their death, no matter how close to peace they are. They know they are fighting a losing war but must continue to do so, despite its futility. Indeed, the Russian prisoners and their French combatant enemies are viewed on the same moral level as the soldiers. They are no different than them except for the language, as many of them are peasants and farmers and only maim and kill because they are ordered to and have been subjected to mindless propaganda. On a basic level, the soldiers are all the same, no matter which side they fight on.
Remarque uses a terse, direct style to convey the horrors of the frontline and strip away any flowery sense of existence. Yet, the words he uses are powerful and reveal a cold, heartless war that is bereft of ideals. Through the first-person narration of Paul, Remarque delivers the content that seems to be much more personal than if a third person narrator was utilized. Indeed, it is easy to imagine the horrific sights of "No Man's Land" and the mangled corpses and putrefying bodies.
Overall, this novel certainly deserved to be hailed as a great war (anti-war) novel. It is easy to see why this book was burned during the Third Reich, as the "Fuhrer" could not have been too happy with Remarque's views on patriotism and war. However, this novel holds certain universal truths that cannot be ignored. Superb.
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Jim Leonard (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
Erich Maria Remarque is one of the most brilliant minds of the last hundred years. He captures the cruelty and horror or war in its most brutal form. The protagonist, a German soldier, Paul Baumer, goes through unrefined hell as he journeys through the most violent and devestating years of his life. From the front line, trenches are blown apart and splintered during each bombardment. Constantly he fights for his life, there is no time for sentimentality, even less for one's own thoughts. He is opened unto a world unlike the world he left behind. As for the home front, things aren't much better with supplies running low and a lost sense of warfare. Within a small time lapse of their first battle, Kemmerich, a good friend of Baumer is wounded in the leg. Kemmerich dies within a relatively short period of time; in a dressing station where death is rampant and surgeons cut off limbs at the slightest sign of injury. With Kemmerich's death begins a novel, so real, that it is as if the battles and the guns still fired to this day, and in a way they do, just on a different front. There's only one way to have quiet on a front, and I'll leave to your imagination just as to how. |
Octavius (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
'War devours everything” is the general theme of Erich Maria Remarque's famous novel. The story is a first-person narrative detailing the life of its author, Paul Baumer, during the period of The Great War from 1916- 1918. Baumer just graduated from high school and, like every other good German, he signs up for the war along with his classmates to serve his Fatherland: it is the ideal that has been pounded into them by their government, school teachers, and elders. At first all gleaming with overconfidence, the narrator and his friends soon realize that there's no glory in war even if one has dutifuly served the Fatherland and received an Iron Cross pinned to their chest by the Kaiser himself.
The narrative uses the characters to show how the reality of war, in one way or another, destroys or consumes the vitality of life: it is rich in showing the futility and beastiality of war. Remarque in effect explores the two main schools of thought that occupied intellectual discussion at the turn of the 20th century; positivists such as Bertrand Russel who thought that modern progress was a positive factor to humanity if guided by moral values and, the school of nihilism advanced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others arguing that morality was simply a conventional rationalization of an objectively purposeless existence. Baumer and his friends are, at first, positivists: despite the war, they're all still obsessed with youthful notions of duty to the state and their dreams of becoming artists/writers, theologists, farmers, and foresters. When they arrive at the front, their sergeant is the sobering pragmatist who teaches the youths to dispense with their naive idealism and to bear only the brutal reality of war in their thoughts. He teaches them the practical skills of good soldiering by keeping dry and finding good food. He teaches them to survive by using their shovels to decapitate the enemy instead of the fixed bayonet. Slowly but surely, each of the narrator's friends become victims of the war despite their idealism: some of them are killed precisely because of their idealism. In short, the narrative subtly explores every possible facet of war in how it permanently destroys, disfigures, or otherwise changes life and the human spirit: it explores the utter futility and dehumanization of war. Although one follows Baumer's optimism throughout the story, one realizes that optimism ultimately changes nothing in terms of the reality of war: only one's perception of it. The story actually leaves the question open as to whether an optimistic outlook serves any purpose at all in either war or peace. Remarque himself claims at the beginning of his work that it is not a critique or evaluation and certainly not an adventure story but simply an account of the lives of a few men fighting in a long and gruesome war.
This is a great work on the horrors of war and particularly modern mechanized warfare. Beyond the fact that it could have been avoided, the most horrid thing about WWI is the toll it took on the generations of men who fought in it. By the war's end, about 75% of the male population ages 17-35 in Germany and France was either dead or permanently disabled by the war in one way or another. Of those who were injured, many were amputees, horribly maimed/disfigured, or suffering permanent neurological damage from exposure to mustard gas. WWI was also the last war in which soldiers had statistically a higher chance of dying from disease and deprivations than from combat; penicillin was yet to be discovered and medical facilities/care remained primitive. Most limb injuries tended to be amputated to avoid scepsis and blood transfusions were not really known. Most wounded soldiers died simply of blood loss/shock; those who survived often died from various viral/bacterial infections. In reciting such grim details, Remarque's narrative is far from being a tragic epic in the style of the Iliad where great champions died gloriously in combat. For Remarque, there's no glory in war; the only glory is to survive it. Remarque's characters are only ordinary men who try to survive a horrid war the best they can. None of the characters seek to be heroes in this story although many perform heroic feats to save their commarades. This is a true classic of Western literature and is worthy of reading.
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