All Quiet on the Western Front

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1929

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapters 11-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Devastation of Trench Warfare

One of the most noteworthy and striking features of the novel is the graphic images presented throughout, especially during the combat sequences. The reader should be prepared to be shocked at the level of violence. However, this is intentional. With this novel, Remarque’s purpose is to present an accurate and truthful account of the war. The many depictions of how men are killed is meant to shock because it is the antithesis to the romanticized version of war that depicts it as something perhaps terrible, but in the end noble and honorable. What Remarque shows us is that in this war, there was no ideal; instead, there was only the truth of what happened. This is what makes the novel a work of literary realism.

The narrator Paul does not provide an exposition on the purpose of trench warfare. He does not give a history of its use, nor does he attempt to analyze the strategic determinations as to how one side wins and one side loses. The reader must consult elsewhere if he or she wishes to learn the answers to these questions. For the duration of the novel, most of what the reader can gather is that there is the German front and the enemy front, usually French and English. Paul describes how an enemy attack precipitates, how it escalates, and what it culminates in, which is usually some form of attack where the enemy side charges the other. He also describes that the only way to survive these assaults is through good luck. The men are ceaselessly suspended in a state of near death. One second, they are alive and in the next, they very easily could be killed.

While at the front, there is almost never any silence; even when the shelling has ceased temporarily, there are the near constant screams of wounded men. In fact, the more experienced man is able somehow to delineate the different kinds of sounds that each projectile makes. When the fighting occurs, the noise is absolute. This is significant because as Paul learns when he goes on leave, returning to peace and quiet is not easy for the veterans of this war. At one point, Paul hears a streetcar and instinctively ducks for cover. The constant noise, the sheer violence, the constant confrontation with death are hallmarks of trench warfare, and even if a man survives it physically, they are likely to be devastated well into their lives after the war. This is ironic given the novel’s title, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Remarque seems to be underlining the noise and danger of war with this title.

The Hypocrisy of War

Men of a low social class are the ones fighting the war; those who insist that the war must be fought, but who don't actually fight, are of the wealthy classes. The hypocrisy of this arrangement is one of the novel’s central themes. What is more, the zealousness with which those who send others to fight the war draws the hypocrisy out even more. For example, Paul says about his former schoolteacher, “There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best—in a way that cost them nothing” (7). It is difficult to declare outright if Paul feels there was an accompanying degree of nefarious intent on the part of these kinds of men; however, whether on purpose or not, hypocrisy is at the root of the message; that men like Kantorek were so enthusiastic about sending poor folk to die in combat magnifies it.

For many of the men, they see the flaw in reasoning for being at the front engaged in such a vicious war. While the elites of society spend time drumming up support for the war effort, the men in the trenches struggle to make sense of why they should hate their enemy simply because they are told to. During a dialogue with Kropp, Kat says, “Now just why would a French black-smith or a French shoemaker want to attack us? No, it is merely the rulers […] They weren’t asked about it any more than we were” (111). Importantly, Kat makes a socio-economic connection with the enemy. This implies a tacit recognition that the men who are doing the actual fighting do not have power. Tjaden bluntly responds to Kat, “Then what exactly is the war for?” and Kat’s reply that “There must be some people to whom the war is useful” (111) is an indictment against not just the elite who profit from the war, but the unjust system that enables it to happen.

The reader sees Paul make the same connection several times throughout the novel, such as when he recognizes the Russian prisoners are peasants like himself who are unable to rationalize the war just like he isn’t. He also recognizes the irony that the men in the trenches are suffering from starvation and dysentery while the upper classes in Germany are becoming rich off of the food they send the soldiers. Remarque’s message is that soldiers on both sides are suffering for the pockets and ideals of the richer men who have sent them to war.

Dehumanization as a Means of Survival

With all of the horror the men experience while in the trenches, it is obvious that the psychological trauma they suffer is tremendous. Witnessing the death of so many men, on all sides, in such gruesome fashion would be enough to devastate anyone. However, Paul’s voice in the novel rarely becomes indignant on this topic. Instead, he presents the many manifestations of the psychological trauma in an objective, journalistic tone.

The trauma is most apparent when Paul is granted leave and when he is hospitalized. His inability to re-acclimate himself to being back in his boyhood home is a consequence of the psychological devastation. His panic while walking in town after he hears a streetcar begin to move indicates shell shock. The wounded man in the hospital who stabs himself with a fork displays a mad desperation. These are but a few of the many details that show the reader how devastating and far-reaching the psychological trauma really is.

Additionally, Paul’s recognition of the suffering of Russian prisoners, and his immediate response that “this way lies the abyss” (105), is a self-denial of that which makes us human. In fact, what the war ultimately does to the soldier is that it dehumanizes him. It makes him into a machine.

Paul explains this tendency to dehumanize when he immediately stabs the man who falls on top of him in No Man’s Land: “[The man was] only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind” (121). Paul’s reaction may well have saved him, but when he confronts that he has killed a man—not an idea—with his own two hands, he re-humanizes the man and is devastated by his actions. Remarque juxtaposes these men in the trenches with the politicians and “Kantoreks” of the world who must never face the brutality of their actions and are able to see war as ideas and abstractions. The men in the trenches must cling to dehumanizing the enemy out of self-preservation.

In the final chapter, as Paul chronicles the deteriorating state of the war, and of the men’s psyches, he says, “First we are soldiers and afterwards, in a strange and shamefaced fashion, individual men as well” (146). In this observation, one can see the dehumanization, but what is also apparent is the absolute absence of hope. There is only shame to look forward to should a man survive the front.