All Quiet on the Western Front Monthly Review

All Quiet on the Western Front
By Erich Maria Remarque 

  All Quiet on the Western Front is a fantastic book, so good it was banned in Nazi Germany, so you know it's "controversial". Anyhow, it's a classic war novel that is so effective considering how straightforward it is.

How would you describe the author's style of writing?
  
   Remarque's style is very engrossing, the perspective is first person through the eyes of fictional Paul Baumer, but what makes it interesting is he acts as more of a spectator than an active participant in the action. It's like watching scenes from a war movie in literature form. This perspective works because that's really what much of the book is, one long list of really graphic scenes on the front lines. Roughly the first hundred and forty pages don't have many memorable moments, especially if you've been stripped of the concept of morality by seeing the D-Day sequence of Saving Private Ryan like I have, it's a sequence of artillery strikes, taking cover, watching your fellow soldiers perish, repeat. That is a condescending viewpoint, but the book was very sneaky at tugging on the reader's senses; after grasping the tedium of the trench warfare, the book throws some recruits into the mix, seeing how inexperienced they are and reading about their deaths really bring a contrast that shocks the senses.

   Pg 130 " They get killed simply because they can't tell shrapnel from a high explosive, they are mown down because they are listening anxiously to the roar of the big coal-boxes falling in the rear, and miss the light, piping whistle of the low spreading daisy-cutters. They flock together like sheep instead of scattering, and even he wounded are shot down like hares by the airmen."

Pg 131 "Between five and ten recruits fall to every old hand. A surprise gas-attack carries out a lot of them. They have not yet learned what to do. We have found one dug-out full of them, with blue heads and black lips."

   After reading about the monotony of war, these gruesome scenes give you a true dose of reality. Something about this effected me more so than any defense of an enemy attack and military surgery.

      

What is the author's purpose of the book, how is it achieved?

   You don't need to read a war novel to believe it's view's are anti war, and All Quiet is no exception, but how it shows this is exceptional. What I found so impressive about the book is that how it was written reflected the life of the soldier just as much, if not more than the jarring descriptions. The sense of monotony to the struggle lead me to a mentality that this is like another day at the office, but every now and then there are sequences, and not just the ones about the recruits, knock you back to the instinct of how absurd the leaders of each country were to think all the lives wasted were justified. Every time I put down the book, I felt this must be what Remarque's experience as a veteran must have felt like.

   Another thing that some may or may not like is how the other soldiers Paul signed up with eventually blend together and have little reason to remember each one's names or personalities. They do off and on throw out great viewpoints, but once again the bleak writing is used to the book's intentions advantage. Because they don't really have much character to them, one could easily assume that they were meant to feel more like just part of a series of faceless numbers. 

   One other thing I liked about much of the book was how there really wasn't much of a true plot to it, which lead to me skimming through most of the long combat sequences. This sounds like I thought of it like a dry read, but the reality is that different reading styles will get a wildly different experience out of it. If you skimmed through It like I did, you will most likely picture it like a shell shock moment in a war film, or one long flashback that focuses on the depression a soldier could feel. It's a simple method but very unique when compared to literature that may require reading through dialogue and thoroughly analyzing character progression. You could try to find maturity progression in the characters during the first, but it's like trying to find water in the wasteland, you'll have to pretend like it's there. These readers will eventually find more of that underlying reason for the book around the eighth chapter.

For what audiences is the book intended?

   The audience for this book seems obvious, anyone interested in knowing the realities of war. Me being interested in history read this book with that intention, but the only problem is that in this modern world, media is much more elaborate. I've seen war movie classics from The Longest Day to Black Hawk Down and after seeing how graphic they get, it was hard to get the most out of the combat sections in Remarque's tale. With that said, anyone who discovers that sense of monotony, and the underlying shock with the recruits will have a thought provoking experience. Not to mention some of the absolutely astonishing literature that must be seen to believe. 

"I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in unknowingly, foolishly, obediently slay one another. I see the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the world see these thing; all my generation is experiencing these things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing ;-it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What shall happen afterwards? And what shall come after us?"

   Once again, if your interested in reading this book for the same kind of emotion that can be found in Saving Private Ryan, you won't find it here, but you will find something different that can be equally appreciated.