all quiet on the western front :: essays research papers

What was going through Remarque’s mind? Paul is caught in WWI fighting to prove his loyalty to his country. Amidst the war, he struggles to find meaning in the new image he has become. In the beginning, their teacher persuades everyone in the class to enlist in the military to fight the glorious war. Thinking this is an honourable idea; everyone joins even those who secretly fear the battlefield. However, they are forced into volunteering. Not enlisting is like turning their back on their own country. To the teachers, schoolmasters, and older men, going to war is the best thing a man could do for his country. In reality, Paul and his friends do not want to kill or be killed. After Behm became Paul's first dead schoolmate, Paul viewed the older generation bitterly, particularly Kantorek, the teacher who convinced Paul and his classmates to join the military, feeling alone and betrayed in the world that they had left for him. Paul's generation felt empty and isolated from the rest of the world due to the fact that they had never truly established any part of themselves in civilian life. In the story, Paul tells us that all the older soldiers are stilled linked to their present lives. These older soldiers have wives, children, jobs and interests to come back to. According to Baumer, all the younger soldiers have to come back to is their parents and maybe a girlfriend. The young soldiers have no jobs and no idea on what life beyond the war will be like for them. All the young soldiers know how to do is fight in the war. And that is what they do till they are injured, or killed. This war has totally ruined the lives of Baumer, his friends, and all the young G erman soldiers who fought in this war. At boot camp, Himmelstoss abused Paul and his friends, yet the harassment only brought them closer together and developed a strong spirit amongst them. After a battle Paul was given leave and returned home only to find himself very distant from his family as a result of the war. He left in agony knowing that his youth was lost forever. Before returning to his unit, Paul spent a little while at a military camp where he viewed a Russian prisoner of war camp with severe starvation problems and again questioned the values that he had grown up with, compared to the values while fighting the war.