Analyze the All Quiet On The Western Front Essay – Flashcards

a kind, compassionate young german soldier fighting in the trenches whose war experience teaches him to detach himself from his feelings; after doing this, though it seems to save him from a number of war horrors, he is never the same. he cannot express any feelings at all about anything. since he is said to be more sensitive than the others, it is harder for him to impersonalize life and death and make only his animal instinct existent, so once he does so, he is never the same.

an inventive soldier who is paul's best friend in the army, "kat" is 40 years old, he is very resourceful and can always find food, clothes, etc when needed

an intelligent young man who is paul's classmate and serves with him in the second company, kropp is one of paul's best friends, has an interest in analyzing causes of the war (WWI)

a hardheaded yet practical young man, he is one of paul's classmates, he constantly asks his friends in the second company about their plans for after the war

one of paul's friends in the second company, he is a wiry young man with a ferocious appetite. he holds a deep grudge again Corporal Himmelstoss

pompous and ignorant, he is a headmaster in paul's highschool before the war, he pressures paul and his classmates to fulfill their "patriotic duty" by enlisting in the army; he is a representation of the useless ideas about war of the older generation of leaders

a noncommissioned training officer who was a postman before the war. (has "little man syndrome") he is power hungry and torments paul and his friends while they are training, he later tries to make amends with them; he is a prime example of how fighting on the war front (particularly in trench warfare) transforms people completely into emotionless drones

paul's classmate and war comrade, he contracts gangrene after suffering a light wound and his leg has to be amputated. he dies in chapter two (this is the first encounter with the meaninglessness of death and the cheapness of life in war)

the first of paul's classmates to die in the war, he did not want to enlist in the first place but he caved under the pressure of headmaster Kantorek. his horrendous death shatters his classmates' trust in the authorities who convince them to join the war

a young man who is paul's close friend in the second company, he has a wife and farm at home that he misses and talks about non-stop

a french soldier who is killed by paul in "no man's land" this becomes one of paul's most traumatic war experiences because gerard is the first person he kills in hand-to-hand combat

a close friend and classmate to paul, he serves with paul in the second company, he is the first in paul's class to lose his virginity

paul's friend in the second company who is large and burly, he was a peat-digger before the war and he hated it

a soldier in a neighboring unit, he is a "bed-wetter" like Tjaden

a patient in the hospital where paul and kropp go when they are wounded, he very much wants to have sex with his wife but cannot because he is confined to his bed for minor fever

paul's classmate who becomes a training officer and torments Kantorek when he is conscripted as a soldier

one of the biggest themes in the whole book, it shows the terrible brutality of war; all other books written about war prior to this one put more emphasis on the glory and honor whereas All Quiet on the Western Front sets out to explain what the soldiers actually experience first hand; the fear, unimportance put on life and death, and emotionless death, in many ways, WWI demanded this depiction more than any war before it; it altered humankind's concept of military conflict with its catastrophic levels of carnage and violence, battles that lasted for months on end, and new advances in weaponry and war tactics that made killing more impersonal and easy than before. it is important because it shows how the book accurately portrays the mind-numbing terror and savagery of war and the intense emotional and mental damage that it causes. at the end all of the major characters are dead, representing the war's devestating effects on the lost generation and the young men who were forced to fight in the war.

one of the other important themes is how the war effects the soldiers who fight on the front; not only the fighting part, but the living part, the behind-the-scenes so to speak; they fear for their lives constantly because any moment could be their last, this poses an intense physical threat that causes the nerves to be at continual unease. they are forced to live in horrendous conditions, filth, rats, corpses, and lice. they go long periods of time without food, sleep, clothing appropriate to the situation, and sufficient medical care. they have no choice but to deal with the frequent and sudden deaths of those who they are close with - sometimes deaths that happen mere inches away from them in an extremely violent fashion - the effect of these conditions is shocking and sudden, they are thrown into them as soon as they join the others on the war front. it creates an overloaded feeling of panic and despair, in order for the soldiers to survive they must learn to completely disconnect themselves from their feelings and rid themselves of any and all emotion and just accept what they get. in doing this, the soldiers become incredibly corrupt. most of them are not able to love normally after the war because of this. some, for example, paul, cannot imagine a future without the war because the only way he knows how to live is in the conditions of the war. everything becomes nothing and the meaning put on life and happiness and the enjoyment of life is gone because it is unrealistic in the conditions of the war front.

one cause of WWI was nationalism, which is the idea that competing nation-states were a fundamental part of existence, that the first loyalty should be that of your nation and that your national identity was a huge part of your identity; it was not new during WWI but rather it was at its peak of intensity, All Quiet on the Western Front portrays the idea of nationalism as a hollow, hypocritical type of tool used by those in power to control their nation's people. paul and his friends are persuaded into joining the army with nationalist ideas, their experiences of fighting a war on the front quickly masks the idea's irrelevance. soldiers fighting on the front are not fighting for the glory of their nation, they are fighting for survival. they kill to avoid being killed. paul and his friends do not believe their opposing enemies to be the real threat, but rather the men in power in their own nation, who have sacrificed paul's (and others) life to war to increase their own power and glory. they do not practice what they preach and they are not really in it for the glory of the nation, they are in it for the power and the status.

the pressure to join the war is most associated with Kantorek and the role he plays as paul's teacher who is always giving speeches on why paul and his friends need to join the army. Kantorek uses propaganda (ironically enough, because this was a new-age war tactic in WWI), idealism, and nationalism to convince his male students to join the war efforts. he glorifies the war in a sense, he makes it seem like the state of mind that the boys have going into the war will continue throughout, which is absolutely not true.

going against patriotic idealism, carnage and gore is used to portray the reality of the war front. every battle throughout the book features a violent and bloody picture. death becomes very impersonal in war. fighting for the glory of your country and being loyal to your nation is overridden by the long-term mental and emotional corruptions of fighting on the war front. it becomes all about survival. when someone dies the mindset is not sorrowful and depressing ..it is not "i can't believe they died" instead it becomes "who is going to get their bed? their food? shoes?" nationalism and patriotic idealism are hyperbolized from the start, but they quickly lose their persuasive ways when reality hits on the war front.

as the story goes on, the soldiers fighting on the war front have a type of animal instinct that kicks in. this is in relation to the horrors of war and the effects of war on the battling soldiers. once they have tuned out all of their emotions towards life and death and everything becomes impersonal, their animal instinct sets in. it is purely a fight for survival, survival of the fittest, like that of the animal kingdom. the soldiers' only concerns become their own lives, their own safety; every man for himself for the sake of their own sanity.